Peeping Tom

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Mark, a studio camera assistant and amateur filmmaker, has grown up in the shadow of his father's psychological experiments, practised on him as a child. While he now experiments by filming his murders, he forms a tentative relationship with Helen, who lives with her blind mother in the same house, and wants him to illustrate her children's book about a magic camera. But Mark cannot resist his murderous compulsion and finally films his own death. Peeping Tom had an incredible reputation when I was a film student in the sixties - out of Jim McBride's fascination with it came his David Holzman's Diary (1967). Then, in 1979, I was able to help finance the re-release of Peeping Tom in its complete version by Corinth Films. I insisted on having my name on the poster along with Michael's, which was like a fantasy come true. Somehow it seems ridiculous to try to talk like a critic about a film that is so extraordinary in the way it deals with the complexity of film and reality. A friend once called me on the phone when it was showing on American television to say that the line “All this filming, it's not healthy”, reminded him of me. I said, “That's the beauty of it!” I always felt that Peeping Tom and Otto e mezzo (Fellini's 8 1/2, 1963) are the two great films that deal with the philosophy and the danger of film-making. Martin Scorsese (Foreword of Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger: Arrows of Desire)

YEAR   1960 PRODUCTION   Michael Powell Michael Powell Ltd./Anglo Amalgamated DIRECTOR   Michael Powell SCREENPLAY   Leo Marks PHOTOGRAPHY   Otto Heller MUSIC   Brian Easdale EDITION   Noreen Ackland CAST   Carl Boehm (Mark Lewis), Anna Massey (Helen Stephens), Moira Shearer (Vivian), Michael Powell (Mark's Father), Columba Powell (Mark as a child) RUNNING TIME   109 m.

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