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Peeping Tom (1960)

Posted By: Someonelse
Peeping Tom (1960)

Peeping Tom (1960) [Optimum Special Edition]
DVD9 (VIDEO_TS) | PAL 16:9 (720x576) | 01:37:43 | 7,25 Gb
Lang: English 2.0 @ 224 Kbps + English Commentary track | Subs: None
Genre: Crime, Thriller | UK

Michael Powell's controversial meditation on violence and voyeurism effectively destroyed his career when it was first released, but later generations have come to regard it as a masterpiece. Karl Heinz Boehm stars as Mark, the son of a psychologist who kept a video journal of the boy's upbringing for research purposes. The constant intrusions profoundly affected the boy, who grew up to be a photographer himself; but his principal subject matter consists of women whom he murders before the camera. He then runs the films of his victims in their final throes so that he can study their reactions to death–a perverse extension of his father's experiments, which tormented Mark to analyze his reactions to raw fear. The British press had long been hostile to the unorthodox films of Powell and his partner Emeric Pressburger; when Peeping Tom came around, they used the film to castigate him as "sick" and tawdry. The passage of time has proven Peeping Tom as profound and accomplished as any of Powell's earlier films, and it ranks with Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window (1954) and Vertigo (1958) as a landmark exploration of the links among voyeurism, violence, and male sexual desire. Powell himself plays the evil father in the flashback sequences, and his son Colomba plays Mark as a child.

IMDB

DVD Distributor: Optimum

It takes a pretty special film to destroy the career of one of Britain's greatest directors practically overnight, and Peeping Tom is just that sort of film. While its content isn't terribly shocking by today's standards (at least compared to the floodgates of gore opened by Blood Feast a few years later), psychologically Peeping Tom has lost little (if any) of its original, disturbing impact. Director Michael Powell, with tongue slightly in cheek, once described Peeping Tom as a film about a film fan, and behind Powell's jest lies the key to the film's impact. Mark Lewis (Karl-Heinz Boehm) is a murderous voyeur who obsessively films the deaths of young women (whom he stabs with the sharpened leg of a tripod); in the first few minutes, as we watch one woman's agonies through the viewfinder of Mark's camera, Powell forces us to watch Mark's crimes through his own eyes. And later, as Karl views the deadly images projected onto a screen in rapt silence, we see an unpleasant reflection of ourselves; if the appeal of the cinema is to a large degree voyeuristic, as the camera allows us to silently observe the lives of the figures on screen, then Mark Lewis is the ultimate extension of the ugly side of the filmgoing experience, taking erotic pleasure in the pain and fear of the people he films, and Powell is all too willing to indicate the audience's complicity as they follow Mark's actions.

Peeping Tom (1960)

And while the standards of its day imposed certain limits on Powell, Peeping Tom doesn't shy away from a clear focus on the fetishistic voyeurism inherent in the story: Mark supplements his career as a focus puller by doing cheesecake photography (at a time when the legality of girlie magazines was still questionable in England); one bit of comic relief is pegged on a timid man's buying under-the-counter pornography from a tobacconist; and the U.K.'s most famous nude model of the day, Pamela Green, appears in a small role (the relative equivalent of, say, giving Linda Lovelace a supporting role in Frenzy). While Powell carefully documents the emotional conditions that made Mark what he is, he also clearly intimates that his twisted psyche merely amplifies (and distorts) the voyeuristic impulse that lurks in us all, making Mark Lewis unexpectedly sympathetic and the audience an unwitting accomplice in his crimes. While often compared to Psycho, another ground-breaking terror film of the same year, Peeping Tom is a more daring and audacious film than Alfred Hitchcock's masterful whodunit, and it has more in common with Hitchcock's Rear Window. An unusually frank and non-judgmental portrayal of deviant psychology and sexuality (Mark's actions are not condoned, but he's more a tragic victim than a villain), the film asks questions and raises issues guaranteed to make nearly any audience uncomfortable.
Mark Deming, Rovi
Peeping Tom (1960)

To understand the stir that Peeping Tom caused when it was released in 1960, you need to think about what audiences at that time were accustomed to when they went to the cinema. Innocent love stories, historical epics, action-packed westerns and colourful musicals were the staple cinematic diet of the time, certainly not dark, disturbing and intensely violent murder thrillers like this. What probably unsettled contemporary film-goers even more was the fact that a film of this kind could come from a much-loved and revered director like Michael Powell. In modern times, the equivalent would be if Steven Spielberg were to make a graphic and reviled film about paedophilia or bestiality, consequently never being allowed to stand behind a movie camera again. When Peeping Tom hit the big screen, it was rejected by the public and crucified by the critics, and left Powell's hitherto glorious career in ruin.

Peeping Tom (1960)

A film cameraman, Mark Lewis (Karl Boehm), displays psychotic tendencies as he murders women with a spiked tripod attached to the bottom of his camera, capturing on celluloid their final screams of agony. It is revealed that when he was a child, Mark was used as a guinea pig by his father (Michael Powell) in a series of psychoanalytical experiments about the symptoms of fear. Among other things, Mark's delightful dad would wake him throughout the night and shine lights in his eyes, drop lizards into his bed, and on one occasion even forced him to pose for photographs next to the dead body of his mother. As a result, Mark has an unhealthy obsession with fear and, in particular, the expression that people have on their face during moments of fear.

Peeping Tom (1960)

Peeping Tom is one of the few films that still has the power to shock all these years on. Psycho, released roughly at the same time, is still a great film but its shock value has been diminished by years of repeat viewings and increasing permissiveness in the cinema. But Peeping Tom is an altogether more disturbing piece of work. Boehm is excellent as the killer whose entire outlook has been skewed by his father's experiments. Also impressive is Anna Massey as the killer's fragile and unsuspecting fiancée. Powell directs the film brilliantly, using bold and dazzling colours to disguise the horrific atrocities that punctuate his film. It is understandable that the film was met with revulsion and rejection at that time, but in retrospect it is a film of real importance and power. In a 21st century world bombarded and desensitised by harrowing images on the news and in the movies, the theme of losing one's grasp on what is and isn't morally acceptable is more pertinent than ever. This is not easy viewing, but it IS essential viewing.
IMDB REviewer
Peeping Tom (1960)

Extras:
. New introduction by Martin Scorsese
. New commentary by Ian Christie
. 'The Eye Of The Beholder' documentary
. 'The Strange Gaze Of Mark Lewis' documentary
. Photo gallery
. Trailer
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