Rating of
4/4
Career Suicide was never this Spectacular!
Filmhaus - wrote on 04/12/21
Prior to this movie, Michael Powell was the cinematic equivalent of Steven Spielberg in the British Isles.
During the second World War, he produced war-time masterpiece after masterpiece, examining England's relationship with the United States while chronicling his country's cultural journey through periods of intense turmoil.
And the people loved him for it.
Why? Two words: Emeric Pressburger.
While Powell was known for his avant-garde palette and bon vivant sensibilities, Emeric, acting as the chief scriptwriter and co-director of the Archers label (their partnership), was a master at channeling the passionate sentimentalism coursing through veins of the British everyman and shaping it to emotionally-charged, borderline maudlin dialogue.
Basically, he was Paul McCartney to Powell's John Lennon, and what they made together was exquisitely bittersweet.
Between the two of them, they were able to examine the changing political landscape in post-war England and navigate through them with a perfectly balanced mixture of savvy cynicism and youthful idealism.
Then the war ended, and they started getting bored with each other.
And Powell free of Pressburger, just like Lennon free of McCartney, took his creative freedom to the limit and made an intense, scathing masterpiece devoid of sweetness or sentimentality.
Pre-dating Hitchcock's fetish-exploration & exploitation themes in Psycho, this thing gives all new meaning to the idea of toxic "male gaze" as it explores and criticizes the immersive nature of the camera's eye from the perspective of both the audience and the director.
The main character, Mark, is a talented young cinematographer with hideous demons stemming from a childhood of systematic abuse from his father, all videotaped for posterity.
Driven to obsession but unable to cope with his pain, the sins of Mark's father visit themselves regularly on a bevy of young Soho beauties through Mark and his camera, modified with a blade to satisfy his murderous compulsions.
To that end, Peeping Tom could have easily been an early grindhouse classic, especially given the time period it was released.
However, whether by influence from his work with Pressburger or as a subconscious attempt to discuss his own peccadillos, Powell was unwilling to create a cardboard villain and gave voice, nuance, and dimensionality to a range of disturbing topics.
Similar to Fritz Lang's M, Mark is expertly written as a sympathetic sociopath, and this is the reason the movie train-wrecked Powell's career.
Ultimately, 1960s audiences weren't ready for stark discussions around sexual repression, voyeurism, and violence in cinema, especially if they were being implicitly indicted for their viewership.
As well-crafted as this film is, the critics and censors didn't like having their noses rubbed in what they deemed to be lurid, morally reprehensible content (which is ironic, as all things considered, as this movie has almost no blood/gore).
It was universally panned, and the distributors balked and released it only to adult theaters. Powell was labeled a pariah, and spent the next few decades scrounging around trying to scrape by.
However, folks like Martin Scorcese helped to resurrect interest in the film, and it stands as a reminder of what a difficult message costs to communicate.
