Peeping Tom (1960)
In this day and age, in a society so numb to violence, it is hard to imagine a time when people used to be scared by Vincent Price movies. Back then, it was commonplace for horror films to revolve around either the classic monsters (Frankenstein, Dracula and so on), or the fears of the Atomic Era (such as aliens, giant mutations resulting from radioactivity, and failed scientific experiments with catastrophic results). Although the Hammer films, with their graphic violence, were pushing the boundaries of what could be shown onscreen, the horror element itself was still quite detached from reality, be it in some Gothic castle in the past or in the laboratory of a crazy scientist in the near future. It was not until 1960, with Michael Powell's Peeping Tom and Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, that horror was brought to the real world, to the present-day society: far away from the literal monsters from before, embodying pure evil alone, the killers in these movies were nothing but wounded human beings secretly trying to cope with their traumas. Evil thus was no longer in plain sight, but hidden away as a facet of the human psyche, and, as a result, much more palpable (and frightening) than it had ever been.
It was in a starless night that Mark Lewis (Carl Boehm) made his first victim, a prostitute he picked up in a London alley. While killing her, Mark filmed her face so that, later on, in his private movie studio, he could better watch it being distorted by fear as she died. It is later revealed that Mark is an introverted focus puller in a London film studio, as well as a pin-up model photographer part-time. He lives in a gigantic house he inherited from his father, whose downstairs rooms he sublets in order to be able to maintain the place. One of his tenants is Helen Stephens (Anna Massey), a young woman who befriends him on the night of her birthday. As a token of appreciation, Mark, who had never had a friend, shows her one of his home movies as a birthday present, a home movie in which he is repeatedly tormented by his father, a renowned scientist whose main interest was the effect of fear on children. "I think he learned a lot from me [...] and I'm sure good came of it... for some people", Mark tells her. They remain friends, with Mark promising to help her in her book about a magic camera; however, his obsession with fear forces him to claim another victim, whose death he also films. The resulting shot, alas, is no good, being hence of no use in his lifelong project, a documentary on fear itself: he has to kill again. Having then at long last obtained his perfect shot of absolute fear with his last victim, he is finally ready to die, his much-rehearsed conclusion to his documentary.
The first shot in the movie is that of an eye in extreme close-up, gazing through the fourth wall right at the audience: we suddenly find ourselves being stared at as if we were about to do something atrocious. Such shot sets the tone for the following scene, in which we are literally put in the position of the killer, Mark (Carl Boehm), seeing the world though the viewfinder of his camera while he picks up his first victim, a London prostitute named Dora (Brenda Bruce). During the whole time they are together, despite Mark's camera being hidden inside his coat, Dora talks directly into it as if it were the man in front of her, thus stressing the fact that, from that point on, the camera, the killer and the audience are the one and same entity. However, regardless of the ensuing violence presented to us in a first-person point of view by director Michael Powell, in which we are actively reacted against by Dora, we find ourselves strangely attracted to the novelty of the shot, being therefore no different from the crowd of people gathering at the crime scene in the following day, enticed by the unusual incident, fighting to get a better view of Dora's body and yet being disgusted/saddened by her murder. After all, the movie advocates, we live in a society where even the respectable elderly gentleman presented to us in the subsequent scene (Miles Malleson) is himself a pornography ogler, a world in which an industry made to voyeurs by voyeurs is able to thrive to the point of being considered the Seventh Art.
Carl Boehm's moving portrayal of Mark is what elevates this character above even the widely more recognizable Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins), from Psycho, IMHO. Even though we know Norman is appalled by his mother's actions, we only get to know the full extent of his delusion by the end of the film, reason why we tend to see Mark's daily struggle as something that, contrary to Norman, Mark cannot break away from (well, at least in a first viewing of Psycho). Furthermore, contrary to Norman or the likes of Henry (Michael Rooker) in Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1990), Mark is able to genuinely care for people, and we can't help but feel happy for him when we see him overjoyed by Helen's (Anna Massey) company, up to the point where he is willing to let her put away his camera, an item without which he never left his house, while they go on a date. Despite knowing Mark to be a cold blooded serial killer, who not only kills his victims, but also forces them watch their own deaths, we find ourselves sympathizing with him, hoping his relationship with Helen will set him free. Regrettably, this is not the case, since he schedules his date with Helen to the time it takes to develop the film he just finished shooting, depicting his murder of his co-worker Vivian (Moira Shearer). As expressed so heartbreakingly by Hans Beckert (Peter Lorre), the murder in in Fritz Lang's M (1931), one cannot escape from oneself. (On a sidenote, I wonder whether the idea of the son driven mad by being used as his scientist-father's guinea pig was not extrapolated from Darwin's observations on his own son, as chronicled in his posthumous paper A biographical sketch of an infant -1877... but I digress.)
Peeping Tom was shot in beautiful Eastmancolor, proving once more that that once inferior film stock had been refined to the point of producing results as vivid as the much more expensive Technicolor, which held a near-monopoly on color movies up until the 1950s. Powell's cinematographer, Otto Heller, is able to create some astounding effects by contrasting shots as seen by us, in color, and by Mark, through his monochromatic camera. Consider, for instance, the scene in which a policeman lays a blanket upon Dora's body: when we see it on film, that blanket is depicted in a blood-red tone, whereas when we see it through Mark's perspective, it assumes a deep black shade, stressing, in his eyes, the idea of death. Such idea is highlighted once more when Mark is watching a film of him killing Vivian, and we are able to see a skull-like shape projected onto his back, as his black-and-white footage blends with his jacket in Eastmancolor.
Nowadays, with virtually everybody holding a camera-enabled smartphone with themselves at all times, the underlying themes in Peeping Tom have become more relevant than ever; in spite of that, it is not nearly as recognizable as Hitchcock's Psycho, its contemporary. To understand that, we have to go back to the 1950's, when European movies tended to lean toward historical dramas, bright musicals and art films, while in the Americas, film noir and westerns abounded at the time, being as violent as the Hays code allowed them to be, thus creating a less inhospitable environment for Psycho to thrive. Hitchcock himself was, by that time, already known as the Master of Suspense, in a sharp contrast to Powell, who was loved by his classic British dramas from the 1940s. Furthermore, Peeping Tom was previewed by critics prior to its release, whereas Hitchcock, fearing a backslash from the movie critic community, declined any pre-screening of Psycho. Consequently, Peeping Tom was reviled by the British critics, who, besides being shocked by the violence depicted on screen, viewed it as an attack on the movie industry itself. As a result, Peeping Tom was taken from all major cinemas, ending up as a double-feature in shady movie theaters up until 1962, while Hitchcock's cunning promotion for Psycho ensured its success with the public despite its lack of critical acclaim. Nearly forgotten for years. it was not until Martin Scorsese had it restored and shown at the 1979 New York Film Festival that Peeping Tom was properly recognized as the masterpiece it is, a status it still holds to this day.
It was in a starless night that Mark Lewis (Carl Boehm) made his first victim, a prostitute he picked up in a London alley. While killing her, Mark filmed her face so that, later on, in his private movie studio, he could better watch it being distorted by fear as she died. It is later revealed that Mark is an introverted focus puller in a London film studio, as well as a pin-up model photographer part-time. He lives in a gigantic house he inherited from his father, whose downstairs rooms he sublets in order to be able to maintain the place. One of his tenants is Helen Stephens (Anna Massey), a young woman who befriends him on the night of her birthday. As a token of appreciation, Mark, who had never had a friend, shows her one of his home movies as a birthday present, a home movie in which he is repeatedly tormented by his father, a renowned scientist whose main interest was the effect of fear on children. "I think he learned a lot from me [...] and I'm sure good came of it... for some people", Mark tells her. They remain friends, with Mark promising to help her in her book about a magic camera; however, his obsession with fear forces him to claim another victim, whose death he also films. The resulting shot, alas, is no good, being hence of no use in his lifelong project, a documentary on fear itself: he has to kill again. Having then at long last obtained his perfect shot of absolute fear with his last victim, he is finally ready to die, his much-rehearsed conclusion to his documentary.
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| Dora (Brenda Bruce), about to be murdered, ass seen though the viewfinder of her killer's camera |
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| Mark (Carl Boehm) mesmerized as he relives his latest murder on film |
Peeping Tom was shot in beautiful Eastmancolor, proving once more that that once inferior film stock had been refined to the point of producing results as vivid as the much more expensive Technicolor, which held a near-monopoly on color movies up until the 1950s. Powell's cinematographer, Otto Heller, is able to create some astounding effects by contrasting shots as seen by us, in color, and by Mark, through his monochromatic camera. Consider, for instance, the scene in which a policeman lays a blanket upon Dora's body: when we see it on film, that blanket is depicted in a blood-red tone, whereas when we see it through Mark's perspective, it assumes a deep black shade, stressing, in his eyes, the idea of death. Such idea is highlighted once more when Mark is watching a film of him killing Vivian, and we are able to see a skull-like shape projected onto his back, as his black-and-white footage blends with his jacket in Eastmancolor.
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Yet another noteworthy aspect of Peeping Tom is its sound. The piano soundtrack, composed by Brian Easdale, exquisitely complements Mark's personality, growing frantic as his excitement mounts, dimming as such excitement fades away and stopping abruptly when his frenzy is interrupted, cued by his switching off his projector. In fact, thanks to the adroit sound design by Malcolm Cooke and Gordon McCallum, we end up unconsciously associating to Mark's murderous intent the tune made by the piano and the clacking sound of the projector (in the same way we did to Hans Beckert's whistling in M - 1931), tune which has its climax by the end of the movie, when violins and crying children are joined to the mix, introducing a nightmarish quality to that already disquieting scene. Also remarkable sound-wise are the shots inside Mark's private film studio, his "lair" so to speak, with its nonstop echo of dripping water, as well as the scene in which Mark first meets Helen's mother (Maxine Audley), a blind woman who, ironically, is the only one able to see there is something odd about him, reflected in Mark by the sound of his heartbeat, audible only to her.
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| Mark watching his second victim begging for mercy. Notice the skull-like shape on his back. |
Summarizing it:
| Liked | Didn't like |
|---|---|
| The haunting soundtrack by Brian Easdale and sound design by Malcolm Cooke and Gordon McCallum | Can't think of anything. |
| Carl Boehm's sympathetic portrayal of Mark |
Despite the horror onscreen, Hellen, very much like the audience, cannot make herself stop watching it:
Great Movie review by Roger Ebert here.
If you liked this movie, then do watch Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window (1954), as well as, obviously, Psycho (1960).
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