Peeping Tom (1960)

  For nearly twenty years Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, with their production company The Archers, were some of the most dependable British filmmakers around. Powell would direct and co-write and Pressburger would write the other half and produce. Their classic films include 1943’s ‘The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp,’ 1947’s ‘Black Narcissus,’ and especially 1948’s ‘The Red Shoes.’ Unfortunately even the best creative partnerships eventually go stale and after a series of movies that underperformed they dissolved their partnership in 1957, although they remained good friends for the rest of their lives.

Powell followed up in 1959 with ‘Honeymoon,’ based partly on the ballet ‘El Amor Brujo’ by Manuel de Falla. To directly quote Wikipedia, “It is one of Powell's least regarded movies.” The next year he decided to make the script for ‘Peeping Tom’ written by Leo Marks, a former cryptographer turned writer who would also go on to script 1968’s ‘Twisted Nerve.’ Financing was secured through Anglo-Amalgamated, a somewhat downmarket maker of B-grade crime movies who were hoping for some more high-brow success by partnering with Powell. Actors sought for the lead role of Mark Lewis, the film’s protagonist and killer, included Dirk Bogarde and Laurence Harvey, but due to scheduling conflicts they went with Karlheinz Bohm, a German-Austrian actor who talked with a noticeable German accent which is never addressed in the film.

It’s important to note that upon release this movie was so despised by British critics as unacceptable filth and borderline pornography that it basically killed Powell’s career. It was so badly received that it convinced Alfred Hitchcock not to have any press screenings before the release of ‘Psycho’ later that year. A critic in The Tribune wrote that “the only really satisfactory way to dispose of Peeping Tom would be to shovel it up and flush it swiftly down the nearest sewer.” The Observer wrote that “It's a long time since a film disgusted me as much as Peeping Tom.” It was a bomb in the UK and barely released in the US. Frankly Hitchcock was correct to keep his movie from the tender sensibilities of professional film critics.

It wasn’t until the 1970’s, with a new generation of filmmakers taking over the industry, that the movie’s reputation started to be rehabilitated. This came about largely due to the influence of Martin Scorsese, who started singing the film’s praises as soon as he gained some success. He’s quoted in The Telegraph as saying “I have always felt that ‘Peeping Tom’ and [Fellini’s] ‘8½’ say everything that can be said about filmmaking, about the process of dealing with film, the objectivity and subjectivity of it and the confusion between the two.” It’s now seen as a rich text both for its psychological depiction of the killer with his traumatic background and the metafictional way it indicts both him and the audience with its depiction of voyeuristic violence. It now regularly appears high up in lists of both best horror films and best British films of all time.

The movie is not particularly interested in soft-peddling its themes or what it’s about. The movie opens with a closeup of an eye opening wide, that of Mark Lewis, our killer. The movie then cuts to an obvious sex worker on an obvious set. A shadowy figure steps out of the bottom of the frame and walks towards her. An insert shot shows he’s holding a camera underneath his coat with the lens poking out. The figure then moves forward, the lens of his camera coming directly towards the lens of the audience’s camera, as it were. Then it cuts to what his camera is filming, framing the street walker with its artificial eye. This is the movie directly telling the audience that the point of view of our main character and the point of view of his camera are, in a very real sense sense, the same thing. This movie is our first (but not the last) instance of a killer protagonist this month. Most of the scenes are told from his point of view and often from the point of view of his camera. The movie is telling the audience that seeing and filming are going to overlap significantly in the movie as that’s the way our main character views his life.

We watch as the woman tiredly states that it’s going to be “two quid,” which if my online calculations are correct translates to about fifty dollars in today’s money, which seems about right. She leads the camera view down the street, into an apartment building, and upstairs to her flat. The camera watches as she starts to undress, then it dips down and to the left as the killer adjusts something that makes a metallic noise. The sex worker immediately looks frightened and then terrified as the camera moves closer and closer. Eventually she screams directly into the lens as she’s killed. The scene abruptly cuts to a projector showing the footage the killer captured, in black and white and without sound. The credits roll over this footage as we watch the film along with Mark.

I want to focus on the framing here because every onscreen kill we see (which is actually only two, although another happens offscreen) ends with a terrified woman screaming directly into the camera lens. This is exactly how all of the deaths in ‘The Lodger’ were filmed, as were the deaths in countless other horror and crime movies in the decades leading up to this movie. The industry hadn’t yet shed its puritanical reluctance to show blood and gore in movies, instead defaulting to keeping violence offscreen or simply having their leading ladies’ screams imply all manner of dreadful things happening just outside the frame. This is a movie where the killer is deliberately creating movie deaths in real life. He will later be shown to compulsively rewatch the films of his kills and it’s implied that he finds sexual release in reliving it this way (it’s not shown on screen but I think seeing Mark bolt upright at the moment of death is pretty easy to interpret). It’s no accident that he also works in the film industry and says he one day hopes to be a director. The movie is not trying to be subtle.

The next day Mark is filming the police response to his killing. It takes a minute for us to see his face. First the camera is obscuring it, then we see through his camera lens. Eventually a member of the public notices the filming and wanders over to ask what paper he’s with and it’s very interesting to watch how he responds. First he slowly lowers the camera, giving us our first glimpse of his face, and his expression is stricken as he stammers out, “I beg your pardon?” The man repeats his question and with an almost mechanical click Mark’s expression softens and he’s able to give a fairly casual answer of “The Observer.” He smiles slightly but a noise from the police investigation offscreen instantly makes him step away, adjusting his camera. He moves to get a different angle of the police carrying out the body and loading it into a van. 

Mark then drives his sweet cherry moped to his job at a sleazy-looking newsagent’s. The walls are covered with pin-ups taken from magazines. They all seem to be of semi-naked women, which makes some of the rest of the movie confusing about what is and isn’t considered pornography. A quick internet history search implies that images of mostly-nude women were legal at the time of filming as long as there was no public hair displayed, and of course no sexual activity was allowed. We see a customer come in and ask, slightly embarrassed, if the shop has any “views” for sale, which the shopkeeper brings out from behind the counter. Presumably these show either pubic hair or sex acts. After he buys and leaves the owner waves Mark upstairs where two women are waiting to be photographed in apparently an apparently illegal manner.

The movie associates pornography and murder in interesting ways but never really comes out and says that one contributes to the other. On the one hand Mark is mostly business during these photo shoots and seems completely uninterested in the women’s nudity. When a new model is revealed to have a cleft lip this does excite Mark and causes him to insist on filming a closeup of her face. On the other hand the third murder in the movie, the one we don’t actually see, is of one of the other models who gets fully nude on screen in the first instance of frontal nudity in British cinema. At no point does Mark refer to the pornography he produces when he eventually explains what drives him to kill, but it’s certainly not an accident that the film introduces it to the narrative.

The heart of the movie really involves Mark’s relationship with a tenant in his house, Helen. As he’s coming home that night he peers into a ground floor window onto her twenty-first birthday party. Everyone notices him so he ducks away, enters the house, and tries to hurry upstairs. Helen catches him at the bottom of the stairs and invites him to the party. He stammers a polite refusal and continues up to his room. Later that evening she knocks on his door with a piece of cake. They talk and he reveals that he’s actually the owner the house and thus her landlord. She laughs and says that with the way he carried himself everyone thought he was just another tenant who was always late with the rent. He explains that it was his father’s house and where he grew up, which will be very important later.

Thus begins an awkward kind of courtship between Mark and Helen, though I don’t really understand what she sees in him because at the best of times he still gives off intensely creepy vibes. At one points she justifies her interest by saying he has “a quality.” Her mother, a blind woman constantly pounding whiskey, doesn’t trust him as she says she doesn’t trust a man who walks quietly. She’s played by Maxine Audley and her character is a lot of fun, if a little too close to the cliche of having a disabled person gain basically supernatural powers. Over the course of the movie she’ll reveal she can hear when someone is standing outside of a window or sense when people are looking at her. Despite her mother’s misgivings Helen visits him in his apartment and marvels at his room of filming equipment.

It’s during one such visit that we start to learn about Mark’s backstory. He shows Helen old recordings of his childhood, where his father would constantly torment him in his sleep in order to film his reactions. Lights are shown in his face, lizards are thrown onto his bed, that sort of thing. Mark explains that his father was a psychologist who wanted to study fear reactions in children and thus used him as a kind of guinea pig. He grows pretty agitated when he reveals all of this and Helen is very sympathetic. His father even filmed his reaction to visiting his mother on her deathbed. The film shows a brief seaside vacation with his father’s new wife and then footage of his father gifting a young Mark his own camera. As I said the movie isn’t trying to be subtle.

We see Mark at his main job, which is as a focus puller for feature films. He gets along relatively well with the other crew members on the job and confirms with Vivian, the main actress’s stand-in, that they’re still on for that evening. Later on, when everyone’s left and the studio is shut down for the night, Vivian sneaks out of her hiding place in the dressing room and goes to meet Mark on the main stage to film surreptitiously. Apparently they reached a deal where Mark wanted to direct something and the stand-in wanted to be filmed as a lead. Vivian is played here by Moira Shearer, the star of Powell’s previous film ‘The Red Shoes.’ This scene is the centerpiece of the movie that goes through several stages. First Vivian sneaks onto the soundstage and starts looking for Mark. As she calls out for him the overhead lights start turning on one by one, blinding her and following her around the cavernous room. Mark eventually reveals himself atop a catwalk and the tension releases. She’s manic as he starts setting up the camera and adjusting the smaller lights. She talks a mile a minute about the opportunity to act. She turns on her portable music player and dances around the set. Mark indulges her a while before he eventually insists she start the scene, which involves her acting terrified. She tries to get in character but is having trouble figuring out what would frighten her to death and asks him to set the mood.

At this point Mark becomes fully menacing. He slowly walks toward Vivian and softly says as he does so, “Imagine someone coming towards you who wants to kill you.” He’s fully in her personal space at this point. “Regardless of consequences.” She asks, “A madman?” He answers, “Yes, but he knows it and you don’t. And just to kill you isn’t enough for him.” She asks a question but he puts a hand to her throat to stop her. “Stay there. You’re just right.” He backs away, his breath heavy, then raises one of the legs of his camera tripod towards her. “Imagine this would be one of his weapons.” He removes the end with a metallic squeal to reveal a long knife underneath. He begins to slowly walk toward her, filming, as she realizes what he intends to do and tries to back away. She’s stopped by a prop suitcase and screams as the scene fades out.

There’s a slightly funny scene that evening as Helen visits while Mark is developing the film of this latest murder. He keeps looking at clocks and rushing back to his lab to start the next step while also trying to maintain his composure with Helen.

The next day we’re back at the movie set, shooting the next scene. Someone wonders where Vivian is but they filming anyway. As it becomes clear that the scene is going to involve opening the trunk containing Vivian’s body Mark takes out his camera and surreptitiously films everyone’s reactions when it’s opened. The police are called and as it happens the officers assigned are also investigating the murder of the streetwalker from the beginning of the film. They instantly notice that the terrified expression of the victim’s face matches that of the earlier murder and decide they’re connected. This is one of the few movies where the police are pretty competent and on the ball early on. They start interviewing the cast and crew and Mark continues filming it all. He explains to another crew member that he’s filming a documentary, though he declines to say what it’s about. After his brief police interview he climbs into the rafters to film the police canvassing the crime scene.

Things kind of start falling apart for Mark after that. Before their dinner date Helen introduces Mark to his mother, who seemingly confirms her bad impression of him. It’s worth mentioning that on their way out Helen convinces Mark to leave the camera behind. During their dinner Helen says she’s writing a children’s book about a magic camera and wonders if he could possibly help with the pictures. He’s delighted by the offer, although he still checks his watch to see when his latest film will be fully developed and available for viewing. They return home in high spirits, Mark reclaims his camera, and goes upstairs. He threads his new film in the projector and starts to watch when he hears a noise in the room. He shuts it off and turns on a light to reveal Helen’s mother standing in the darkness.

Their confrontation is odd. Since the movie’s silent and she’s blind she has no idea what’s on the screen but wonders aloud what’s so important about it that he felt compelled to turn it on the instant he got home. After briefly breaking down about how his latest film is a failure, that the lights fade too soon, he removes the cover on his tripod leg and for a moment considers killing her before relenting, putting the cover back on. She threatens to move them out of the house and he promises to never film Helen. As he shows her out she says he needs help and he’ll eventually need to tell someone about what’s going on.

The next day there’s a shrink on set to help with the cast’s nerves. Mark pulls him aside to ask if there’s a cure for people who are peeping toms, to which the psychologist replies that it would take several years of intensive therapy. Mark wilts at the news and briefly rests against a camera before apparently making a final decision. As he leaves the police decide to put tails on all of the staff members, just in case. On his way over to the newsagent’s he spots the police tail behind him and smiles in grim amusement. Since it’s after hours the owner gives him the key and tells him once he and the girl are finished to lock up behind him. Mark goes upstairs and much to the girl’s annoyance starts filming the officer waiting outside, saying only that it’s for a documentary. Eventually the girl lies on the bed, ready to start the session, and Mark stands menacingly over her. Before we can see the murder we cut to Mark leaving and putting the key through the newsagent’s letterbox. He glances again at the officer and hops on his moped.

Meanwhile Helen is waiting in Mark’s room. She gets curious and starts the film in the projector. Instead of seeing the footage we see Helen’s reaction as she grows nervous and then frightened. She starts to back away only to run into Mark. She desperately asks him to explain what she just saw and he does so. He haltingly explains that while she knows some of what his father did she doesn’t know everything. He reveals that in addition to filming him his father also wired the entire house for sound and plays recordings of himself at different ages wailing in fear and terror. He says the house is still wired and plays a tape of a conversation between Helen and her boyfriend in her room. He reveals his full setup, brandishing the knife at the end of his tripod as well as a concave mirror attached atop the camera itself. He explains that he wanted to see the most terror possible in his victim’s faces as they died and the most frightening thing is your own face as you die. He comes close to killing Helen but can’t bring himself to do it. 

He hears the police arrive outside, who have discovered the body at the newsagents and have come in force. Almost manic he shoves Helen aside and starts adjusting a bunch of flash photography cameras set up around the room. He attaches his main camera to a wall in a move he’s clearly practiced many times. He tells Helen that his death will be the end of his documentary. She grabs at him and begs for him to simply turn himself in but he refuses. As he stumbles towards the spike the various cameras go off. He pauses at the last moment, looks directly into his camera, and says he’s afraid. We watch as he pushes the spike into his neck, He grabs the camera from the wall and staggers backward, keeping the lens pointed at his face, before slowly sinking to the ground. Helen collapses with him and that’s how the police find them. As they lead her away one of the tapes plays a final recording of Mark’s father saying, “Don’t be a silly boy. There’s nothing to be afraid of.” Then as the movie fades to black we hear young Mark say, “Daddy, hold my hand.”

In the end Mark was recreating the movies from his youth, when he father was investigating the effect of fear on him. He became fascinated by the most terrifying thing he could think of, the realization of his own death. He filmed the death of three women before finally filming himself. The movie gives a few hints that his compulsion is sexual in nature but it doesn’t lay it on that thick. He doesn’t respond to a kiss Helen gives him, instead pressing his camera to the spots where her lips landed, and while walking to their dinner date he passes a kissing couple and instinctively reaches for his camera. His victims are all women, one a sex worker and one working in pornography. Something’s going on here and I think the movie pushed it about as far as one could in 1960.

On the one had it’s hard to understand the critic’s visceral rejection of the movie as filth when there are only two deaths on screen and we see absolutely no blood. By its very nature the film is interrogating the portrayal of violence on screen and arguably implies that an association with pornography can lead to depravity, a stance that you’d think these conservative voices would appreciate. I think they rejected it because in its structure it involves the audience in the violence the film is committing. It kind of rubs our noses in the fact that we’re watching the movie for the same reason that Mark is filming these deaths: to see women screaming into the camera. Easier to call the whole film pornographic than grapple with the deeper issues it raises.

As I said the movie has since been reappraised and judged to be of high critical worth. It’s got a Criterion release and everything and I can see why. The movie is very aware of what it’s doing and deliberately grates against audience passivity at times but it’s shot and staged incredibly well. Mark is a fascinating protagonist and we understand by the end why he’s compelled to do what he does. This is the first of these movies that interrogates the reasons for the actions of our killer instead of just writing him off as a maniac. Looking at the movies ahead I think there’s going to be a growing divide between those movies interested in getting inside the head of our serial killers and those that are just going to use him as a monster. I think either approach can work pretty well depending on the intention of the movie, and for a movie that’s more than sixty years old I think this one succeeds pretty well.