Peeping Tom intrigued me a great deal. For a start, it's the first film by Michael Powell I have seen without Emeric Pressberger's involvement. Secondly I heard it was the film that destroyed his career. Unlike now, when the only things that can really destroy a directors career is if their films stop making money, this film ruined Michael Powell because it was deemed too shocking, too sick for public consumption. However, 52 years later, times have changed. The film has been reclassified a 15 (though I would argue that that is still too severe) and it has gained quite a reputation for itself. The biggest supporter of the film that I know of is Martin Scorsese, a man who seems obsessed with all Powell & Pressberger films (with good reason) and who introduced Powell to his last wife, Thelma Schoonmaker (Scorsese's editor). He appears on this release too, giving a passionate introduction to the film.
The film focusses on a young man who seems to film everything he sees, including the murders he commits. He later revisits these moments, watching the final moment of terror on their faces as they realise what is to become of them. He begins a relationship with a young girl who lives downstairs in his building. He is scared that he will do something to her, so refuses ever to film her for fear of what he will do. She falls for him, and knows something is wrong, but is never sure what. The police are tracking him down through the entire film, but unassuming as he is, whether they will catch him or not truly remains a mystery. There's a great backstory involving his father which goes a long way toward explaining his current behaviour.
The film is remarkable, I must start by saying that, because I fear that somewhere amongst this, my real views on the film will be hidden. Basically, created here is a man who is the template for many modern villains. You see, he is not a bad person, indeed you sympathise with him at numerous points in the film, even like him. Powell had a theory that the reason that the critics found the film so distasteful was because they could not get their heads around a film where they liked or identified with a murderer. He is a timid, ordinary man. The film often gets compared to Psycho in that respect, but released before Psycho, this film was hit by much harsher criticism.
The major theme of the film is voyeurism. As a child, his father would study people who would watch other people kissing in public etc, he would film these moments and commit experiments on his son to this effect, this lead in later life his son to commit the acts of violence to the women he loved on camera, so he could watch these most intimate moments time and time again. It also looks at what happens when you turn the camera on someone. There is an old belief that the camera steals your soul. Powell takes this further, as the main character ends up killing every woman he films, hence why he refuses to ever turn the camera on the new woman in his life, he likes her too much.
This film is wonderfully paced, beautifully shot and the acting is all superb. This stands up there with the red shoes as one of the finest British films ever made. You can see the influence it had on film makers in the 70s and 80s. It is a shame that this ended his career, because the film shows that Michael Powell could make superb films on his own, and was pushing boundaries in a way like no other, I can't begin to imagine where he would have gone from here. Instead we get a film that was a decade ahead of its time, still refreshing, a true revelation to a modern viewer.
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