PEEPING TOM
Looking for trouble
RELEASED OUT NOW!
1960 | 15 | Blu-ray (4K/regular)/dvd
Director Michael Powell
Cast Carl Boehm, Moira Shearer,
Anna Massey, Maxine Audley
This Freudian horror thriller practically ended Michael Powell’s career. While by modern standards it seems pretty tame, you can understand why. Critics were not ready for its portrait of a compulsive voyeur, set amid a seedy Soho milieu of glamour photography – all peeling wallpaper and bruised-skinned models – least of all from the director of films like The Red Shoes and A Matter Of Life And Death.
Austrian Carl Boehm seems strange casting as the decidedly English Mark, driven to film the women he kills with a blade hidden in a camera leg. He excels in the role though, providing flashes of menace but also attracting our sympathy. A psychologist father who treated him like a lab rat is framed as the source of Mark’s hang-ups, and as the painfully shy focus-puller develops a friendship with an innocent neighbour, you can almost convince yourself of the possibility of redemption.
While deploying a killer’s POV that would later be baked into the slasher template, and boasting some tense sequences, it’s a thoughtful portrait of fetishism – one that implicates the viewer. It also has a rich vein of sly wit. “You don’t get that in Sight And Sound!” a co-worker says, showing off a pin-up. And note the name on a hack director’s chair: Arthur Baden (a nod, via Scouts founder Baden-powell, to Powell himself ).
Extras Sir Christopher Frayling provides an articulate overview, (28 minutes), highlighting less obvious aspects like the film’s satire of the Rank Organisation. Also new: a chat between critics Rhianna Dhillon and Anna Bogutskaya (37 minutes), and a restoration featurette (15 minutes).
A 2005 retrospective (19 minutes) has contributions from Martin Scorsese (a fan), Powell’s widow Thelma Schoonmaker, and Boehm. A 10-minute Schoonmaker interview provides Powell’s perspective. Ian Christie’s critical commentary is perceptive and smoothly delivered. Plus: intro; trailers; galley; booklet.
Ian Berriman
Pamela Green (one of Mark’s victims) was a real-life glamour model, who appeared in nudist film Naked As Nature Intended.