Peeping Tom

My mini Brit noir festival ends with 1960's Peeping Tom, directed by Michael Powell. Upon release, the reaction to the film by critics was so vehement that for all intents and purposes it ended Powell's career. Today it is regarded as something of a masterpiece, misunderstood in its day. After watching it last night, though, I'm with the original view.

A very modern picture for its day, Peeping Tom deals frankly with sex and violence, certainly part of the problem with the reaction. However I have no problem with sex or violence (certainly not sex), but I was bothered by the way Peeping Tom was put together. It has all the appearances of a schlocky part of a double-bill at the drive-in, a psychological thriller in Z-picture clothing.

The story concerns a young man, played by Carl Boehm, who works at a London film studio as a focus puller. He's creepy from the outset, with social problems and always wearing his raincoat, even indoors. As a boy he was subject to his father's cruel psychological experiments in fear, which warped him to the point where he has become a murderer--he kills women while filming them.

Boehm's downstairs neighbor, Anna Massey, gets a crush on him, and here is a big flaw in the film. Why any woman, who appears outwardly sensible, would spend any time alone with this guy is beyond comprehension. During her first visit Boehm shows her into his private screening room, where he shows her films his father made of his experiments, such as throwing a live lizard into the boy's bed and filming his reaction. If this isn't a sure sign for a woman to pass on by I don't know what is. It's the same thing with one of Boehm's victims, a stand-in at the film studio played by Moria Shearer, who agrees to go out on a date with him. When he gets her alone on a soundstage and wants to film a scene with her acting frightened, I would expect most women would say they have to go home and clean their oven.

The film is rich in gaudy color and with a disjointed music score that underlines its tawdry style. I did admire some of the frankness of the material--one of Boehm's sidelines is as a photographer of nudie pics, and we see a funny scene in which a respectable older gent comes into a newsstand to buy some behind-the-counter material. But this is the kind of film that makes you want to take a shower after it's over. In the supplemental material (this is a Criterion DVD) there are many critics who bring up some valid points, such as how the film is really about the art of filmmaking (especially when pointing out that Powell himself played Boehm's father) but this is all more interesting in the abstract. It's a movie that's better when discussing than actually watching.

Interestingly, this is the same year that Hitchcock's Psycho was released, and the two films are often compared to each other. Hitchcock, noting the bruising that Powell received, withheld Psycho from screenings for critics. The voiced reason was because the studio didn't want anyone giving away the ending, but Hitchcock privately revealed that he didn't want to suffer Powell's fate.