Most of the movies I write about, that move
me– tend to be unique. But even among those,
Peeping Tom is a singular experience…one that
will leave you with nagging questions. It also will leave you
feeling slimy… and that is no accident.
Peeping Tom came out at the
wrong time and place—England, 1959. Its screenwriter Leo Marks and
director Michael Powell realized that making it was a gamble. They
paid a heavy price, especially Powell. His directing career in
England (long and distinguished) was all but finished.
Movie critics in England were highly
offended—one actually walked up to Marks after the disastrous
premiere and warned him never to do anything like this again.
Clearly, critics felt that material like this has no place in
film.
Movies about killers will cut deeper if they
make you empathize with the psycho character.
Peeping Tom does this well…maybe too well.
Another major reason critics attacked it so viciously.
Abuse in your family begets more abuse. That’s
clearly a theme in Peeping Tom. The abuse Mark
(the title peeping tom) got from his father has turned him into a
killer. Only a tiny part of Mark can express his need to be loved.
You see again and again that he never learned
how to love. Abuse is another story—Mark could write a book about
it.
.
Mark’s secret life–before Helen
Another theme you see clearly—identifying with
the oppressor. Mark is carrying on his father’s abuse.
Mark’s father was a scientist; his field of
interest the reaction to fear. He wrote several books on the
subject; knew it intimately. Hard as it is to believe, his
research centered on Mark. His father taking notes, making
observations, recording Mark’s terror on film.
Now Mark is grown up, his father dead. But he
is still obsessed with people’s reaction to fear—any sort of fear.
His ultimate compulsion–photograph women experiencing the most
frightening moment of their lives—then dying.
That compulsion led him to build his murder
weapon. A tripod for an older 16 millimeter movie camera
(ironically, a gift from his father) with one leg like a
switchblade. A leg that can snap straight out, with razor-sharp
metal at its far end. Mark lives for the moments he can film
women—as they see the danger first, then understand they are about
to die.
You realize right away that Mark is a killer.
But Peeping Tom would be creepy even if he had
never killed—he has the classic behaviors that get you sent to
prison. Staring into people’s windows, stopping to watch couples
embrace, listening to conversations in rooms wired for sound. Mark
has done all of that. I think many of us have felt similar urges
during periods of depression, periods of low self-esteem.
Today, people hear a lot of psychology on TV,
radio, the internet. The 1950’s were a different story.
That is one reason this movie felt so
offensive when it came out. Most of us then did not have those
insights. We felt Peeping Tom accused us of
perversions, of vile desires at least. That was just what Powell
and Marks wanted.
Early in Peeping Tom, Mark
goes into work. A porno studio behind the front of a
respectable-looking tobacco and newspaper shop. The owner dressed
conservatively, like a banker or stockbroker. An older gentleman
comes in, asking for two traditional daily papers. Then
hesitantly, he asks for “views”—British slang for dirty pictures.
Carefully, the owner shows him what he has. The man is thrilled;
he even forgets his newspapers.
Not only does the owner make a subtle but
sleazy remark: “Well he won’t be doing the crossword tonight,” but
Powell cast a familiar, sympathetic actor as the customer. A man
British audiences felt comfortable with.
You have already seen Mark murder a hooker the
night before. Those scenes may make you feel creepy yourself, as
much disgusted as you feel scared.
The street is quiet at night. An older whore,
her glamorous days behind her. Few dreams left. “It’ll be two
quid,” she tells Mark with no expression. He doesn’t say a word,
but no surprise on her part. The last things she expects are
emotion, sentiment. She starts to undress like she has every other
time. Same shit different day.
But she sees something that frightens her,
something more frightening as Mark gets closer… Cut to a
projector, film rolling.
A story like this can have an added sting if
it includes a truly goodhearted character, able to see something
good in the monster. Helen Stephens (Anna Massey) is that
character. We hope for a miracle; that she can transform Mark.
But you know it is already too late. I don’t
know if they used the term “serial killer” then but Mark is
already through that door. Sadder still, Helen senses something
kind in Mark– not all her imagination. When you first meet her,
she seems shallow, good manners and no more. But Helen is more
perceptive than she appears. You realize that fast. She wants
something better for Mark.
She has lived in the same building as Mark for
years, barely exchanging a word. People have warned her that he
stares into her window. She bumps into him the night of her
birthday and offers him a slice of cake. He is unwilling to join
her party but she comes up to his apartment with the cake. To our
surprise, he invites her in.
He tells Helen his father had owned this
building once; he is dead now.
Helen has a naïve side, but she has surprising
self-confidence; a strong sense of who she is. Without an
invitation she enters his darkroom—never dreaming this is the home
of Mark’s secret life. She is impressed that Mark is in the film
business. Everywhere she looks she sees movie film but Mark says
he doesn’t know what to show her. (Ironic. As the old cliché goes,
‘that’s the understatement of the year.’)
She tells Mark to show her whatever he was
watching before.
Old movie footage. A young boy sleeping, then
woken suddenly by bright lights in his face. Mark tells her the
boy is him. His father shot the film. Helen actually jumps at what
she sees next; a large lizard dropped directly onto the boy’s
blanket, only inches from his face. Not a huge species but
terrifying from the boy’s point of view—so sudden, so close.
Most of us know a few kids–either gifted
athletes or just used to springing into action at a moment’s
notice. Who could flick the blanket like lightning and send the
lizard to the floor. But kids like that are the exceptions; young
Mark lies paralyzed with terror.
Radically different reactions to the same film; Helen feels
disgust and anger; Mark–much more complicated
You see a lot happening at once. Helen
watches with horror and disgust. Meanwhile Mark has his camera out
and begins filming her face. No doubt he is turned on by her
expression. It’s too good not to record. He shines bright
light into her face too, though she barely notices.
Helen is angry but not at Mark, angry about
the film. The child abuse and Mark’s lack of emotion. She speaks
for us; you got abused. (She never realizes how turned-on he is,
as many of us might not, given the impact of the film.)
A strange moment. She may be naïve, but she is
totally on target. What the boy experienced is every bit as bad as she thinks.
Meanwhile Mark caresses his camera—he looks
like he’s about to come; so excited, so out of breath he can
barely speak. “What was he trying to do to you?” Helen asks. The
old film goes on; Mark at his mother’s deathbed, then watching an
attractive woman stepping onto a beach—a woman his father married
soon afterward.
An intense turn-on that only Mark understands
Finally Helen says, let’s get out of here. Mark doesn’t scare her;
it is this film that he shows her so casually.
Mark’s reaction is strange. It’s not that he
shares Helen’s anger but keeps denying it. Anger simply doesn’t
seem part of his make-up. Even when he says he never knew a
moment’s privacy as a child, you don’t hear much emotion. He
doesn’t try to convince her that his father was a great man…or an
abusive man. Just somebody who did what he did.
Mark does say that his father’s research
probably helped a lot of people. But that barely registers with
him; you realize how cut off he is from the world of psychology.
If you don’t know it already, you realize later how absolutely
cold Mark’s father was.
Mark is equally cold; a stranger from normal
relationships; addicted to his obsessions. The rest of his life an
empty shell. Not that what he films is better than sex; it is a
no-contest.
He felt his father had the upper hand while he
was alive. Now, shooting his murders is the only time he has the
upper hand. Now I get to be (the all-powerful) daddy.
If you know the show
Criminal Minds,
you probably remember episodes where the BAU people mention a
killer’s growing confidence. Mark has reached that stage. Besides
his work in porn, Mark has a technical job at a major studio,
working in feature movies. Vivian is an actress with a small part
in the movie he is working on. She is no longer a kid, but still
dreams about getting her big break, especially in musicals.
Mark seems to be someone who could help her
out. Their plan is to use the studio set after everyone else goes
home. Then Mark can shoot some footage of Vivian; perhaps she can
use it to help her career.
You don’t get to know Vivian enough to care
that much about her. Yet these scenes pull you in—in several
different ways.
First, you know Mark is taking a huge chance;
killing where he works. He is breaking the old rule, “Don’t shit
where you eat.” And all his other victims were strangers; if
anything happened to Vivian, Mark is a sure suspect.
Mark is also making a huge jump from the
down-and-out women he has killed before. Vivian may have a small
role in the movie but she projects confidence and self-assurance.
She moves around like she’s saying: here I am, world, just watch
me.
Mark is determined to show her (and himself)
that he is running the show. Before Vivian ever sees him, he snaps
floodlights on, straight into her face, one after the other,
blinding her. Finally he reveals himself—on a platform, looking
down on her.
For a long while, Vivian believes he is
flirting—that this is about, “well let’s see what you’ve got…ifyou’ve got it, leave it all out there.” A playful game of
one-ups-man ship. She has no clue that each time Mark woke in
terror, it started with bright light in his face. Now Mark needs
his own bright lights to give him the feeling of power necessary
to kill.
Powell’s casting of ballerina Moira Shearer
(The Red Shoes) adds to the impact. Shearer plays
the role like someone ready to put everything she has out there.
Someone willing to listen to all Mark’s ideas—to say to him in
effect—tell me your wildest ideas, I’m up for it.
Vivian’s confidence in herself actually makes her more
vulnerable–never suspecting what Mark is feeling
She doesn’t know she is heading straight into
his trap. That it means nothing to him how she dances, what music
she dances to. Mark is miles ahead, adapting his familiar rituals
to this new location. Getting set for the inevitable moment he
longs for. When he says, show me the most intense emotion you can…
and make that emotion fear.
Casting this otherworldly, almost angelic
woman, then having her die this way probably infuriated critics
even more. But perhaps Powell suspected (correctly I think) that
seeing someone with this near-magic aura die this way would jolt
you. To put it simply, it would feel wrong to his audiences. It
definitely struck me that way; like watching Janet Leigh stabbed
to death in Psycho, or hearing that JFK just had his head blown
off.
When Vivian’s body is discovered on the film
set, Mark can no longer fly under the radar. He knows he is on
borrowed time.
More irony; at the same time, Helen’s feelings
for Mark have grown; she is almost in love with him. Helen may
seem hopelessly naïve but a lot of her feelings make sense. She is
a sheltered woman, very close with her blind mother. In addition,
her mother has warned her about Mark—Helen wants to prove her
wrong.
Perhaps Helen believes in fate; it’s not hard
to see how she could have misjudged events. Helen’s day job is
librarian, but she writes children’s books in her spare time. Her
latest is titled The Magic Camera. Helen’s dream
is to publish this book and use photographs instead of drawings in
it. You can understand how she believes that meeting Mark was more
than coincidence—she wants him to contribute the photos she will
use.
It’s an old theme—what could have been. But
everything in Peeping Tom is so powerful: the
acting, direction, dialogue, for example, that you grieve for the
things Mark can never get. A truly goodhearted woman to love him,
as Helen could have. A chance to see his photography create a
joyful, not a lethal, kind of magic. (You ask yourself what
Helen’s book was like, and you imagine true sweetness, not like
Bambi or The Sound of Music, but
more like Maurice Sendak or Eric Carle.) Mark will never get the
chance to experience this sweetness, or find the sweetness buried
under his abuse.
Helen is naïve, but not hopelessly
naïve. Some of the goodness she sees in Mark is real. Watch his
face when he tells Mrs. Stephens he would never photograph
Helen—he’s no liar. Or earlier, when he pulls Helen away from the
camera. Neither woman quite understands him…but you do. Watch his
expression, and the way he steps out the door as he and Helen
leave for their dinner date—the only one they will ever have. He
looks like a happy little boy.
Peeping Tom had the bad luck
to come out about the time of some of Hammer Films’ nastiest
releases,
The Revenge of Frankenstein, The Stranglers of Bombay,
for example. Even worse, it was released by the same company which
had just produced two entertaining but trashy features,
Horrors of the Black Museum and Circus of Horrors.
We all know that movies can be used as escape.
To give just one example, you watch Clint Eastwood tell someone
exactly where to go…then back it up with his fists or his Magnum
.44. Such movies are like a drug.
Perhaps people watching
Peeping Tom then, felt this way. That it told
them, this time, don’t be The Man With no Name or Dirty Harry
Callahan (Eastwood roles). Be Mark instead. Live inside him for an
hour and forty minutes.
Their reaction: What kind of sick invitation
is that? He’s a pervert, for Christ’s sake. Then
worst of all, you saw and remembered Mark’s kind side, that lets
him spare Helen from harm, as he promised he would. You want to
tell yourself he’s still a sociopath. But you know he is much more
than that.