PEEPING TOM
PEEPING TOM is the type of film that people either love or hate, comprehend it or are baffled by it. In looking at the film from the standpoint of today’s sensibilities some 47 years after its original release, it is almost unfathomable to consider that it essentially ruined the career of its director, Michael Powell, overnight. It is impossible, in fact, to talk about PEEPING TOM for any great length without the conversation including some sort of tidbit about this unfortunate occurrence.If PEEPING TOM is about anything that we can be absolutely sure of, it’s about the dangers of leading a solitary existence devoid of intimate human contact. It’s also about the desire to stare at or gaze, and on an even deeper level it is a rumination on the relationship that a director has to his audience. Mark Lewis, portrayed in a wonderfully understated performance by Carl Boehm, is a focus puller and girlie magazine photographer who takes his film camera everywhere he goes as if it were a physical appendage. He lives in the West Kensington section of London and works long hours to supplement his filming habit which, unfortunately, consists of frightening women to death just before he kills them, effectively capturing on film their horrific grimace of fear at the exact moment of death. He accomplishes this by an ingenious albeit macabre sleight-of-hand: masking a sharp knife in the leg of his camera tripod and showing a mirror to his victim so their face is the last thing they see prior to death.
PEEPING TOM opens on a closed eye that abruptly opens and cuts to Mark approaching a prostitute with his running camera surreptitiously ensconced in his coat. She offers him sex for two quid (a few dollars – how have times changed!) and as they enter her apartment her disposition turns from that of an insouciant trick who has had one too many johns to that of a terrified and cornered victim whose death is caught on film. As Mark watches this imagery in his screening room later on, he rises out of his chair and briefly convulses at the sight of the murder, as though he were having an orgasm. The opening credits run over this film-within-film imagery.
As the woman’s body is discovered the next morning, Mark stands by filming the police activity. When an official asks him what newspaper he’s with, Mark fibs with the reply, “The Observer”. Again, the theme of looking is enunciated.
Upon returning to the drug store for whom Mark takes photos of beautiful young women, a older gentleman (humorously played by Miles Malleson of DEAD OF NIGHT) comes in looking for “views” (street parlance for girlie photos), and buys up a good number of them. Mark has no doubt taken all of the photos he has purchased. Mark then goes upstairs to the studio where he does the actual photographing and one of his subjects is Milly played by the voluptuous Pamela Green who unsuccessfully flirts with him.
Upon returning to the apartment of which he’s the landlord, he stumbles upon a birthday party for the spunky and cheerful Helen (Anna Massey) who lives below him. She invites him to the party and he politely declines, saying that he’s busy. When Helen visits him later on as he’s watching the footage of the dead prostitute, he hurriedly removes the film from the projector the way a teenager might hide a pornographic DVD today and lets her in. She is fascinated by the darkroom and asks to see the film that Mark put away quickly. Instead he shows her a visual record that his father made of him when he was a child and his reactions to external stimuli, such as fear and distress, and his mother’s funeral. His father’s words (“That will do, Mark. Dry your eyes and stop being silly.”) echo in Mark’s mind as he attempts to photograph Helen’s reaction to the film. She demands that he stop the film and he explains that his father was a scientist who wanted a written record of a child’s life. Helen is disturbed.
At Mark’s second job as a focus puller at a motion picture film studio, he surreptitiously meets with a co-worker/dancer (Norma Shearer) to presumably film her. As she dances and warms up she’s oblivious to his horrible intentions until he exposes his tripod/knife and mirror, effectively recording her death. Later, Helen is then seen speaking with her blind mother Mrs. Stephens who, like Sophocles’ Tireseus, is tuned into Mark’s furtive nature and is unnerved by it. Helen leaves to visit with Mark.
The next day during rehearsal on the film, the lead actress finds the dancer’s body and a police investigation ensues. Mark photographs the investigation and the police make note of it. Later on he and Helen go out for another date and she persuades him to leave the camera at home – for the first time we see him without his appendage and he looks uneasy without it. Arriving home he embraces his camera as if it were a long-lost friend. When entering his apartment he is confronted by Helen’s mother who grills him on what he watches on the screen. Mark tries his best to keep it together, but she knows that he needs help and urges him to get it.
When he’s out of his apartment, Helen waits for him and nosily watches one of his movies he has looped through the projector. Finally, her eyes are opened, and she sees that the imagery is the real deal. Mark catches her, and now that his cover is blown, he engineers his own death on the camera.
PEEPING TOM is as richly cinematic as anything in Jacques Tourner’s CAT PEOPLE. This relatively new DVD is a wonderful supplement to the Criterion Collection Region 1 DVD from eight years ago which had a commentary by British feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey. The new British DVD comes with the following extras:
• New and exclusive commentary by Ian Christie, Powell expert
• New and exclusive introduction by Martin Scorsese
• New and exclusive interview by Thelma Schoonmaker, Powell's widow and Oscar-winning film editor
• THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER documentary (30 min.) wherein Scorsese, Schoonmaker and Christie talking about the film
• THE STRANGE GAZE OF MARK LEWIS documentary (25 min.) about the psychology of the protagonist
• Theatrical trailer
• Booklet containing essay, interview with screenwriter Leo Marks and extract from Michael Powell’s autobiography, MILLION DOLLAR MOVIE
• Behind the scenes stills gallery
The new commentary is yet another fascinating look into the history of the infamous film, and the additional extras make this DVD alone is well-worth the purchase of a region-free DVD player. The disc can be bought from Xploited Cinema out of Cleveland, OH. Ask for Tony, and tell him that Horror Express sent you!
