 Decemberdike
December 4th
Peeping Tom (1960)
Michael Powell's tale of a psychopathic young man who photographs the women he murders with a 16mm camera.
Although not quite as unrelenting as i'd hoped it might be - sexual perversion is shown via metaphor and symbolism and there is no actual on screen violence or blood and the whole is rather implicit instead of explicit - this is still a very good film which i imagine becomes better with subsequent viewings.
Performances are uniformly excellent especially Carl Boehm in the lead role and Moira Shearer as his second victim whose dance routine certainly allows for sexual suggestion prior to her murder with the viewer practically there with Boehm in the studio. It's this voyeuristic viewpoint that is forced upon the viewer that so appalled critics at the time.
Director Michael Powell's career, once seen as the leading light of the British film industry, was effectively killed off by Peeping Tom, a film hated by critics at the time and it's only in later years that it's been seen by the likes of Martin Scorsese as a classic in it's own right.
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