"Peeping Tom offers realistic cinematic images that relate to the cinema and nothing more. It creates a magic space for its fiction somewhere between the camera’s lens and the projector’s beam of light on the screen. " http://www.criterion.com/current/posts/65-peeping-tom for a great write up. Peeping Tom, as its title implies, is overtly about voyeuristic sadism and how it's set within the film industry and the cinema itself. A little too close to home perhaps? Possibly a movie ahead of it's time.......
What a shock to see the spectator identifying with the protagonist.
I have never seen this film and am glad I did. Excellent way to spend a rainy Saturday afternoon! Ok, we are nervous about swimming, taking a shower alone, and now "cameramen???"
There are some great lines in this timeless piece.
"Do you know what the most frightening thing in the world is? Fear
"If death has a face....."
I loved it......
Sounds like it has to be on my list of "must see" movies! Thanks!
ReplyDeleteI can see why the knives were out for director Micheal Powell when he releases Peeping Tom. This movie is a shocking essay on childhood trauma, voyuerism and murder. Powell seems to be able to offend the guardians of all that is decent with scenes of killings, semi-nudity and an easy chat among prostitutes. What many be its signature offense, Peeping Tom, recrutis the audience to become complict in the film’s seedy invasions of privacy purely for entertainment. The film paints a broad stroke that all fimakers are predatory creatures.
ReplyDeletePerhaps Peeping Tom was a film before its time. Could this be the precurser to our ever-present “reality” television? Watching the film, I found myself thinking of other voyuerism films, such as Body Double, Rear Window, Blue Velvet, and even The Truman Show. A glimpse into another world which we cannot turn away. These are not all horror films, but truly terrifiying to consider when you think of the psychological underpinnings of Peeping Tom as these film’s patriarch.