Film criticism can be a terribly faddish business. We're like a pack of wolves at some times and a bunch of lapdogs at others. One of the famous critics or big-time producers or directors pans or champions a film, and everyone climbs on-board. Here we have a film that was arguably the biggest flop in the history of British filmmaking when first released in 1960. Now, we find it being hailed as a masterpiece. There's certainly a place for critical reassessment. Tastes change and films created before their time sometimes come into vogue decades after their initial release. Then again, some "rediscoveries" prove to be flashes in the pan and ultimately sink back into oblivion. That's my prediction for this particular reputed masterpiece, by Michael Powell. I still look forward to seeing some of his earlier films (I've got a couple sitting in my stack), but this particular one left me very much unimpressed.

Historical Background: Michael Powell was born September 30th, 1905, in Bekesbourne, England, not far from Canterbury. He died in 1990. Powell, working as a bank clerk, had a repressed interest in filmmaking when he met Harry Lachman, a would-be movie director. Lachman arranged a position for Powell as an apprentice for Rex Ingram in America. Later, Powell returned to England and worked with Lachman at Elstree studios in various capacities, from photography, to scriptwriting, and, finally, as a director. After his first substantial success, The Edge of the World (1937), Powell was hired by Alexander Korda and began collaborating with another newcomer, Emeric Pressburger. This fruitful partnership led immediately to Spy in Black (1939), an espionage thriller. Powell also made a mark with The Thief of Bagdad (1940). During the early years of World War II, Powell concentrated on propaganda-related pieces of some quality, such as 49th Parallel (1941) and One of Our Aircraft Is Missing (1941).

Powell and Pressburger launched their own production company in 1942, called "The Archers." Under this umbrella, they fashioned a string of remarkable films, beginning with The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943) and including I Know Where I'm Going (1945), Black Narcissus (1946), Stairway to Heaven (1946), The Red Shoes (1948), and the Tales of Hoffman (1951). In 1956, Powell and Pressburger dissolved The Archers and parted company amicably. That turned out to be fortunate for Pressburger because Powell's career was just about to self-destruct.

Powell's first solo project after The Archers was Peeping Tom (1960), the film under review here. It was a kind of slasher film involving a psychologically disturbed voyeuristic killer, who films his victims at the moment of their death. No sooner did Peeping Tom hit theaters than it was met by an unprecedented barrage of negative criticism. Included among those critical appraisals were the following:

The only really satisfactory way to dispose of Peeping Tom would be to shovel it up and flush it swiftly down the nearest sewer. Even then, the stench would remain.

The sickest and filthiest film I remember seeing.

As a result, the film was pulled out of theaters after just five days. The reaction was so devastating that Powell's career was essentially over. He made just one more film in Britain before going into self-imposed exile in Australia, where he directed his final film, They're a Weird Mob (1966). Later, Powell would find himself penniless and forgotten. Martin Scorsese led a group of directors in resurrecting the film at the 1979 New York Film Festival. Even then, it received only a mixed reception. Fashionable critics today tout this film as a masterpiece but others continue to revile it for its glib treatment of sexual violence and other reasons.

The Story: Mark Lewis (Karl Böhm) is a cameraman for a film studio. At night, he moonlights as a photographer of nude prostitutes, creating cards sold at a tobacco and porn shop. Mark is tormented by demons of his childhood, during which his scientist father conducted impromptu experiments on the boy as part of his study of fear. As one example, the father would drop a lizard on the boy as he slept and then watch and film the terror on the young lad's face as he woke up with a start. In another example, Mark is filmed paying his last respects to his deceased mother, as she is stretched out on her bed. As a result of these bizarre experiences, Mark has grown into a man with an obsession with filming fear. Taking the idea to its logical (actually illogical) conclusion, Mark perfects the notion of filming women as they are being murdered, murdered by himself, that is, using the sharp tip at the end of one leg of his tripod.

Mark's life becomes somewhat more complicated when he finds himself warming to the gentle attentions of a young woman, Helen Stephens (Anna Massey), who lives downstairs from his rooms on the second floor. She takes an interest in his life, partly because both are shy and intelligent, but also because she hopes that he will shoot pictures to accompany her book, recently accepted for publication. Further complicating Mark's anonymity is Mrs. Stephens, Helen's mother. She's blind, but Mrs. Stephens has heightened auditory sensitivity and, living immediately below the room where Mark processes his snuff films, has some inkling that he's not especially normal. As Mark's killing spree gradually expands, from one woman to another (Moira Shearer), and finally a third (Pamela Green), the police begin to close in.

Themes: I should say a little bit by way of self-disclosure before commenting on this film's merits and demerits. When an accident occurs on an interstate and the traffic slows to a crawl because of the rubbernecking, I'm that one driver out of twenty who swears at the others for wasting time. I want the traffic to keep moving and ignore the distraction. Secondly, I find "horror" in films emotionally engaging or horrifying only when it has some sort of realistic foundation. I might laugh at horror films that are fanciful or ridiculous, but they just don't excite my capacity for fear. Thirdly, I should mention that I knew nothing about this film's content, or the controversy surrounding it, before placing it in the DVD player. I didn't even know its genre category. I came to the film entirely on the basis of it being highly rated in a film source book that I use frequently.

To me the term "voyeurism," taken by itself, is a neutral term. I don't view voyeurism as inherently good or bad. A whole lot of modern reviewers of this film make what I consider to be a fundamental error in interpreting this film, by concluding that the controversies surrounding the film have to do with its treatment of voyeurism. What is and should be controversial about this film is its treatment of sadism, not its treatment of voyeurism. They are two separate issues, even though this film links them together by introducing episodes of voyeuristic sadism. Voyeurism by itself is a relatively benign phenomenon while sadism is perhaps the greatest evil in which mankind engages. To call this a film about voyeurism is equivalent to saying that Hitler's problem was that he was a liar.

We are told, nowadays, by Scorcese and the revisionist critics, acting as his lapdogs, that what makes Peeping Tom a masterpiece is its reflection on cinema as an essentially voyeuristic activity, both for filmmakers and, ultimately, the audience. It is in no way an original idea, but, then again few film ideas are entirely fresh, so we should not hold the recycling of a theme against this film. Any film that can present a story and simultaneously act as a meta-perspective on filmmaking, as an art, has at least added an additional level of meaning. Every time a viewer sits down to watch a film, he or she is engaging in a bit of vicarious living and sensory perception. In so far as the visual sense is engaged, that experience qualifies as voyeurism. One interesting point made by Powell in Peeping Tom is that there is a parallel possibility in relation to the auditory sense (though we have no express term for it), as suggested by Mrs. Stephens's remark to Mark, while in his dark room: "I visit this room every night. The blind always live in the room they live under." Perhaps the word "eavesdropping" comes closest to the auditory equivalent of voyeurism.

There is nothing inherently morbid, neurotic, or even antisocial about voyeurism, taken by itself. Sitting on a beach in southern Portugal last spring, I took pleasure in observing the young women who chose to sunbathe or sea-bathe topless. It caused me not the slightest pang of conscience. The nervous system is specifically designed to draw one's attention to sensory experiences that are unusual and/or significant in some way. Paying attention to that which is unusual or which evokes emotion is entirely natural; repressing the response would be unnatural. Voyeurism assumes an immoral quality only when some specific aspect of a particular instance of voyeurism violates some other moral axiom. For example, it is wrong to go out of one's way to gaze surreptitiously through a neighbor's window not because of the voyeuristic impulse, but because it disrespects your neighbor's privacy rights and, quite possibly, property rights (if trespassing is involved). All of what we call "pornography" is inherently voyeuristic. In my opinion, there is nothing inherently immoral about pornography, as a class of material taken collectively. Pornography is sometimes immoral, if, for example, its production involves any kind of exploitation of one or more of the participants. I am opposed to men or women of any age (but especially children) being manipulated into participation in pornographic activities, but I see no moral problem if adults, acting entirely on the basis of free choice, profit from images of their bodies or sexual activities. Nor is the viewing of such material (if produced without exploitation) inherently immoral.

What about voyeurism in relation to human suffering? What are the moral implications of watching a person who is in pain, agony, or being tortured, for example? Again, it depends entirely on the particulars. The capacity to care for a dying person sometimes depends in part on an ability of the caretaker to observe the person's suffering without running away from it. On the other hand, there's a clear immorality in watching a person in agony if the act of watching adds to their suffering or substitutes for taking steps that could alleviate that suffering. Then, to take the most extreme possibility, it is clearly despicable to inflict suffering on a person out of desire to observe it. What makes it despicable is the sadism involved; the additional element of voyeurism adds very little to the moral appraisal. If I were being tortured or slowly murdered, it would make no difference to me whether or not that circumstance was also being filmed.

Many critics, in writing about Peeping Tom, declare that its greatest value lies in the fact that it implicates viewers in voyeurism. My response to that observation is a big "duh." Yes, we all know that film viewing is inherently voyeuristic. That's not news. On the other hand, film viewing, taken categorically, is not, inherently, sadistic. Many film viewers specifically avoid films that contain gratuitous violence. Certainly, there is a subset of films, mostly in the horror and action genre, that glorify the violent and sadistic impulses of mankind. It is not filmgoers in general that are complicit in that violence, but only the makers, marketers, and fans of such films. People like Michael Powell, in this instance. Even so, their complicity in real life sadism is minimal. I've said elsewhere that far more urgent than the problem of violence in cinema is real life sadism, attributable mostly to politicians, imperialists, and militarists. For every person killed by a serial killer, there are hundreds or thousands killed in unnecessary warfare and by poverty. For every person tortured by a civilian nut case, others are tortured "officially" in places like Guatánamo Bay or Abu Ghraib. I don't advocate censoring films with gratuitous violence; but I don't personally go out of my way to support that part of the film industry, either.

A film could have made all of the much-touted intellectual points of Peeping Tom in relation to voyeurism without also introducing the element of sadism. The apologists for this film are using the film's interesting treatment of voyeurism as a screen or false defense for what is truly controversial about the film: the glamorization of brutality toward women and the implied invitation to audience members to derive pleasure from watching it. The title of the film Peeping Tom is a bit of intellectual dishonesty, aimed at disguising what is most relevant about the film. What makes Mark Lewis a genuinely troubling character is not that he is a Peeping Tom, but that he is a sadistic killer.

The origin of the phrase "Peeping Tom" had nothing to do with violence and everything to do with nudity. It goes back to Lady Godiva who was born around 980 AD in Mercia, England. She was a beautiful local girl who married the Earl of Mercia, but whose loyalties remained with the folks of the town of Coventry. She badgered her husband to reduce the heavy taxes that were being levied on the town. Wanting to silence her on the matter, he replied that he would do so if she road on horseback through the town stark naked. Godiva was determined to help her people so she struck a deal with them. She asked them to all agree to remain indoors on the day of her ride and close all of their curtains and refrain from peering out. She had long streaming hair and was a beautiful, well-built woman. One man, a tailor named Tom, found the prospect of ogling Godiva in the flesh more than he could resist. Peeking through his shutters, he was suddenly struck blind, or so the legend maintains. Until the end of the nineteenth century, the townspeople of Coventry held an annual celebration to honor Lady Godiva's bravery and sacrifice of her modesty.

Production Values: The script written by Leo Marks was intended to be an intellectual puzzle about the relationship between cinema and voyeurism, but never cuts more than skin deep. Perhaps Marks needed a longer tripod. As a suspense story, the film is especially flimsy since the audience knows the killer's identity virtually from the beginning.

Peeping Tom was released the same year as Psycho (1960), and since the two films cover similar territory (psychopathic killers), comparisons between the two were and are inevitable. Peeping Tom provides none of the tension of Hitchcock's great masterpiece. Furthermore, Hitchcock laid a credible psychological foundation for Norman Bates, but Powell provides only the most absurd kind of basis for the actions of his killer. Mark was terrorized by his biologist (not psychologist, as several reviewers state) father who was interested in studying the fear response and used his boy as a guinea pig. That, by itself, is implausible since someone studying fear might be expected to have more than typical appreciation for the capacity of fear to produce both psychological and physical trauma. Nevertheless, suspending that instance of disbelief, we further learn that Mark loved his father despite the abusive treatment. In a telling exchange near the film's conclusion, Mark's father is heard (on a film) saying, "Don't be a silly boy. There's nothing to be afraid of" and Marks responses, warmly, "Goodnight, daddy, hold my hand." Mark basically grew up as the victim in a sadomasochistic relationship. It would have been credible had he become mousy, self-loathing, shy, and introverted, or any subset of those characteristics. He could have learned a need to be abused or, conversely, he could have learned to despise fear-invoking situations, but there is no reason why the childhood described for Mark would produce a sadist. Then, even if one suspends that second point of disbelief, Mark could have developed other outlets for generating, experiencing, or filming intense emotions, other than murder. He could have, for example, stood at a convenient spot next to a roller coaster ride. In fact, Mark knew better than most a wide variety of methods for inducing fear, without resorting to murder. So, Powell has provided only the shallowest kind of phony psychological structure for his character's aberration. That one reviewer can describe this film as "a study into the mind of a serial killer" is an indication of how thoroughly the mumbo-jumbo of pop psychology has infiltrated the thinking of the general public. Contrast the character Mark Lewis with the killer of little girls in the great classic M. Peter Lorre's character correctly illustrates that serial killers are typically scared to death of dying themselves and rarely take their own lives.

In contrast to Psycho, the actual violence is mainly only hinted at in Peeping Tom rather than being depicted graphically. That, at least, is a mercy. Several reviewers describe the film as disturbing or creepy, but I did not find it effectively engaging in that respect. One of the strongest arguments launched in defense of this film (and to obviate any criticism of it) is that what the critics who panned it were really objecting to was not the violence per se but rather the sympathetic way in which the serial killer was portrayed. Karl Böhm, playing the part of Mark, is a handsome man to look at and exhibits a friendly personality, even if he is often diffident and mysterious. Norman Bates, by contrast, is a rather creepy, unappealing character right from the get-go. According to film editor Thelma Schoonmaker (later wife of Powell), the tension of the film derives from the fact that viewers (including those nasty film critics) identify with and feel sympathy for the protagonist, creating an audience complicity in the terrible actions of the man. Viewers are encouraged to see things from the killer's point-of-view because the camera is typically positioned over the killer's shoulder. By this account, the devastatingly hostile reaction on the part of critics to the film was attributable to unbearable guilt by association.

It's a nice bit of intellectualization. Perhaps it is true for some viewers. It was not for me, possibly because I am more committed than most people to judging people by their actions and their character rather than by their physical appearance or superficial personality. I never found myself rooting for Mark or sympathizing with him, especially since it was obvious that he was psychologically deranged and a menace, from the very beginning of the film. I experienced no rush from observing terror on the faces of the victims. (That may explain why I am not much of a fan of horror films.) Had Mark, instead, filmed women in the throes of sexual orgasm, I might very well have been drawn in, both as a fellow-voyeur and as an empathizer for the protagonist.

If we're engaging in the business of dismissing the views of critics with whom we disagree on the basis of psychological bias, as Schoonmaker and others are doing, the reverse case could be made just as readily. The horror genre is in very much the same general situation as the martial arts and pornography categories, all searching for high-minded justifications for what are largely pursuits to gratify basic human urges. Thus, every B-level horror film becomes a "classic" or "cult-film" or, as in the present case, "a sophisticated intellectual puzzle." Puhleez! Peeping Tom is a film with one good central idea: the camera as simultaneously the murder weapon, the phallic penetrator, and the instrument of voyeurism; or, Mark Lewis as simultaneously filmmaker, actor, and audience. Beyond that, this film is B-grade all the way.

The lie was put to the phoniness of the pretensions of loftier purposes that swirl about this film by the director's own behavior during the filming. Powell had hired a stag-film actress, Pamela Green, to play the part of the sluttiest of the murder victims. Powell abused the actress with boorish, intimidating behavior, demanding at the last minute that her death scene be filmed topless, which she had not understood to be the case. She had reluctantly acquiesced and as she lay sprawled out on the bed, about to be skewered by the tripod leg, she noticed two of the director's preteen sons watching the scene closely, under the guidance of their father. One of the boys was later used to play the part of the young Mark in the videos shot by the father (played by Michael Powell). It was disturbing to cast and crew members that life seemed to be imitating art a bit too closely, especially given the perverse nature of the art.

Other than the interesting use of subjective camera angles, the cinematography of this film is most noteworthy for its use of colors, and especially the symbolic use of bright reds as the color of passion and blood. There's also good use of shadows to provide an unsettling atmosphere.

Carl Böhm, the handsome blond-haired son of conductor Karl Böhm, provides a decent performance as the killer, though he is hamstrung by his obvious German accent, which in no way fits the storyline. By all indications, the killer's father was a British scientist. It's interesting that one reviewer argues that the accent can be interpreted as a psychogenic speech impediment, which illustrates the lengths that fans of horror films go to in order to disregard the foibles of their genre favorites. Certainly! Mark was so terrorized by his father as a lad that he acquired a German accent! LOL. Böhm does project a pleasant demeanor, except for some creepiness, which is apparently enough to cause some viewers to identify with him.

Anna Massey gives perhaps the film's best performance and later declared the film "a horrible movie to watch." She has all of the fragile vulnerability of the standard horror film ingénue. Her other films included Hitchcock's Frenzy (1972) and Impromptu (1990). Maxine Audley was excellent as the blind mother and Moira Shearer half decent as one of the murder victims.

Bottom-Line: This film is neither the excrement implied by critics of the sixties nor the gem or masterpiece claimed of it by today's bandwagon critics. Its psychological underpinnings are not credible, it's weak as a thriller or horror film, and its much-vaunted intellectual puzzle is neither original nor profound and largely misrepresented by the critics who try to explain it. The performances are mediocre at best. It is a B-grade film that now has its coterie of champions whose excesses of praise are only exceeded by the excesses of criticism leveled at the film forty-five years ago. I am neither morally outraged by the film nor remotely impressed by its quality.

Recommended:
No

Viewing Format: DVD
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age