I'm having difficulty deciding whether Peeping Tom should be approached without, beforehand, reading heavy-duty analyses of it, or whether it's more entertaining if you immerse yourself in all the theoretical arguing, deconstructing, and investigating that has come to surround the film since Martin Scorsese (a lifelong admirer of Michael Powell) saved it from obscurity and began showing it at festivals during the 1970s. Despite its now generally agreed-upon status as a classic, and a masterpiece of British cinema, chances favor you not finding it unless you hear about it through critical (and often in-depth) articles and commentaries. It is not the kind of movie one "happens upon," and most film enthusiasts who just want a taste of Powell usually select from his 1940s catalogue: movies like The Red Shoes or Black Narcissus. The very serious enthusiast happens upon Peeping Tom (as I did) sooner or later, but by then is already equipped (or weighed down) with what the film's about, what it says, what it means, what symbolizes what, and so forth. I can't guess what the film would be like without such foreknowledge.

And I'm not sure if that's a bad thing. Peeping Tom is so laden with coded messages and is so slyly constructed that, without all the critical baggage it carries, it would seem incomplete. It demands - necessitates - heavy and thorough analysis. With regards to its own story, and in the context of film as a form of communication, a pastime, and an art, this cinematic Chinese box half dissects itself and half smiles like a Sphinx with a joke in its pocket, one that you must untangle. In other words, you can hang Post-It notes all around it with cheat hints and scribbled how-to instructions, but it'll still draw you in and act on you in the same unsettling way it's acted on the many thousands of viewers who've come before you. Perhaps it'll come as no surprise that it was written by a man who developed codes for British agents during the Second World War; you can try your hand at deciphering the piece, but there's no denying its effectiveness.

Perhaps I've made Peeping Tom sound like a whodunit murder mystery, or a game that moviegoers play. Not so. The man who "dunit" is made perfectly clear near the beginning, and we spend the rest of the movie with him, this creepy fiend. His name is Mark Lewis (Carl Boehm). He is the landlord of his building, he works as a focus-puller for a movie studio, as well as a photographer of nude women for a magazine shop, and in his spare time, he kills women with a knife attached to a camera tripod, filming their faces as they die. The question we ask is, Why? Why does he kill, and why does he film them? What is wrong with him? Powell and Marks provide answers like clues in a scavenger hunt, but it's not until the final scene, perhaps even after the film is over, that they are revealed in whole.

What's ingenious about the plot is, I can tell you about enough of it to give you a good idea of what you're getting into, should you choose to check it out some day (and I would certainly recommend doing so), but you'll still have plenty to look forward to. For starters, one very sly maneuver on Powell's part (and Marks's - the synthesis of writer and director has rarely been as fruitful) is in the way we're made to feel sympathetic, at times even protective, of the central character. Not once in the course of the movie did it occur to me to say, "Wait a moment, this guy is an absolute loon! He kills women for art! Why am I hanging out with him?" Part of this has to do with the enigma he represents, but mostly it's caused by the very clever way in which the film co-opts our point of view and aligns it with Mark's. The key (although perhaps not the cause) is linked to our human reaction of fear, the way it fixes our eyes and senses, not only freezing us in our tracks, but also captures our undivided attention. The film gets at very primitive fight-or-flight instincts buried in the oily, reeking depths of our psyches, and effectively questions the dividing lines between victim, assailant, and watcher. It toys with subjective and objective camera views the way Alfred Hitchcock played piano with audience members, assigning Mark ambiguous roles (he's the filmmaker, he's the murderer, he's a fellow audience member) and causing some measure of unease in us all along.

Michael Powell sacrifices meticulous realism and an airtight plot to achieve his effects - Mark is the son of a very British psychologist (Powell himself, in a key shot, and in a few voiceovers), but Boehm is a German-born actor who makes only the faintest attempts to mask his accent for the role. Issues of credibility abound regarding the naïveté of Mark's victims, as well as Helen (Anna Massey), the neighbor who attempts to understand and help him, and the intelligence of the police in apprehending the crazed killer. But Peeping Tom is not intended to be an infallible crime story, it's intended to be exactly what it is - a device that sheds both shadowy doubt and blinding light on notions of movie-watching and moviemaking; it is a thriller that allows you simultaneously to be thrilled out of your socks and to look at how you're being thrilled, why, and what it all means. You may resent Peeping Tom for what it says to you, about you. You may also agree with Scorsese when he says that, along with Fellini's 8 1/2, Powell's movie says everything there is to say about making movies. It does not indict the viewer, but it lets the viewer indict himself; in other words, the more serious you are about films, the more distressing you may find Peeping Tom. But you may be more distressed by folks who embrace movies solely as harmless divertissements.

As the titular scoptophile, Carl Boehm reminds one of a tall, blond version of Peter Lorre, especially with his bulging, demented eyes - Anna Massey (daughter of Raymond) is crucial in convincing us that Mark is a candidate for redemption, and Moira Shearer is luminous as a movie star's stand-in that Mark has duped into a late-night, closed photo session. I particularly liked Maxine Audley, who played Massey's mother, a blind alcoholic who's the only character sensible enough to sense something's terribly wrong with Mark, and Miles Malleson, in a small, funny part as an old gentleman in the market for black-market nude snapshots. Otto Heller's cinematography for Peeping Tom is more firmly grounded in kitchen sink reality than Powell's previous pictures; it, too, is like a puzzle that begs solving - observe the use of red, for instance, and its varied connotations: the red dress, the red light, the red box, etc. Peeping Tom is not the kind of movie you cozy up with on a rainy Saturday morning, and it's less successful as an autonomous thriller than as an exercise in motion picture studies, a statement that depends on being placed in the context of films in general, our culture of watching and wanting/not wanting to be watched, etc. As a comment, it works brilliantly, and few will ever accuse it of being "just a thriller."

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Good for Groups
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older