An eye, the window to the soul if "
Tales of the Crypt: Demon Knight" is to be believed, the film opens starkly with a close up of an eye which opens just for a second or two then cuts to the first scene. Just the eye and some notes played on the piano, the only instrument used on the score for the entire film, the eye sets us on a path that the film doesn't let up on: It creates a sense of unease.
Cut to a Soho street with a lone prostitute. A middle-aged prostitute. None of your "Wow. I'd pay for that" tart-with-a-heart, clearly taken from some modeling agency, we see portraying prostitutes in American films. The world weary face of this old slut shows a downtrodden woman who's soul has become detached due to the inhumane manner in which she's been forced to make her money in 1960s' London. It's a face we see through the killer's own camera. Like Hitchock's
Pyscho a year later, Robert Powell has used a 2nd person narrative as we watch through the eyes of a killer. We see a lot of this film through this perspective. Not all of it is murder but every bit of it continues the sense of unease and Powell forces this foreboding into every scene, almost as through by osmosis, aided brilliantly by the use of piano in the score.
The piano should really have got an acting credit in this film. I'm a big fan of Charlie Chaplin and, as many might know, silent comedies were released with sheet music as early cinema's would contain an upright piano to accompany the film. When Charlie Chaplin was walking along all happy and care free in The Tramp he did it to some jaunty walking music. When he was being chased by the Keystone Cops then he did to some jaunty chase music and so forth. These musicians in the cinema were the forefathers of the soundtracks we know today. Now the music is never jaunty in this film but it slowly creeps up on you, switching from low chords played violently to a twinkling of high notes. It's a slight throwback to the time when Powell would have first got into making pictures and it's simplicity shits all over John Williams to be frank.
It's not the swinging sixties yet. London is on the cusp of its breakthrough as the fashion, cultural and musical capital of the world. The same shenanigans are going on in this London as they will in a few years time but it's still hush-hush in a city stained with class-consciousness. We see the protagonist, Mark, taking pictures for under-the-counter girly magazines and we see respectable, middle-aged, men buying them but the liberal values we associated with the time period have yet to take root and a sense of sleaziness permeates through. Not that we judge Mark for taking the pictures or the girls who stand around in their frilly undergarments. Instead we see the hypocrisy of the friendly old newsagent with the porn studio upstairs, or how the mild mannered gent buying The Times will broach the subject of getting something for a quick one at the wrist.
Within five minutes we know Mark is the killer, we even see him watching his previous night's work with the whore in his house, but we sympathise with him more than practically anyone else in the film. With the exception of Whale's "
Frankenstein" and "
Bride of Frankenstein" I can't think of a another film off-hand where a killer was a sympathetic character. Frankenstein's Monster, however, wasn't entirely human and his murders are a bit more "Of Mice and Men" than Jeffrey Dahmer. I'll assume there were other film's created before Peeping Tom that made a cold-hearted killer some sort of anti-hero but I can't think of one. Perhaps it was this startling change in tact for a filmmaker, especially one as famous and loved as Powell was at the time, that caused the outrage that destroyed this film for twenty years and Powell's career for life.
As the film continues Mark becomes attached to the girl downstairs, Helen, while working three jobs. His first is as an assistant cameraman on some poor excuse for a comedy film being made by an over-zealous camp director. Powell was not a stupid man and must have known that his masterpiece would be annihilated by our moral guardians in the press. With Powells choice of film within a film for his lead character to be working on, the director must have been thrusting his two fingers in the air and asking "Would you rather I made sterile films like this?". The answer was a resounding "yes" at the time sadly. The lead characters second job is a soft porn photographer and his two scenes photographing Pamela Green are a small treat in themselves. Pamela Green is one of these people who the camera was invented for. An almost timeless beauty with a cheeky cockney wit that manages to raise a smile or two in a film that has no other use for comedy or light-heartedness. It's this attachment to Miss Green that Powell uses to switch our focus from Mark to Helen in the final scene.
Marks most important job, his unpaid work, is to make his "perfect" film. His voyeuristic obsession with looking at life through a camera sees him killing women on camera in an attempt to make it. In the final scene we find out what helps create his perfect film and what it is he's been looking for and, despite the use of whores, porn stars and dancers his voyeur obsession it is not based on sex. Indeed Mark is, by far and away, the most asexual man in London it appears. His arousal is for photography, and anyone interested in photography or filmmaking will take far more from this film than most. It's the search to find something more about the human condition through images that drives Mark on which I'm sure is the basis for most photographers passions.
Of course the only woman he will not "film" is his Helen who is nothing but the picture of innocence. If Mark had managed to get over his killing/filming habit they could have had a very long, loving, sexless marriage. There probably would have been a lot of cats and cushions in that house... and maybe a few bodies under the patio.
The film delves into behavioural psychology to understand Mark's "perversion". He was used, by his father, as a child in a case of experiments not unlike the "Little Albert" experiments of the 1920's. We see old home videos of these experiments with Robert Powell playing Mark's father and Powell's son playing a young Mark. For the people who shot this film down on it's release it was yet more ammunition that Powell was sick enough to allow his son to be exposed to their horrors of this film. All nonsense of course but perhaps it was young Powell's striking performance, however small, that made some think he was tortured or coerced to get such a realistic performance. However, in a film with great performances throughout and brilliantly written characters, Karlheinz Böhm steals not only this show but any film you watched before it or after it. If you don't believe me I still think Carl Boehm is the best thing in The Incredibles. His slight German accent makes him stand out from the rest of the cast. His isolation from the world at large is helped, and not hindered, from his accent and his whole persona reeks of slight discomfort in the company of others. When Helen goes to kiss him and he brings his camera up to defend himself this is, without question, one of the most captivating scenes in any film.
I can't recommend this film enough. It's not a film for horror, crime or thriller fans. It's not a film for fans of celluloid controversy, but it's one of the world's must-see films. I chose this as my first review of a classic film because, quite simply, of every film to have had it's reputation destroyed by our self appointed moral guardians it is by far and away the best. It's one of the greatest film's I've seen and Martin Scorsese himself described it as one of only two films that were "perfectly directed". He probably said
The Aviator was the other one though: the smug prick.
The Studio Canal re-release of this film DVD has two documentaries about Peeping Tom. One features "Marty" heavily and he even does an introduction to the film. Scorseses role in getting this forgotten classic into the public consciousness cannot be under estimated.
On it's initial release the film was savaged by the British press. It was considered as exploitation of the worst kind. For my money all cinema, all good cinema, is exploitation. Some scenes were cut and lost forever. Some included nudity but I very much doubt it was nudity for exploitation's sake. As these cuts were destroyed we will sadly never know if there was any foundation to this argument. Either way the outrage scuppered any general distribution of the film, and it was shown in half-legal porn cinemas both here and on the Continent but was virtually unreleased in America. It did become a sleeper hit with European filmmakers which stopped it from being lost forever. In much the same way that, as a youngster, I discovered
The Evil Dead or
A Clockwork Orange via grainy tapes recorded from tape to tape with the adverts for Hamlet still in it, this film gathered a reputation amongst those in the know as a forgotten classic, and it remained this way until the film found it's way to Scorsese.
According to the DVD extras "Marty" was handed his copy on pre-production to
Raging Bull and was so captured by it that he managed to get it onto the New York Film Festival twenty years after it's original release thanks to previously highly restricted release in the States. It was an instant hit. Critic's fell over themselves to have a big group wank over this stunning piece. I'm joining in with them now (twenty years late again so I guess the soggy biscuit is mine). This film will constantly be re-discovered by the future generations of filmmakers and film lovers. Powell became a hero to Scorsese, Coppola, Lucas and the other great American directors of our time. Even in the Director's own time, Hitchcock paid tribute to Powell's bravery when Pyscho was close to suffering the same fate as Peeping Tom. Indeed, Hitchcock admitted if there was no Peeping Tom then Psycho would have got the same treatment as this film.
Although the press outrage itself was disgusting I feel that my real hatred has to be reserved for the British film industry at the time. Every single actor in this film went on to bigger roles in bigger films. Many of the actors seen in the film had their first acting chance given to them in Peeping Tom. So directors and producers of the day must have seen this film. They must have enjoyed the performances and, one can assume, the film. So everyone did well from this film apart from Powell. When the media hype about the tastelessness of the film was at its highest point where were the people of Rank, Ealing and Hammer to defend it? Why was Powell not given further work by people who must have seen this film as a beautiful piece of directing? It took two decades for anyone with any clout within filmmaking to give Powell the admiration he deserved.
Twenty years after its release Scorsese put his name to its distribution Stateside for the princely sum of $5,000 and a copy of the film for himself. It was restored (and has been restored again for the DVD), sent out and so the greatest sleeper hit since designer drugs was born.
