I spent nearly half of my college career studying a theory of communication that deals with looking through and looking at communication. It’s all about recognizing the fact that there’s a lens in front of you as you watch a movie, watch TV, look into a camera or even look out into the world with your own eyes and mind. The smarter of us understand that we are seeing someone’s perspective, and yet still we look, fascinated by the emotions before us.
Michael Powell’s “Peeping Tom” is a film about looking, being terrified at what we see, being unable to look away, and feeling tortured and gross for doing so.
It’s a psychological horror movie released just months before “Psycho” about a serial killer, Mark (Carl Boehm), who videotapes women as he’s killing them, all to capture their last moment of fear and rewatch it later. He’s horrified by his actions and his films, but Mark has the psychological disorder of voyeurism, making him consumed to invade a person’s genuine expressions of humanity, be they love or terror.
Mark’s films are all black and white and silent (which would likely be the only option for home video equipment in 1960), but Powell orchestrates them to eerie, silent movie ragtime, and “Peeping Tom’s” vibrant colors and careful framing create a disturbing, unreal effect. On aesthetics alone, we’re drawn into Powell’s cinematic flair, and we hate ourselves for it because of the nature of the story. His techniques seem to telegraph that through any form of movie magic, Powell can pull our strings and keep us transfixed and terrified no matter what he portrays.
This sounds as if it would be an almost hateful, troubling movie to watch, and for audiences in 1960, it in fact was. Powell had been a British mainstay director along with his screenwriting partner Emeric Pressburger. They made numerous films of varying genres and moods, but this is NOT a Powell & Pressburger film. The public and critics reviled “Peeping Tom” for how it seemed to criticize you for watching and empathizing with Mark’s depravity. Because of this, “Peeping Tom” effectively ended Powell’s career as a director.
But today in its Criterion release, the film is a compelling, psychological powerhouse of a film. It’s a masterstroke of technique, and every frame and line of dialogue calls attention to just how strange it is to sit in a dark movie theater watching people live their lives.
One of the movie’s best scenes takes place inside a movie studio after hours. A stand-in on the set has agreed to go on a date with Mark, and he asks her to play along and be filmed as he prepares to murder her. The scene is orchestrated perfection, which also works as Mark’s way of attaining the closest thing to actually capturing reality; the perfect film. “Peeping Tom” knows there’s no such thing, but still we crave more.