Peeping Tom (1961)

Best movie of this year hands down!

Good concept, poorly executed.

The acting in this movie is really good.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

This looks so good and appears far more seriously intended than the same years Psycho, yet I hesitate to enthuse. I feel it would have been a better idea to use a likable English actor in the central role and imbue him with a more subtle creepiness. It seems too easy to just make the baddie a German so that we may assume the worst. True, we are supplied with background evidence of abuse of the abuser, thanks to the survival of his father's films of him as a child and there is word from a psychiatrist towards the end regarding the needs of a pathological voyeur. But the real horror of the need to create fear in another to excite is not properly explored which is a shame especially as only a few years later the horrors of the Moors Murders would be upon us. Nevertheless the use of colour is extraordinary, the recreation of the seedy newsagents (complete with copies of the UK glamour digests, Spick and Span) the alley way prostitutes and the glamour photography wondrous. Anna Massey always strikes me as a most awkward actress but she does very well here almost covering up for the more tentative performance from Karlheinz Bohm as the man with the killer camera.

Some films are so innovative, so ahead of their time, so wholly engaging, that they leave the audience in a perpetual state of "wow" as they watch; Peeping Tom is one such film. Directed by Michael Powell in 1960 explores voyeurism and hypocrisy in a similar fashion to Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho released the same year. Starring Karlheinz Böhm and Anna Massey, Peeping Tom delves into the emotional psyche of a man who uses his camera to kill people while simultaneously using it to film their dying reactions. Powell manages to tap into the sexual interest of voyeurism of his principle characters as well as the hypocrisy of what constitutes art in amazing ways. Showing such stark juxtapositions to illustrate hypocrisy was stunning. To watch this film in 2017, it's possible to miss just how revolutionary this film was for 1960, but nonetheless, Powell deserves to be recognized and praised for his innovative film.Mark Lewis (Karlheinz Böhm) is an introspective, shy man who works as a production assistant on British films. When he is not working on the film set, Mark takes pictures of naked women to be sold somewhat secretly by a store in town. Mark attempts to take artistic shots but is always brought back by the owner of the shop who constantly reminds him to only photograph naked women, as that is what sells. When Mark is not on film sets, or at a porn shoot, he spends the majority of his spare time tucked away in a bonus room in his flat watching reels of footage, that he makes, trying to chase his dream of becoming a filmmaker. The unsettling aspect is what Mark is viewing, Mark shoots murders, ones that he commits, and then watches them later in his flat. Mark's sexual repression is never more clear than when he is watching these films and becoming aroused by them. It becomes clear that Mark is obsessed with the effect of fear, and how it is experienced by others. Believing he is doing somewhat of a service by continuing his father's work on fear and the central nervous system, Mark views his films as research, thereby absolving himself of any guilt of committing murder. Mark fills his life with the different forms terror assumes, becoming obsessed with the emotion and willing to chase it no matter the cost.The most mesmerizing thing that Peeping Tom does is explore hypocrisy. Mark has the drive to create art, he wants to be a filmmaker, creating something for the rest of mankind, but is continuously denied the chance. Mark has taken to photographing subjects believing it to be an artistic outlet until he realizes he is supposed to take the most carnal of photos. Art is only valuable if it sells, and the naked women are all that his boss is interested in selling. Powell's ability to make such a statement on art and the way it is created and consumed was masterful. Peeping Tom is a wonderful suspense film, with each line of dialogue and image shown to the camera having a distinct place in the film. Any decent suspense film is dependent upon its score, and Peeping Tom has the perfect score for a suspense film. Another stand out technical aspect of the film is the interesting way in which color is used. Powell creates a world in Peeping Tom and uses color as an aid in such a way that the audience actually feels drawn into Mark's screening room. Karlheinz Böhm absolutely makes the film, creating a creepy yet unassuming Peter Lorre-type of performance, demanding attention from even his most subtle times on screen. Peeping Tom laid a foundation for many films to come yet continue to hold the respect of being one of the first of its kind, that "originals" often lose.

In any person's life, the period from childhood to youth is one of the most difficult phases. It is a period in which innocence is gradually replaced with maturity. However, if a person is the victim of some bad happening in this phase, it would continue to haunt for the rest of the life. This psychological observation is the basis of British director Michael Powell's masterpiece 'Peeping Tom'. It was written by Leo Marks who is credited for having created one of the most original screenplays ever written. Peeping Tom is an important film for students of cinema as well as psychology as it examines in detail the relationship fear has in cinema. This relationship is so mutually common that both of them are used abundantly by the film's leading man Mark Lewis. For many viewers, home theater is a modern invention which brings viewers closer to films but for a peeping tom like Mark Lewis it had a different personal connotation as he had his own version of home theater at home which enabled him to seek pleasure by watching fear. It is cinema especially its technical side which helps Mark Lewis to create fear in the minds of his victims. Peeping Tom was made in 1960s, a time of revolutionary change all over the world. However, its growing popularity is essentially a strong proof of its 'Cult' film status.

This is one perplexing film, almost as odd as Anna Massey's, the heroine's, face. Her features -- eyes, nose, lips, chin, neck -- seem to have been plucked at random from some genetic hat and flung together by the creator and, happily, came out right, almost by accident. Half the time I couldn't tell whether a scene was aimless or held some deeper, clinical significance that was lost on a dullard like me.The bare bones of the story are plain enough. Handsome, introverted, young Karlheinz Böhm works as some kind of focus puller in the British movie industry. He occupies the top floor of a rooming house and the largest room is dark and filled with mysterious cinematographic junk, like one of those chambers in a horror movie.Due do his child abuse, he loves to see women being frightened and then he kills them with a sharp spike on the end of one of the feet of his tripod, filming their faces all the time. He doesn't do it very often but when he does, she switches his persona from his usual reticent, shambling self, to a cockeyed maniac.Is there hope for him? I mean, we really DO want him to get caught or at least stop committing these little sins because he's pathetic. He sounds like Peter Lorre. For a few moment, in the middle of the film, yes, there seems to be a way out of his obsession. Anna Massey, a winsome young lady of twenty one, talks him into a date and more or less forces him to leave his movie camera and tripod behind. He's surprised to find he's enjoyed himself and promises himself never to kill her -- unless he sees her frightened.As the lunatic, Böhm is bland. Anna Massey is far more interesting. When she speaks, it seems that only her lips are moving while the rest of her face remains at rest. (That really IS worth making a movie about.) Moira Shearer has a small role as one of the first victims. She's given some clunky choreography except that she gets to bust one or two ballet moves that I think are called kick fans. She's quite a dancer. She's the only woman I've ever seen who can be en pointe sitting down.Nobody else is of much importance except Massey's blind mother, Maxine Audley, who makes up for the challenge to her sight by being practically clairvoyant. The police are no more than drones.It's not hard to understand why Böhm is more comfortable with cameras than with people. Conversing with other people is an extremely complicated business. It's only because we do it so often that it seems routine. But it's not. We have to manage our body language, our facial expressions, our utterances, our inflections, and the distance we keep between ourselves and the other. We don't notice these commonplace decisions except in people who make the wrong ones, as schizophrenics do.But those careful and precise judgments don't need to be made when a camera or a computer or radio can act as a transducer, shielding us from the judgment of others. We're safe behind that baffle. You doubt? Ever have stage fright? Well extreme introverts like Böhm have people fright.But, in the end, I don't know what to make of this movie. It's a mistake to read too much into a thing. It's like looking at a random assortment of stars in the sky and connecting them in such a way that you wind up with the outline of a bull or, for the Chinese, a rat. The prominent director may have led some viewers to make that error, but I'll have it some points for its meanderings being the result of deliberation; for the rest, felix culpa.