Review of Peeping Tom: The Criterion Collection

Introduction

Michael Powell enjoyed a long and successful partnership with Emeric Pressburger, making such classics as `A Matter of Life and Death`, `Black Narcissus`, `The Red Shoes` and `The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp`. In the late 1950s, he decided to make a film with Leo Marks, a wartime cryptographer who had written a story about Mark Lewis (Carl Boehm), who works as a focus puller and supplements his income by taking photographs for `under the counter` magazines. Mark was the subject of bizarre and cruel experiments by his father, who used him as a guinea pig in his research into fear. Mark spent his life, up until his father`s death, being recorded on tape and film and has developed an unhealthy relationship with the camera, to the point where he kills women, filming them as they die.

Mark lives upstairs in a shared house, keeping himself to himself, until Helen Stephens (Anna Massey) approaches him on her birthday and invites him to her party, which is attended by all the other lodgers. The two begin seeing each other, much to the dismay of Helen`s blind and alcoholic mother (Maxine Audley), who senses something about Mark that she doesn`t like.

Critical reception to the film was scathing. Derek Hill wrote in The Tribune that "The only really satisfactory way to dispose of Peeping Tom would be to shovel it up and flush it swiftly down the nearest sewer. Even then the stench would remain." and Isobel Quigley in The Spectator called it "the sickest and filthiest film I remember seeing", surpassing the horrors in George Franju`s horror masterpiece `Eyes Without a Face`. Carl Boehm recalls how guests of honour left the premier without even looking at him and Powell.

A huge fan of Michael Powell`s work, Martin Scorsese, together with other filmmakers including Bertrand Tavernier and Francis Ford Coppola, championed the film and it was released on DVD by the Criterion studio in 1999.

Video

Presented in the original aspect ratio of 1.66:1, but now anamorphic, the film looks terrific, with vibrant colours and good contrast - you`d be hard pushed to guess that the film was released in 1960.

Audio

A crystal clear mono soundtrack with optional English HoH subtitles.

Features

The `audio essay` by Laura Mulvey isn`t a commentary that you can sit and relax to, it is an authoritative piece of work that demands your attention and is a rewarding listen.

The stills gallery of behind the scenes photos is interesting

Chris Rodley`s `A Very British Psycho` documentary, produced for Channel4, runs at 50 minutes and concentrates on the life of Leo Marks and how he came to write the story and become involved with Michael Powell. An interesting documentary about a complex and fascinating man.

There is also the theatrical trailer.

Conclusion

Lambasted on its release, `Peeping Tom` virtually finished Michael Powell`s career as a filmmaker, as he never recovered from the critical mauling his film received. Compared to the films he made with Emeric Pressburger, this marks a huge change in direction for Powell who, despite examining the human psyche in `Black Narcissus`, had never made a film as intense and terrifying as this.

The choice of Carl Boehm for the lead was a strange one, as the German actor had never made an English language film, but his clipped tones and reserved appearance suit the character perfectly, sounding slightly like Peter Lorre. Anna Massey was similarly inexperienced, having only made one film, and that was in a small role, but she is likewise perfectly cast and plays opposite Boehm beautifully.

I can only imagine that the critical mauling it received was because the critics were not expecting such an intelligent and terrifying examination of the mind of a psychopathic killer in which the audience sympathises with the murderer, and that a bawdy sex comedy about a Peeping Tom would have received more favourable notices. Released in the same year as Hitchcock`s `Psycho`, `Peeping Tom` also has a socially inept serial killer as the main character, with scenes of incredible tension, but unlike `Psycho`, it has taken nearly 40 years for Powell`s film to be recognised as a masterpiece.

This is a better version than the R2 Special Edition, though completists will want them both for the variety of extra features.