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Peeping Tom (1960)

Director: Michael Powell

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From Time Out Film Guide

In the early '60s, there was one brave film (which had nothing to do with kitchen sinks or working class tragedies) which struggled single-handed to drag the British cinema into the present tense: Michael Powell's phenomenal Peeping Tom. It centres on scoptophilia (voyeurism, or the morbid desire to watch), and so the central character naturally works in movies; but his obsessions are compounded by his childhood experiences at the hands of his father, a psychologist interested in the mechanisms of human fear, and he grows up with a helpless compulsion to kill. Mark Lewis (Böhm, later rediscovered by Fassbinder for Fox) is the most gentle of psychopaths, an eternal victim whose crimes are cries of rage against his father and stepmother, and at the same time pathetic rehearsals for his own inevitable death. A Freudian script of notable maturity teases limitless implications from this premise, while maintaining a healthy sense of humour. First-timers may care to note that Daddy in this Oedipal riddle is played by Michael Powell.

Author: TR 0000-00-00 00:00:00

Time Out Film Guide