Peeping Tom│StudioCanal
Courtesy of STUDIOCANAL
by JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
1960 was a year that sent shockwaves throughout the film industry. Alfred Hitchcock, who was to direct Anna Massey twelve years later in his lurid thriller Frenzy – about a serial killer in central London – opened a movie called Psycho. Psycho was significant in several regards. Hitchcock refused to show the film to critics and barred his two leads, Anthony Perkins and Janet Leigh, from doing any promotional interviews as he wanted total control over the film’s publicity and its content. This was in June of 1960. Two months earlier another celebrated filmmaker had released an equally shocking film called Peeping Tom and whose critical reception ruined both the movie and the reputation of its director, Michael Powell. Hitchcock wanted audiences to judge Psycho for themselves. Most audiences never got a chance to evaluate Peeping Tom.
Both films were about serial killers and both showed the murderer as a self-effacing, somewhat shy and socially awkward man with severe parental issues. Hitchcock’s film, on the coattails of its shrewd marketing campaign, became a huge success. Michael Powell’s film, now reassessed as the masterpiece it is, virtually scuppered the director’s career. Essentially, Peeping Tom put the viewer into the position of voyeur, at a time when the Sexual Revolution had yet to break. Also, Powell was venerated by critics as the creator of such classics as A Matter of Life and Death, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp and The Red Shoes, which he had made in collaboration with his co-producer and scriptwriter Emeric Pressburger. Now he was out on his own and he had whipped up this seedy little film in which his victims – prostitutes, models and the real-life porn star Pamela Green – are dispensed with on camera. Remember, this was 1960, the year when the top three box-office stars were Doris Day, Rock Hudson and Cary Grant. And Michael Powell was no Master of Suspense, in the Hitchcock sense.
Yet Peeping Tom, which was rescued by Martin Scorsese from near oblivion, now being released in a 4K restoration on Blu-Ray, is a film of many layers, a playful thing, part satire of the British film industry (and of Soho) and part psychologically complex thriller. Scorsese says that in the 1960s, the film was like a rumour, that “No one was sure it existed,” after its mauling by the British press. Of course, by today’s standards it is nothing more worrying than a cosy little thriller. But viewing it again today, one can see how daring it was at the time. Not only does it turn the viewer into a peeping tom – embodying the male gaze – but pokes fun at the dirty old man in a raincoat, sent up rotten by the beloved character actor Miles Malleson who plays the customer of what is euphemistically known as a newsagent in Rathbone Place, Fitzrovia. According to the bonus material on the Blu-Ray – an excellent interview with the articulate film historian Christopher Frayling – the newsagent was used as was, complete with a mosaic of photographs of naked women on the front door. I’m not sure you could get away with that today.
The lead character is played by the Austrian actor Carl Boehm – whose Germanic accent is never questioned in the film – who plays the cripplingly shy focus puller and landlord Mark Lewis, who never goes anywhere without his trusty 16mm Bell & Howell camera. Lewis is played as a sympathetic character, who discovers a new lease of life with Helen, his 21-year-old tenant played by Anna Massey (co-star of Hitchcock’s Frenzy). It is Helen who uncovers the shadow that Mark’s late father still casts on him, much as Boehm’s own father, the celebrated Austrian conductor Karl Boehm, dominated the life of his son.
There’s a warning at the start of the film about its “outdated historical attitudes,” which actually serves it as a fascinating piece of social commentary. As to be expected from Michael Powell, it is a beautifully constructed thriller, albeit a little overwrought by today’s standards, but is full of humour, and makes one laugh even as it makes one feel complicit in the gaze of its protagonist. And all the bonus material is terrific.
STUDIOCANAL’s release of Peeping Tom is now available on Blu-ray and in 4k from Amazon:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Peeping-Tom-Vintage-Classics-Blu-ray/dp/B0CKFF88DS
STUDIOCANAL is Europe’s leader in production, distribution and international sales of feature films and series, operating in all nine major European markets - France, United Kingdom, Germany, Poland, Spain, Denmark and Benelux - as well as in Australia and New Zealand. It owns the largest library in Europe and one of the most prestigious film libraries in the world, boasting more than 8,000 titles from 60 countries, which span 100 years of film history. 20 million euros has been invested into the restoration of 750 classic films over the past 5 years. Known for releasing a stunning roster of incomparable vintage classics titles, STUDIOCANAL’s releases include outstanding thrillers, heart-rending masterworks, horror favourites, war dramas, Ealing comedies, and plenty of lesser-known gems. The collection boasts some of the greatest and beloved stars of British cinema.
