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Further thoughts on Peeping Tom (1960)
[Note: Because the first murder happens at the beginning, and we see who does it, I don’t believe I give much away in this piece. But you might want to skip this if you’re adverse to reading about a film before seeing it. My previous review also discusses plot, but it shorter and less in depth.]
Last night, I saw Peeping Tom on the big screen for the first time (the third time overall). It’s gotten better with every viewing. There were times last night when I almost cried, not from emotional involvement but from the sheer perfection of the scene I was watching. It’s the sort of movie which adds layers of meaning the more you know about it.
The story concerns a young man, Mark Lewis, who is a focus puller for a movie studio and in his spare time takes nudie pics for the underground trade. He’s also working on a “documentary,” part of which is actually the first scene of the film. He follows a prostitute to her room, filming her all the while, and kills her with the camera on her face. What follows is an obsessive look at his psychosis and the meaning of looking, including how that relates to filmmaking and viewing.
The film, though it came out the same year as Psycho, was buried under critics’ affront at the blatant identification of voyeurism and movie watching, not to mention a plot and characters that still seem heavily messed up today. Foremost is the “sympathetic” portrayal of the murderer. There is never any doubt that the main character is a serial killer. The suspense comes not from “who,” but “when.” And in the meantime, we get to know Mark (as well as we can) and essentially see all the action through his eyes and camera. For me at least, the suspense becomes "will they catch him... I hope not!"
Now, I’ve seen this film several times. And even knowing what was coming (as you do from the first five minutes of the film), I couldn’t help but like Mark. A lot. My reactions are suspect considering how hot I think Norman Bates is, but I don’t think there’s any doubt that Mark, like Peter Lorre in M, is an insidious sort of villain. The soft-spoken, pitiable kind. (The fact that Mark’s Austrian accent is totally inexplicable, considering that the character explicitly states he was born in his home in London leads me to wonder if Powell made that connection as well.) What’s more, I get swept up in downstairs neighbor Helen’s (Anna Massey, once married to Jeremy Brett by the way) attempts to get through to him, and touched by his refusal to hurt her. I love them together, despite everything.
There are a lot of comparisons on the web of Psycho and Peeping Tom, which is understandable considering their common year and themes. (I haven’t read them yet, because I wanted to get this out of my system first.) But I think there’s an important difference in the two characters. Norman never knows that he’s crazy. He’s almost completely blameless, aside from the cover-up of what he believes to be his mother’s crimes. Mark knows exactly what’s wrong with him. And while he is the result of systematic torture by his scientist father to make him into what he is today, the fact that he admits to being crazy, and knows why, removes that padding of victimhood from him. And it therefore makes our identification with him even more uncomfortable.
The other major difference, and I’m going to come out and say it, is that Peeping Tom is a much more complex, and far better, film. I love Psycho. But while it’s a forerunner of psychological horror, its psychology is facile. Most of Norman’s behavior has little to do, directly, with the explanation we’re given. So while Peeping Tom is far from realistic, it all makes sense in a way Psycho doesn’t. The famous shower delivers more thrills from a visceral standpoint. But Norman’s voyeurism, for instance, seems incidental as opposed to the foundation of his personality and insanity. There are endless chains of voyeuristic pleasure and condemnation in Peeping Tom which make it, in the end, a far more rewarding experience. And Mark’s complete understanding of what he is and why makes his helplessness in the face of his own psychosis all the more poignant.
All this is only enhanced by those layers I was talking about before. Like the one where Mark’s father, who used him in his studies of fear in children and voyeurism in general, is played in old films by Michael Powell, the director. Mark is played by Powell’s son. So we essentially have the creator of the film as the creator, both genetically and psychologically, of the “monster” in the film. Mark himself is in the film business. His victims all earn their living (and dying) by being looked at. The only people who “escape” his fatal gaze are Helen, who never seems to know what she’s seeing but is fascinated by him, and her blind mother who (of course) sees everything too clearly.
So was Powell, as some critics complained, condemning the film industry? In some way equating the voyeurism of the audience with the voyeurism of sexual deviants? I don’t think it’s that simple. To me, it seems like he’s having fun with the concept. He’s pointing out some extreme implications of our behavior, mapping Mark’s crazy onto a framework which allows for numerous meanings, but in the end he made his living in film. At least until the critical reaction to the sex and violence (and our complicity with such?) of this film ruined him. For me, the unease of this position between voyeuristic pleasure and deviance is what makes the film so shiveringly good. I like being held in that difficult state and I appreciate a film that can keep me there so long.
I’m not sure exactly why that is. But I’m not alone. And the alternative explanation is that I just dig hot, mild mannered, voyeuristic serial killers.
Last night, I saw Peeping Tom on the big screen for the first time (the third time overall). It’s gotten better with every viewing. There were times last night when I almost cried, not from emotional involvement but from the sheer perfection of the scene I was watching. It’s the sort of movie which adds layers of meaning the more you know about it.
The story concerns a young man, Mark Lewis, who is a focus puller for a movie studio and in his spare time takes nudie pics for the underground trade. He’s also working on a “documentary,” part of which is actually the first scene of the film. He follows a prostitute to her room, filming her all the while, and kills her with the camera on her face. What follows is an obsessive look at his psychosis and the meaning of looking, including how that relates to filmmaking and viewing.
The film, though it came out the same year as Psycho, was buried under critics’ affront at the blatant identification of voyeurism and movie watching, not to mention a plot and characters that still seem heavily messed up today. Foremost is the “sympathetic” portrayal of the murderer. There is never any doubt that the main character is a serial killer. The suspense comes not from “who,” but “when.” And in the meantime, we get to know Mark (as well as we can) and essentially see all the action through his eyes and camera. For me at least, the suspense becomes "will they catch him... I hope not!"
Now, I’ve seen this film several times. And even knowing what was coming (as you do from the first five minutes of the film), I couldn’t help but like Mark. A lot. My reactions are suspect considering how hot I think Norman Bates is, but I don’t think there’s any doubt that Mark, like Peter Lorre in M, is an insidious sort of villain. The soft-spoken, pitiable kind. (The fact that Mark’s Austrian accent is totally inexplicable, considering that the character explicitly states he was born in his home in London leads me to wonder if Powell made that connection as well.) What’s more, I get swept up in downstairs neighbor Helen’s (Anna Massey, once married to Jeremy Brett by the way) attempts to get through to him, and touched by his refusal to hurt her. I love them together, despite everything.
There are a lot of comparisons on the web of Psycho and Peeping Tom, which is understandable considering their common year and themes. (I haven’t read them yet, because I wanted to get this out of my system first.) But I think there’s an important difference in the two characters. Norman never knows that he’s crazy. He’s almost completely blameless, aside from the cover-up of what he believes to be his mother’s crimes. Mark knows exactly what’s wrong with him. And while he is the result of systematic torture by his scientist father to make him into what he is today, the fact that he admits to being crazy, and knows why, removes that padding of victimhood from him. And it therefore makes our identification with him even more uncomfortable.
The other major difference, and I’m going to come out and say it, is that Peeping Tom is a much more complex, and far better, film. I love Psycho. But while it’s a forerunner of psychological horror, its psychology is facile. Most of Norman’s behavior has little to do, directly, with the explanation we’re given. So while Peeping Tom is far from realistic, it all makes sense in a way Psycho doesn’t. The famous shower delivers more thrills from a visceral standpoint. But Norman’s voyeurism, for instance, seems incidental as opposed to the foundation of his personality and insanity. There are endless chains of voyeuristic pleasure and condemnation in Peeping Tom which make it, in the end, a far more rewarding experience. And Mark’s complete understanding of what he is and why makes his helplessness in the face of his own psychosis all the more poignant.
All this is only enhanced by those layers I was talking about before. Like the one where Mark’s father, who used him in his studies of fear in children and voyeurism in general, is played in old films by Michael Powell, the director. Mark is played by Powell’s son. So we essentially have the creator of the film as the creator, both genetically and psychologically, of the “monster” in the film. Mark himself is in the film business. His victims all earn their living (and dying) by being looked at. The only people who “escape” his fatal gaze are Helen, who never seems to know what she’s seeing but is fascinated by him, and her blind mother who (of course) sees everything too clearly.
So was Powell, as some critics complained, condemning the film industry? In some way equating the voyeurism of the audience with the voyeurism of sexual deviants? I don’t think it’s that simple. To me, it seems like he’s having fun with the concept. He’s pointing out some extreme implications of our behavior, mapping Mark’s crazy onto a framework which allows for numerous meanings, but in the end he made his living in film. At least until the critical reaction to the sex and violence (and our complicity with such?) of this film ruined him. For me, the unease of this position between voyeuristic pleasure and deviance is what makes the film so shiveringly good. I like being held in that difficult state and I appreciate a film that can keep me there so long.
I’m not sure exactly why that is. But I’m not alone. And the alternative explanation is that I just dig hot, mild mannered, voyeuristic serial killers.
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(I love Peter Lorre in M).
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