`Peeping Tom’ is about the nature of fear. It bears great resemblance to “Psycho” (both were made in 1960, this was completed and released first), but is not quite up to the same standard. Like the Hitchcock masterpiece, the male lead is terribly disturbed, and has been since childhood, had an overbearing parent, and he confides his feelings in a girl he has just met. Also, in the film that Mark shoots, we see close-ups of a woman’s screaming mouth, an image from a certain shower scene. `Psycho’ was, of course, a major success, maybe because it is far more polished, while this deliberately has a murky feel to it.

It is not hard to see why the film basically ended director Michael Powell’s career. Not a bad film by any means, `Peeping Tom’ is very unpleasant in places. It is not strong enough to be described as disturbing, unlike “The Exorcist”, “Deliverance” and “A Clockwork Orange”, but it does make the viewer uncomfortable in what he’s watching. Also, when watching, I began thinking about the misogyny that is in the film. There is one sympathetic female character in the film, Helen. The others; the prostitute at the beginning, the models, Helen’s mother, the actress, Viv (who dances around while Mark wants to work), they’re all annoying, or unkind, or coarse. Mark makes women nervous by his very presence, and whilst the film doesn’t say they deserve death, when Mark gives his reason for killing, it is almost as though it is their fault.

The other major theme of the film is voyeurism. Mark, above all, watches. Killing itself is not in his nature, but he is looking for fear. When Helen tries to take his camera off him, he is at first scared and untrusting. He realises it is all right, but gets his camera back as soon as he can. He is worried about someone finding the film he’s already shot, but he is mostly worried about losing an extension of himself.

The character of Mark is fascinating. Terrorised as a child by his father, he himself is now obsessed with fear and filming. He knows he’s mad, and cannot fully control himself. He is scared by his own feelings for Helen, and doesn’t want to hurt her. But the character doesn’t really develop over the course of the film, and the performance by Karlheinz Boehm is okay, but not brilliant. Mark is shy and reserved, more willing to look than interact, but we don’t ever really get inside his head to understand.

The other film of Powell’s that I have seen is “The Red Shoes”, which was dazzling as a visual feast. It had wonderfully bright colours and images. You would think that a movie about film’s power and voyeurism would be wonderfully shot, but the result isn’t quite up to scratch. It is often dark during the movie, in projection rooms, or developing rooms, and outside – Powell does succeed in making London look drab and ugly. The colours aren’t as vibrant, even with recurring use of red and blue. There is one image that stood out from the rest for me – when Viv’s face is being shown through the projector and Mark stands in front of the screen, it looks very similar to a human skull (more echoes, or foreshadowing of “Psycho”?). There also is a recurring pattern of vertical lines, as Powell shows people trapped in areas by bars onscreen, be they lines on Mark’s camera lens, the box Viv is found in, the projection screen, or the vertical lines in the background.

It helps to make the film unpleasant in that when Mark or anyone else is watching his films, Powell stresses reactions over the footage. He is far more interested in how the audience watching horror reacts. I am sure that this film was intended to shock us, and if it hadn’t, Powell would have failed in his attempt. What he is doing is telling us that when we watch horror films (not slasher-stuff, but the disturbing horror this tries to be), we’re human if we’re scared or made uncomfortable.

The film’s most obvious fault comes right at the end. When Helen asks to go through what the other women went through, I could not believe it. She is in a room with someone who has filmed the deaths of other women, and she wants him to show her how? She is trying to understand what Mark is doing, but it didn’t make sense for anyone to put themselves in such a dangerous position. Especially considering she doesn’t know him overly well. I admit it was necessary for the audience to see what Mark was doing, and what his filming was meant to achieve, but the way we saw it was unbelievable.


Recommended:
Yes