It is 50 years since Derek Hill argued in Tribune that every print of Michael Powell’s study in voyeurism, Peeping Tom, should be “flushed down the nearest sewer”. His contemporaries were similarly appalled and dismissive – and Powell struggled to make films thereafter. In the subsequent half century, notably in the 1980s when Martin Scorsese sponsored a re-release in New York, Peeping Tom has been hailed as a masterpiece. Looking at it now, in the light of the popularity of “torture porn”, I wonder whether Derek Hill had a point.
The film works in the tradition of film noir and begins with a point-of-view shot of a prostitute who welcomes an unseen young man and is then murdered by him. The killer in question is Mark Lewis (Carl Boehm), a film technician who as a boy was photographed in increased states of distress by his father (Michael Powell himself). The film deals with Mark’s struggle to curbs his killer instinct as he attempts to have a normal relationship with the girl downstairs (Anna Massey).
At the end, we learn how Mark kills his female victims, with a long spike that flicks up at the front of his camera. The film clearly links sexual pleasure and murder to the cinema, with Mark addicted to the look of fear as the spike penetrates his victim.
Mark’s “fear addiction’ – and the film’s critique – is actually a search for capturing authentic emotion. We see him watch his developed film and experience disappointment with the result. Powell’s film coincided with the growth in British cinema of kitchen-sink drama, of an interest in the concerns of the working class. This can be seen as a desperate stab at turning back the clock, in terms of representation.
As to whether Peeping Tom is a masterpiece, if Powell hadn’t made it, someone else would have done – although possibly not in the 1960s. Alfred Hitchcock’s nearest equivalent, Frenzy, was made in the early 1970s. Peeping Tom was ahead of its time, but nothing more.
