PEEPING TOM was one of the first major films to take Snuff as its theme.
As the year was 1960, the audience, and above all the critics, weren't
exactly ready for it and Powell, for whom a great career was predicted,
was slaughtered by reviewers.
It became incredibly difficult for him to obtain funding
to make films in the years that followed.
Using his small camera Mark films his victims during the chase and at
the moment of death. The subjectively filmed sequences focusing on the
victims are completely fantastic and terrifying. But it is Mark's
obsession with ultimate terror and the images which give the film its
strength. You can't take voyeurism any further than this.
Mark's eager developing and viewing of his short films are reminiscent
of a small boy with a new toy. While this toy allows him to explore the
areas which fascinate him, as in all games there is a risk of
disappointment. We are enticed into empathising with Mark because of his
background history and it is possibly that which made the film repugnant
to the critics. Naturally there must be a reason why people murder and
when it is the obsession of a timid individual like Mark we feel little
other than empathy with him. Although what he does to women is
repulsive, the film is far more about Mark's internal world and possibly
even more about our need or thirst to see, to watch.
Michael Powell himself said in 1978: "Peeping Tom is a very tender film,
a very nice one. Almost a romantic film. I was immediately fascinated by
the idea: I felt very close to the hero, who is an 'absolute' director,
someone who approaches life like a director, who is conscious and
suffers from it. He is a technician of emotion. And I am someone who is
thrilled by technique, always mentally editing the scene in front of me
in the street, so I was able to share this anguish." (Powell,
Pressburger and Others).
Because the film was hated when it first came out there are a number of
incredible/funny** reviews of PEEPING TOM which show that even if you
have a high reputation there are some themes you just can't deal with. I
find it totally absurd that someone should cease to be talented just
because, for example, they choose to depict madmen who throw glue in
people's hair (see below).
So those were the old reviews: "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..." (Tribune,
1960).
[That was the famous damning review by Derek Hill]
"It is made by a director of skill and sensibility (...) Then one
remembers that even in his best period Michael Powell would suddenly
devote his gift to a story about a maniac who poured glue over girls'
hair. He has got beyond glue here. He has got to the trick knife
lovingly embedded in the throat, to the voyeur with sound effects, to a
nauseating emphasis on the preliminaries and the practice of sadism -
and I mean sadism..." (The Sunday Times, 1960).
[And that one was from Dilys Powell (no relation), although she later
apologised]
In 1989 Martin Scorsese praised PEEPING TOM and in recent years the film
has not only been a cult (or popular in horror film circles) but also
been recognised by the majority of critics.
Made in the same year as PSYCHO, both these films bring fear closer to
everyday life and into the human psyche. "Evil" is closer than we would
care to realise. PEEPING TOM is a masterwork and absolutely just as
relevant today, if not more, with all our documentaries and news images
which bring the nastiest and most perverted things that society is
capable of producing into our living rooms. What do we want to see? Or
an even more relevant question, why do we want to see it?
** Swedish pun (ot)rolig: otrolig means incredible, rolig means amusing
