Peeping Tom (1960) | Monday Movie Review

Peeping Tom (1960)
DIR: Michael Powell
Phycological Thriller

Requested by Desdinova the Super Villian of the Ozarks on our ToDo List

London Tribune – “The only really satisfactory way to dispose of ‘Peeping Tom’ would be to shovel it up and flush it swiftly down the sewer, even then the stench would remain.”

Premiere – ”One of the Top 25 Most Dangerous Films”

Peeping Tom is a curious film. Although it was years ahead of it’s time it effectively destroyed the career of it’s director Michael Powell. I guess mixing voyeurism, murder, and sexuality has the ability to do that pretty quick when an audience misses the point.

Let me give you a quick synopsis of Peeping Tom before I go over a few of the notes I took while watching the film and some interesting facts I found out as well.

Mark, a possibly, in fact almost assuredly, disturbed man, likes to kill pretty girls. Can you blame him? Surely every one has wished ill on some pretty girl in their lifetime at least once for some reason or another. Being pretty isn’t easy I’m sure. Being able to get whatever you want with a smile and a flip of your hair, having people want to wait on you hand and foot, even down to getting extra cream cheese on your bagel for no ‘apparent’ reason (yes, that happens to Megan all the time). Must be rough. Anyway…

Mark though, kills in a slightly different way with a little more personality and finesse if you will. He likes to film the girls as he kills them, and not only that, he uses his actual camera equipment to do them in while filming with the same camera! Mark falls for one of those pretty girls and struggles with how not to kill her. He’s also looking for a explanation of why he is the way he is. Why does he like to watch?

I believe what this film really is about is the expression of filmmaking being almost a security blanket to a filmmaker. From my point of view I related in some ways, always wanting to capture every little thing on film, the good and the bad. It’s a deep and real passion. The ability capture and re-watch the events on screen over and over again is exciting to me and almost necessary to some sort of basic function. It’s hard to explain. In fact, the protagonist Mark says, “I can’t describe it, only photograph it.” I knew exactly what the filmmaker meant, wanting to photograph everything, even to the bitter end.

Film Still Frame

MY NOTES:
-I always find it fascinating that once you watch a lot of movies you can start to tell what country each one was made in or at least the country of origin the filmmaker is from. In this case the film is very British in essence.

-The film is about a misunderstood voyeurism. Isn’t people watching other people what the movies are all about?

-Interesting to see all the old cameras, editing and lab equipment.

-Mark is told that “…filming this much can’t be healthy…” I’ve been told that.

-What other movie can boast that immediately after the opening sequence it’s gets away with playing the same footage completely over again during the opening credits.

-The Eastman Colour came out very well!

-Many old and some modern, especially ultra low budget films don’t appear to have the ability to transition between ‘cuts’ or ‘clips’ properly without the use of crossfades or other pre-made transitions . I call the ability to do this correctly “Natural Transitioning”. Natural Transitioning means that each clip has been properly cut at just the right frame so that it ‘connects’ with the next clip in line and is an appropriate match to follow the previous clip. Peeping Tom, I feel, does this very well.

INTERESTING FACTS:
-Peeping Tom was so hated by audiences and critics it was pulled from all British theaters the same year it was released. Two years later, in May of 1962, it was released in the U.S. as a severely cut up version. It had a quick death of it’s own.

-The film has only survived and kept it’s popularity because Martin Scorsese revived it in 1979 at the New York Film Festival.

-The director, Michael Powell, has one of the longest autobiographies for a famous filmmaker. With a total of 1,317 pages it far beats the average of about 325 for other directors.