Spine #58
Distributor: Criterion Collection (USA)
Release Date: May 14, 2024
Region —
4K UHD: Region Free
Blu-ray: Region A
Length: 01:42:20
Video —
4K UHD: 2160P (HEVC, H.265 — Dolby Digital, HDR)
Blu-ray: 1080P (MPEG-4, AVC)
Main Audio: 1.0 English Linear PCM Audio (48 kHz, 1152 kbps, 24-bit)
Subtitles: English (SDH)
Ratio: 1.66:1
Notes: This Criterion edition is the film’s 4K UHD and Blu-ray debut in North America.
“To me it was a simple, good idea for a film… Leo Marks – who’d been a code-breaker during the war so naturally everything he did was double-edged… It was such a model picture. We shot it in 30 days on a budget of £140,000 on schedule, and then when we’d finished, we were all sitting there with our tails thumping on the floor, so pleased with ourselves.” —Michael Powell (City Limits, 1986)
Peeping Tom (1960) is best known as the film that destroyed Michael Powell’s distinguished filmmaking career, but time has a way of turning underappreciated movies into classics. The film was made during a rather challenging period in Powell’s career. Not only was the British film industry changing to his detriment, but Powell was also trying to find his footing as a solo filmmaker after the temporary end of his famous partnership with Emeric Pressburger. He had just finished principal photography on Honeymoon (1959) — a film that is now all but forgotten — and was looking for a compatible collaborator for his next feature.
“The studio work and editing of Honeymoon [1959] was done at Shepperton Studios, where I met Danny Angel [Daniel M. Angel]. He had just been producing a film about espionage, about codes and decoding, and about the French underground in the war. Virginia McKenna and Paul Scofield were in it, and it was called Carve Her Name with Pride, which sounds like a quotation, and probably is. Anyway, it was a very successful film. Danny said, ‘Micky, are you still looking for a writer to work with you, like Pressburger did? Because, if you are, you ought to see Leo Marks. He’s as crazy as you are.’
‘How do you know?’
‘He’s been working with me. Apparently, he was a code breaker during the war, and he tells the tallest stories about it that I’ve ever heard. But he gave us a lot of good stuff for the film. There’s no doubt that he knows all about espionage, and code breaking, and all that stuff.’
‘I don’t know that I want to make a film about espionage. It seems to me you’ve done that. What else can Leo Marks do?’
‘He can write poetry. He’s weird, I tell you. You ought to see him. He lives double or triple lives, he’s difficult to get ahold of, and he’s full of mystery and conundrums. But he’s good value. I’ll give him your telephone number.’
I didn’t know it, but this was to change my life and career. This was the birth of Peeping Tom.
We met. We shook hands, and I wished we hadn’t. He had a grip of iron. It reminded me of the hairless Mexican in Somerset Maugham’s memorable short story, but Leo Marks was neither hairless nor a Mexican, like the character Peter Lorre played in Hitchcock’s Secret Agent [1936]. Mr. Marks was impressive. He had eyes like stones and crisp, curling black hair that looked like a wig but wasn’t. He was short, square, and powerful. His clothes gave nothing away.
He wanted to write me a film about a double agent, an agent whom he had known personally in the French underground during the war. I said I wasn’t interested in a war story. He changed his tune, and started to talk about psychoanalysis. He knew a lot about it, although he was only about thirty. I said why didn’t we make a film about Freud? He said yes, why didn’t we? It was one of those subjects I had always had at the back of my mind. He said he’d go away and think about it. A week later John Huston announced he was going to make a film about Freud in Munich for the producer Paul Kohner, an old-timer who later on became one of the top Hollywood agents.
I broke the news to Marks, who had seen it already. It soon became clear that he was remarkably well informed. He was no stranger to the corridors of power, and had had frequent access to Downing Street and MI-5 during the war. He said he was through with all that, but I doubted that he was. In a week or two he rang again: Could we meet? By now there was a certain intimacy between us, although I wouldn’t call it friendship. I suggested he come to 8 Melbury Road.
He rang the bell at 9:00 a.m. precisely. He had a flower in his buttonhole and a newly lit cigar between his lips. It was all carefully thought out. I took him into the library, and he cast his eye around at the books and the shelves that went up to the sixteen-foot ceiling. He knew about books. He explained that he was the son of that well-known book dealer, Marks, on Charing Cross Road. He had cut his teeth on an Elsevier Bible. When I knew he was a book lover, I was able to relax. It was clear that the books spoke to him from their high shelves. He sat down, leaned toward me, fixed me with a penetrating gaze, and said, ‘Mr. Powell, how would you like to make a film about a young man with a camera who kills the women that he photographs?’
I said, ‘That’s me. I’d like it very much.’
He said, ‘How shall we begin?’
‘I suggest that you work at home, or wherever you’re used to working, and come to see me perhaps twice a week to read me what you’ve written. Then we can discuss it. An original film script wants to be about eighty quarto pages.’
‘American quarto, or English quarto?’
‘American. I can usually make myself available in the evening. Does nine o’clock suit you?’ He inspected his cigar ash.
‘What will you pay, Mr. Powell?’
‘A nominal fee for the first script, against an agreed fee for the whole job when the film is made.’
‘What would you call a nominal fee, Mr. Powell?’
‘Five hundred pounds down, five hundred on delivery of the final sequence.’ His eyes sparkled. This was in 1959.
‘And the agreed fee, Mr. Powell?’
‘That would depend on the size of the budget. This will be a low-budget film. It’s a tricky subject. We don’t want our backers telling us how to make it. When the film goes into production, we’ll pay you another fifteen hundred.’
He took a long puff.
I wrote him a check for £500. He looked at it with affection, and put it away, carefully, in his notecase.
‘Does the word ‘‘scoptophilia’’ mean anything to you, Mr. Powell?’
This was obviously a test question. I thought fast. ‘Is it Greek?’
‘Yes, it’s Greek.’
‘Love of looking? Urge to look?’
‘Exactly: ‘the morbid urge to gaze’ — a familiar term to alienists.’
‘Hmm … the morbid urge to gaze …. Peeping Tom.’
He made a wry face. ‘I was afraid you’d say that.’
‘But that’s what it means.’
He inspected the ash of his cigar, looked at me, nodded his great head. ‘More or less.’
He rose. ‘Will next Friday suit you?’
‘Same hour?’
I wrote the appointment down and saw him into the street. It was a fine night. He looked up and down Melbury Road, with its great houses standing in their own gardens.
‘I envy you, living here, Mr. Powell.’
I nodded. ‘When are you going to start, Leo?’
‘I have started.’
We both laughed, and he strolled away up the street.” —Michael Powell (Million Dollar Movie, 1992 / 1995)
Leo Marks had his own contradictory account of all of this, but it doesn’t exactly strike one as accurate. Marks insists in his version that it was his agent and not Daniel M. Angel that initiated their first meeting.
“I wanted to meet Michael Powell because he’d directed A Matter of Life and Death and The Red Shoes, among others. Michael Powell was the film industry’s Resistance Movement. A Matter of Life and Death was, I think, his masterpiece… I managed to get an introduction to him through a very influential lady agent who’d agreed, reluctantly, to look after me if I insisted on writing a film script or two. She also looked after Graham Greene, so I think she knew what she was doing. Michael Powell knew damn-all about me, and it was like talking to a camera.” —Leo Marks (Leo Marks Interviewed by Chris Rodley, Peeping Tom, 1998)
Marks claims that it was upon that very first meeting—and not several meetings later after the idea to make a film about Freud was abandoned—that he brought up the idea of Peeping Tom. In fact, in his account, he told Powell the entire story of the film right then and there.
“At the end he looked at me in complete silence. So, I thought: ‘Right, I’ve made a mess of that, I’ll try another one.’ So, I recited a second film I wanted to write. Every single scene. And this ‘camera’ continued to regard me in complete silence. So, I thought: ‘What have I got to lose; I’ll try a third.’ So, I did, and still no response from Mr. Powell. So, I got up and said: ‘Please forgive me for wasting your time. May I tell you how much pleasure your films gave Resistance Movement agents when they most needed it.’ And he said: ‘My dear chap, my voice is in my throat, sit down. They’re all mine!’
So, I went rushing back to my agent saying, ‘He wants all of them!’ And she said, ‘Darling, don’t you think you ought to wait and see how the first one turns out?’ But knowing everything in those days I said: ‘No. It’s a three-picture deal because he mightn’t like it when it turns out.’ So three films were committed to Michael Powell, and that was the birth of Peeping Tom.” —Leo Marks (Leo Marks Interviewed by Chris Rodley, Peeping Tom, 1998)
It is impossible to say for certain which of these two versions actually happened, but Michael Powell’s account seems more likely. Powell and Marks met fairly often at the director’s home at 8 Melbury Road. Interestingly, his neighborhood would become the location for many of the scenes that would appear in Peeping Tom. “It was only by making Peeping Tom … that I was able to immortalize the London world in which I lived,” remembered Powell.
“The tall red-brick house opposite [to me], number 5, Mark’s house in the film, was dark. But there was a light in the basement. … Melbury Road hesitates and curves like a country road, because that is what it is. The house that Lady Holland built for Watts, the painter, is on the site of the old farmhouse, and there was a duck pond. This small area was thick with highly varnished, highly commercial painters. Our house was built for Marcus Stone, who painted Lover’s Walk and Parting in Gardens. Back to back with us was the garden of the palace of Lord Leighton, a passionate Arabist who had built himself a studio in the form of a mosque, domed and tiled and with a fountain playing in a small basement. As you walked down from Kensington you passed the immense house of Holman Hunt, who never despaired of trying to teach Edward Lear to paint in oils. On the corner opposite the handsome house with tall windows is the house of Luke Fildes, painter of ‘The Doctor,’ a print of which used to hang in every kitchen or nursery in Britain.
But the thrill of thrills for me was learning that the tall red-brick house opposite number 8 had been the home of Mr. Bassett-Lowke, maker and designer of scale models of steam engines. It was a name of power and delight to all mechanically minded schoolboys, and his catalogs charmed even un-mechanical me. Now his name snatches me away from Melbury Road to the playroom that my father built for us near the backdoor of Hoath Farm in Kent. I think that I have related how my older brother took it over and filled it with his steam engines and working models. Even I could appreciate the models and the beauty of their working parts, but to hear the name again was enough to thrill me. There are certain names from that mechanical period before the 1914 war which, though un-poetical themselves, fill the mind with poetic images — Bassett-Lowke. the Great Western Railway, the Flying Scots man, Bugatti, Rolls-Royce. Handley Page — they conjure up a vanished world of burnished copper, of shining brass, of clouds of steam, of clumsy, great ideas lumbering about and waiting to be airborne.
When I made Peeping Tom I chose this house of Bassett-Lowke’s to be the home of Mark Lewis, the shy and compassionate scoptophiliac in the film. When we were shooting some night scenes there, I was asked in by the owner of the garden flat, who knew all about Bassett-Lowke and showed me a hatchway specially cut in the wall that allowed the model steam train to leave the house and run out into the garden, over suspension bridges and through tunnels, until brought stately back by remote control into the house of the controller. He made so many people happy, including my brother, that I hope Bassett-Lowke was a happy man himself. I always imagined him as being fat, with a top hat.
The other day the son of my neighbors in that house rang me up. He had just seen Peeping Tom on television. He told me that when Mark crossed the hall and looked into his mother’s room, it was an almost unbearable moment for him. I was pleased. That single shot had found its mark, its unique audience. Equally, Norman Shaw’s architecture, with his finials, pinnacles and chimneys and windows, had created a perfect setting for me. There is something looney about his absorption in ornament and detail, as there is in me. He compels your interest because he is confident of gaining it.
Leo was an ideal creative partner. He knew nothing about films or the theatre, but a very great deal about men and women. He was malicious, inventive, and un-shockable. In less than six weeks we had our draft script. Our scoptophiliac, our peeping tom, turned out to be called Mark, of course, since Leo himself was the original scoptophiliac. Mark works in the movies, as camera assistant and focus-puller on a big film in production at a major studio. He ekes out his slender salary by shooting front covers for porno graphic magazines. His equipment is expensive and extensive. He uses a lot of film. He does his own developing and printing. He has his own projector and his own screen. His camera tripod has a concealed dagger in one of its legs. A distorting mirror locks into a slot above the lens. It is a murderous weapon. He is a camera fiend. He is gentle and sweet and attractive, and quite, quite mad.
‘How would you like to open the film, Mr. Powell?’ inquired Leo.
‘With a kill,’ I answered.
‘Correct. Shall I read it to you?’
‘Please.’
He read it . . . the street at night . . . the click and whirr of the concealed the prostitute’s words ‘It’ll be two quid’ . . . the high heels clattering on the stones, the clang of metal against metal, the whirr of the camera, the screams of the prostitute, the quick cut to the whirring projector showing the whole sequence on screen, Mark’s orgasm and collapse … it was all there in the first draft.
Leo was watching me closely. There was a long pause.
‘Shall I go on?’
He had placed his cigar carefully on a stand before reading and the ash was now almost an inch in length. He picked it up very carefully, took a long pull, and carefully put it back.
‘Shall I go on, Mr. Powell?’
I nodded, without speaking. I was already listening to Brian Easdale’s piano track.
Leo said, ‘Dissolve to the next morning.’
I said, ‘No dissolve — straight cut. We haven’t used a dissolve for time-lapse since A Canterbury Tale.
He made a note.
The final script was about ninety-five pages, a bit long, but we had to start going after the money.” —Michael Powell (Million Dollar Movie, 1992 / 1995)
According to Leo Marks, several studios were interested in financing the film.
“Now, the script was so bad that three major film companies tried to buy it from him! That was a new experience for Micky. Two offered to finance him, an even newer experience… So, Micky could not have had an easier time. But being Micky, he quarreled with each of them in turn and ended up with a small production company.” —Leo Marks (Leo Marks Interviewed by Chris Rodley, Peeping Tom, 1998)
This is an unfair oversimplification. The major studios wouldn’t allow Powell complete creative freedom, and he wasn’t willing to compromise for a few extra dollars. Frankly, this is a quality that all great filmmakers share.
“I sent a copy to the National Film Finance Corporation: they loved it; another one to Film Finances: they wanted to see a budget; I showed it to the Rank Organisation: they turned it down. Just to pay them out, I decided to make it in their studio. Bill Burnside read the script and was mad about it. ‘It’s better than M!’” —Michael Powell (Million Dollar Movie, 1992 / 1995)
Finally, Anglo Amalgamated showed interest in the script.
“The company was known through the ’50s for low-budget ‘B’-type movies. Financing Peeping Tom was part of a move they were making in the early ’60s to try and work with well-known film talent and move away from their low-quality reputation. They wanted to work with Powell because of his impressive CV…” —Kiri Bloom Walden (Devil’s Advocates: Peeping Tom, 2020)
Most importantly, they were willing to give Powell complete creative control over the film as long as he was willing to stay under budget and on schedule (even if they would end up regretting this decision and argue with the director on many occasions).
“Nat Cohen came into my bar at the Voile d’Or. He was looking very Riviera and wore a Panama hat with a band. [Nat Cohen and Stuart Levy ran Anglo-Amalgamated Films.]
‘Micky, I like your script, and so does Stu [Levy].’
‘What’s your budget?’
‘About £150,000.’
‘That’s a bit high for us. You haven’t got any names.’
‘Don’t want them.’
‘Well, get it down to £125,000, and we’ll come in. The National Film Finance Corporation will put up the rest.’
So, we were financed, and I didn’t have to play the Wardour Street names as they suggested.” —Michael Powell (Million Dollar Movie, 1992 / 1995)
Powell could now begin the process of pre-production, and casting was one of his most important challenges. “Laurence Harvey, who’d just made Room at the Top, wanted to play the lead,” remembered Leo Marks. This was the writer’s preferred choice for the role of Mark Lewis, and he later seemed to blame Michael Powell for not casting him in the role. However, his blame was misplaced because Harvey turned the role down.
“I was still doing a little work on Honeymoon at Shepperton Studios. On the stage next door Jack Clayton was just winding up his film Room at the Top, starring Laurence Harvey. Larry seemed to me to be ideal for the job, and he thought so too. I visited his stage, and he visited mine. But the word was already out. The scouts had seen Harvey’s performance, and very soon everybody knew what a fascinating film Jack Clayton had made of the novel ‘Room at the Top.’ All the Hollywood leading ladies wanted this new leading man. He suddenly appeared at my elbow in the studio.
‘Micky, I’m sorry. I’m off to Hollywood. I’ll never get such a chance again to screw all those dames . . . you understand . . . nothing personal. I love your script — but Hollywood, here I come!’
I wished him luck. I saw him later on, in Butterfleld 8, and felt I had contributed something to it. … Who was going to play Mark? I had no idea.
I wanted Anna Massey for the girl. She was twenty-one, a good actress, and Ray Massey’s daughter. Anna had brought theatrical London to its feet, and to her feet, in a play by William Douglas Home, ‘The Reluctant Debutante.’ It was her first professional engagement, and it ran for two years.” —Michael Powell (Million Dollar Movie, 1992 / 1995)
Anna Massey had her own suspicions as to why she was chosen for the role.
“I have often been asked how I got the part. I think the fact that my father had worked with Powell on A Matter of Life and Death must have had an influence. But I think there was another reason. Powell for many years had conducted a clandestine relationship with the actress Pamela Brown. Pamela and I looked extremely alike. We could very easily have been related, and I have always thought this was his main reason for choosing me to play the heroine, Helen. It was the most wonderful part, full of emotion, warmth, and innocence. Her journey was indeed frightening, and often on set I was genuinely scared, even though the crew were around.” —Anna Massey (Telling Some Tales, 2006)
Powell originally planned to cast Brown in the role of Helen’s mother, so Massey’s suspicions may be accurate. After all, it would make sense to cast look-alikes as mother and daughter, and Brown was the right age for the role at the time.
“Her mother in Peeping Tom was to have been Pamela Brown, but Pamela was in a play in the U.S.A. Anna Massey had dark red hair and large, expressive eyes, like Pamela, so I searched around for another redhead to play her mother. … Maxine Audley got the part. She also inherited Pamela’s sweaters and filled them nicely. She was a powerful addition to the cast. I had seen and admired Maxine in Larry’s production of ‘Titus Andronicus.’ She played the Queen of the Amazons and was a veritable queen. Next came Brenda Bruce, an old friend of Pamela’s of long standing. She gave a deliciously grubby performance as the little Soho tart, Mark’s first victim.
Who was to play Mark as an eight-year-old child? Nobody but ‘Bumba’ Powell, naturally. And his father? His father. I don’t approve of directors acting in their own films, but this was a family affair. But who was to play Mark as an adult?
I went to a cocktail party in Shepherd’s Market. I think Bill Burnside took me there. He was doing the publicity on the film. He was responsible for those awful eyes that glare at you from the posters of Peeping Tom, if you can find one. I was introduced to a charming young man whose name I couldn’t catch. He was talking about music. There was something about him; every word he said, every movement he made, betrayed the sensitive artist. He was with a lovely girl, of course. It nagged me that I had seen him before and couldn’t think where.
‘Are you an actor?’
He blushed. ‘No . . . yes … I mean, you wouldn’t have seen it, but I have acted.’
‘In films?’
He nodded. ‘A film called Sissi. It’s short for Elizabeth, but when I say the title of the film in England, everybody laughs.’
I said, ‘Watch me. I’m not laughing. You’re Karl-Heinz Bohm!’
‘How did you know?’
‘But I’ve seen the film — both films! You were splendid, you and Romy Schneider … Sissi, and Sissi, the Empress.’
He blushed again. He really was a very sensitive young man. ‘Thank you.’
‘And Karl Bohm, the great conductor, is your father?’
‘Yes, Karl Bohm is my father.’
And rival, I thought. To have the autocratic, passionate Karl Bohm as your father, and competitor, would be a tough nut to crack. Karl-Heinz’s real passion was also obviously music, but he had charm and ability — loads of it — and he knew how to handle himself, and, on top of that, was most attractive. He spoke English with hardly any accent, it was more like an intonation. I liked that, for the part. It suited our polyglot movie community. I made a sudden decision.
‘Here’s my card. Please telephone me tomorrow. I might have a film for you.’
He was thunderstruck. ‘Are you the Michael Powell?’
‘I believe there is another one, but I haven’t met him yet.’
He still held my card in his hand, so I took it from him, and stuck it in his waistcoat pocket.
‘Don’t lose it.’
‘I won’t.’
Nat Cohen, hearing the news, threw up. Not only was I not going to star Laurence Harvey, whose films had always made money, but now I was playing an unknown Austrian in the main part!
‘He’s not unknown. His father is a great conductor, one of the greatest. The Sissi films made lots of money. Everyone in the European art world knows Karl-Heinz — ask around!’
He grunted. ‘You’re talking about my film, and how to sell it.’
I flared up. ‘We’re talking about my film, and how to make it.’
He groaned. ‘I want you to play that blond girl who was in Stewart Granger’s film, and you bring me this Massey girl, who is more like a boy than a girl, and it’s her first picture, and nobody knows her, and then you let Larry Harvey walk out on you . . . and now you want to play this Austrian!?’
‘It’ll work, you’ll see. My director of photography, Otto Heller, is a Czech.’
‘I’ll tell you frankly, Michael, if I could get out of it, I would.’
‘You can’t.’
Why do films always start this way, with disagreement between the film makers and their backers? The answer’s simple: We know what we’re doing, they don’t.” —Michael Powell (Million Dollar Movie, 1992 / 1995)
Nat Cohen wasn’t the only one with reservations about Carl Böehm. Leo Marks was never satisfied with this particular casting decision. However, one feels that this might be because he had become too invested in the idea of Laurence Harvey in the role.
“Instead of Laurence Harvey, he cast a German actor, Carl Böehm. … Harvey, a very skillful actor indeed, was likely to have made Mark more of a narcissist — and probably a fringe homosexual. He would have given him depth. So did Böehm. My only objection to Böehm was that I couldn’t reconcile his German accent with his father’s perfect English. Carl phoned me from the studio after filming the final scene and said: ‘Leo, Mark is dead.’ And I said: ‘Carl, he’s not yet been born.’ Few authors are satisfied with an artist’s interpretation of a part they’ve created.” —Leo Marks (Leo Marks Interviewed by Chris Rodley, Peeping Tom, 1998)
Powell had no regrets.
“Karl-Heinz [gave] an unforgettable performance. Laurence Harvey would never have touched the level of his intuition, which is not to say that Larry wouldn’t have been good in the part. Anyone who had seen him in restoration comedy would know that, but Karl-Heinz was more than good. He was great. He reached the heights.” —Michael Powell (Million Dollar Movie, 1992 / 1995)
Fans of The Archers will also note the appearance of Moira Shearer in the significant but relatively small role of Vivian.
“In the film script Vivian is an important victim — we see more of her character than we do of some other victims — but it is still a relatively small role. She is written as a straightforward and perhaps slightly desperate bit-part actress who is trying to work her way up into larger roles and stardom. Powell’s choice of Moira Shearer for the role is surprising.
At the time it was made, Moira Shearer was by far the biggest star in the cast. So again, there is an ironic humor in her playing a woman who desperately wants to be a star. … There is something very unsettling both about the onscreen killing of a well-loved British star, and also the unquestioning obedience with which her character acquiesces with Mark’s requests when he is filming her. … Shearer also links Peeping Tom with two of Powell’s most famous and successful films of the past, The Red Shoes (1948) and Tales of Hoffman (1951).” —Kiri Bloom Walden (Devil’s Advocates: Peeping Tom, 2020)
However, it will probably come as a surprise to readers, when we report that Shearer was only cast as a last-minute replacement for another actress when she was unable to fulfill her obligation.
“As if it hadn’t been enough to lose Laurence Harvey, I now lost Natasha Parry, who was my original choice for Mark’s second victim in the movie studio. I think that Peter Brook [her husband] thought that Natasha and I were getting too intimate. I felt Natasha was a neglected actress, and perhaps I made that feeling too plain. Anyway, Peter Brook telephoned from New York. Would I release Natasha from the contract to join him in New York, where he was producing a play with Rex Harrison? They had just fired the leading lady and Natasha knew the part. Rex added his urgent voice to the clamor. It was obvious that Peter was going to get his own way, so I gave way gracefully and ran down my list of possibilities:
Julie Andrews — too famous
Moira Shearer — too glamorous
Joan Plowright — too sympathetic
April Olrich —too exotic
Elizabeth Seal — too sophisticated
Gillian Vaughan — too … too … too …
Noelle Adam — too big a risk
Oh hell! None of them inspired me the way Natasha did! Moira was the pick of the bunch, but what hope was there of getting her at short notice? Precious little, I thought. I had seats that night for ‘The Ginger Man,’ so I went. Tony Walton had done the set, so Julie Andrews was there with Beriosova. Richard Harris in the play was terrific, a genuine star, long bodied, twenty-eight years old, radiating confidence and physical attraction, but it was a girl I wanted, not an Irishman from Limerick…
…I had weighed the possibilities and decided to go banco on Moira. She and Ludo were living in Amersham, north of London. It’s a lovely old red-brick market town, with one of the widest high streets in England. I telephoned I was coming, and arrived at half past ten. Ludo was banging away at a typewriter in the backroom. Moira opened the door. We looked at each other. It was ten years since Hoffmann. She said, ‘Come in, Michael,’ and led the way into the front room, which was decorated with ballet posters.
I plunged straight into my subject, and Karl-Heinz Bohm, who he was, and why. She listened, leafing through the script and the list of the cast. I had penciled the name of the actors already cast against the character he or she was playing, and Moira could see already that there were three or four names that she would love to work with. I could see that I was doing all right, so I left her the script, together with the bongo recording that Brian Easdale had slung together. She promised to read the script by lunchtime, and listen to the recording.
I jumped back in the Bentley and raced to Pinewood. Arthur Lawson was all ready to start building as soon as we got our money. Copies of the script had been circulating, and everybody was excited about the new film. I dashed back to London to meet my young lawyer, Laurence Harbottle, who had been recommended to me by Tony Quayle. He was about thirty and full of energy. He had his offices in the same building as the Film Finance Corporation, which was handy — what you might call inspired casting. I arrived back at our office, with everyone standing around me, and telephoned Moira.
I had telephoned Moira once before, but Ludo, typically, gave nothing away, merely said she was ‘down the village.’ It was a deal — she loved the part! Two thousand pounds for six days, over two weeks, any extra days £350 a day. The whole office was agog, because until then I had said nothing. Bill Burnside, who was doing the publicity, rushed to telephone the Daily Express and all the agencies. We were all there until long past our dinnertime. It was a great coup.
The next day [on October 27, 1959] we had a reading of the script [at the YWCA in Baker Street]. … Leo sat there with his mouth open, without a cigar for once. I had sprung the whole thing on him, choosing Moira Shearer. Someone gave him the Express to read: there was Bill Burnside’s story. Interleaved in my diary [on this particular day] is a telegram addressed to me:
‘EVER GRATEFUL I HOPE — NATASHA’
I smiled. I could afford to smile. I had Moira.” —Michael Powell (Million Dollar Movie, 1992 / 1995)
It is possible that Leo Marks “sat there with his mouth open” because he was unhappy with Powell’s choice of Moira Shearer. Powell felt that her scene needed a rewrite to showcase the star’s dancing abilities, and Marks wasn’t terribly thrilled with the idea because it meant losing an important scene that he had already written.
“He decided that he’d like a big name in the film… so, having made a film with Moira Shearer, he decided he wanted a scene written that would give her the chance to dance. There was only one place in the whole film for this, and I did not want to change it. That’s because what was there in the script was the most important disclosure about Mark in the entire film: why he’s driven to frighten people to death, to achieve the impossible. Instead of which, I was required to write a dance sequence for Miss Shearer to perform.
That was the first time Micky pulled rank and indicated that it was very important that this should happen. So, I shelved the original scene. In the original script, I disclose what Mark’s film really would have been, which tells a great deal about him. … In coding, I learnt that there is only one captain, and I realized that this was even more true of a film studio… Powell was the Captain. Powell had to do it as he saw it — and he did.” —Leo Marks (Leo Marks Interviewed by Chris Rodley, Peeping Tom, 1998)
He felt that the lengthy dance also resulted in yet another important dialogue scene (but this scene was actually shot and cut during the editing process for pacing reasons).
“Unhappily they cut a scene from the film between [Mark and Helen] in a restaurant where you begin to understand that Mark is falling in love and is capable of love. That was cut out. I think it helped to make room for Moira Shearer’s dance!” —Leo Marks (Leo Marks Interviewed by Chris Rodley, Peeping Tom, 1998)
As suggested in Powell’s autobiography, Moira Shearer’s casting provided publicists an angle for promoting the film in the press. In fact, the film’s marketing assets often implied that she had a much larger role in the film.
“A whole series of publicity images exist which feature Powell with his son Columba, Carl Böehm, and [Moira] Shearer. Massey is not included in this series of photographs and it points to the fact that Shearer was a bigger draw than Anna Massey, who in the context of this film had a far more important role. It is not clear whether this particular publicity shoot might have been influenced by the financial backers and distributors, keen to try and protect their investment by making the most of the film’s best-known star.” —Kiri Bloom Walden (Devil’s Advocates: Peeping Tom, 2020)
Actually, Shearer wasn’t the only actor who offered interesting avenues for publicity. Pamela Green was actually working as a model in the soft porn industry when she caught Michael Powell’s attention. He was hoping to cast such a model in the role of Milly, and found some of her photographs in an issue of Kamera magazine. When he read that there would be an exhibition of nudes at the studio responsible for the publication, he decided to attend so that he might meet the model. Powell also considered it a research trip, and his visit ended up informing her scenes in the film.
“The day that Michael Powell walked into the Photographic Exhibition, at our studios in London’s Soho and came face to face with an enormous picture of me, was the day that was to color the rest of my life. Michael Powell turned to his Art Director and said ‘That is the girl I want for Peeping Tom. Downstairs in our office, he explained what he wanted. … He wanted to see me in a studio set-up and suitably lit, as he was convinced that I would be right for the part.
That evening Powell and the Art Director came to our studio on the top floor.
The set that was up was a Parisian Street scene, which consisted of a brick wall, with an arch over an alley, and a pavement and cobbled street. I was particularly pleased with the set as I had not only designed it but also painted the entire set — literally brick by brick. My studio assistant had taken a plaster cast from an actual London Street, including the pavement and the cobbles. When finished complete with genuine French posters, it looked like the real thing. I had studied Art and Painting for seven years, the last four of which I spent at St Martin’s School of Art in London; all of which stood me in good stead when it came to set design and painting, although my main subject was drawing and painting the nude figure.
I stood under the lights; George [Harrison Marks] lit me, and Powell looking through the back of the camera was satisfied with what he saw. The costumes that Milly had to wear in both scenes, as on-screen in 1959 she could not appear nude, had to be both sexy and concealing.
On the wall in the Studio was a large color photograph of a girl with waist-length flaming red hair wearing a waspie corset in deep pink and gold that just clinched the waist leaving the breasts bare. Over her shoulders was a black lace negligee, which she held open to reveal her body. Both the costume and the girl intrigued Powell. I explained that the girl was, in fact, me in a red wig, and was a character that I had created. It’s surprising what one can do with a subtle change of make-up and changing the camera angle. The character was called Rita Landre.
Powell was very taken with the costumes and asked if I could put them on for him to see. Dressed in the Waspie and the black lace I stood on the set. He thought the pink and gold corset was ideal but thought the black lace too heavy.
In my make-up room I had two long racks of every kind of costume, many I had designed and made myself: from these Powell sorted out a short negligee in see-through magenta nylon trimmed with black lace. I took off the black negligee and put on the magenta ‘short,’ he liked it and thought it perfect for the first scene. Next, he wanted a full-length negligee, and he picked out from the collection a pale green semi-transparent flower spattered nylon. This would do for the costume in the second scene.
Powell was fascinated by the set, he walked around admiring the old streetlamp and French posters. I had even planted tiny Ferns and moss to give it a touch of authenticity. He asked if he could copy the set for Peeping Tom, and the Art Director arranged for George to supply him with photographs to work from.
In the corner of our studio was a small set up, consisting of an Attic interior with a black iron bedstead with bed linen and pillows and various props hanging on the wall. This Powell felt he could use for the last scene. We were also to advise him on the lamps and cameras that Mark would use.
At St. Mary Abbott Studios in Kensington, I read the part for Powell and was accepted to play Milly. A contract was drawn up and duly signed. Shooting would commence sometime late October; the film would be based at Pinewood Studios in Buckinghamshire. … My costumes had been borrowed by the wardrobe department, so they could copy them. The black stockings and the black G-String I would supply myself. The ones I used were actually a gift from a fan in America.
…
I spent each evening learning my part as there was a lot of dialogue, and I discovered that in my final scene with Mark I am murdered, as to how was unclear.” —Pamela Green (The Filming of Michael Powell’s ‘Peeping Tom,’ pamela-green.com)
Powell’s most controversial bit of casting was his decision to appear in the black-and-white “home movies” with his own son.
“Powell chose to cast himself as Mark’s father and his own son Columba as the young Mark. He also used his first wife, Frankie, in shots of Mark’s dead mother and filmed these scenes mainly in or near the family home. From a purely practical point of view one can see how directing your own son might be easier than working with a child actor.” —Kiri Bloom Walden (Devil’s Advocates: Peeping Tom, 2020)
Various sources offer differing reasons for this decision. Leo Marks claimed that he appeared in the film for budgetary reasons. Casting himself and his son was cheaper than having to pay actors to do the roles. “It was partly budgetary, partly emotional,” Marks suggested. Powell had another explanation. “I felt it gave the whole thing a greater truth than if we had a routine child actor,” he insisted. “My son understood what we were doing — I explained it all to him — and enjoyed doing it.”
These scenes were actually shot during pre-production while they were still casting the film.
“I would like to explore for a while my contribution to the battered-child syndrome. It was quite conscious and quite shameless — for an artist should be shameless. When I asked Frankie for her permission to play Columba as the eight-year-old Mark in the film I knew exactly what I was doing, or at least thought I did. And Columba, when he saw the film with me, just giggled.
We had had the usual maddening delays over money and contracts that beset the independent film producer, and I was still casting the picture. By this time, I had rented offices and studio space in a small studio in St. Mary Abbot’s Place, which was only a few minutes’ walk from 8 Melbury Road and made it very handy for interviews with actors. I had been rehearsing in this small studio for a week, and I decided to do all Columba’s scenes there, where it would seem more like a game and where he would feel at home. I left the camera crew to line up each shot and ran down to the studio when they were ready. Bumba looked adorable in his gray jacket, his first, with a black string tie and a white shirt. He was thrilled with it. The day had started with a mad dash to Harrods because Frankie had not realized that we would need the jacket for the first shot. The first shot was Bumba saying goodbye to his dead mother. We soon got that in the can. Bumba was appropriately solemn but refused to be directed: ‘If you talk to me, Daddy, during the scene, I shall laugh.’
Take 1 was okay; a close-up of Bumba followed.
‘It’s a close-up. Do nothing. That’s what a close-up is for, to see what you are feeling, not feel what you are seeing.’
Then we re-dressed the set for the nursery bedroom scene. The lizard was a great success as a personality, but Bumba didn’t fancy it much, ‘’because it has claws on its feet.’
In the final scene he got frightened, to everybody’s embarrassment, including his own. I felt like a murderer, deservedly. Needless to say, I used the scene in the film. If my son has lizard complexes late in life, it will be my fault.
Leo Marks had written a scene for Bumba scattering flowers on his mother’s grave. But Frankie drew the line on that. She put the flowers in water instead…
…[One] Sunday [while still trying to find a suitable replacement for Natasha Parry], I had two units working in 16mm black and white: scenes from Mark’s private collection. I shot the scene in our back garden, of Bumba peeping on the two lovers kissing in the next garden. The French couple from the flat upstairs, M. et Mme. Le Compte, played the lovers and put plenty of muscle into it. Meanwhile, Bill Paton went off with Margaret Neal and Gerry Turpin to shoot the lady in the bikini at Ruislip Lido. It was a cold, windy day in October, but Margaret was a hardy girl. All these scenes shot by Mark’s film father were, of course, in black and white, and 16mm, and hand-held.” —Michael Powell (Million Dollar Movie, 1992 / 1995)
In addition to shooting much of the film in his own neighborhood (and certain scenes at his own home), Powell was eager to shoot the film studio sequences at Pinewood.
“Another meta-reference, because he uses Pinewood as the location for scenes that specifically parody Pinewood — or, more particularly, the workings of the Rank Organization, which owned Pinewood and made the types of films Powell is making fun of. The director of the film being shot in these studio scenes is called Arthur Baden, another sneaky autobiographical detail as the name derives from Arthur Baden Powell (an eminent twentieth-century naturalist). Powell makes the studio the setting for its own take down and even uses many of the regular Pinewood studio crew (for example, his make-up man Bill Partleton was head of make up at Pinewood).
Although Powell did not intentionally approach his film in the same way as the emerging ‘New Wave’ of European directors, his own way to choosing sets and locations for the film echoes their cinéma vérité methods. Powell chooses locations that are imbued with significance to the story (autobiographical spaces and real locations) rather than fake fictional spaces, and in doing so adds to the emotional impact of the film on an audience used to seeing horror played out on a reassuringly fake set.” —Kiri Bloom Walden (Devil’s Advocates: Peeping Tom, 2020)
Principal photography would commence in October 1959 and would last for six weeks (some sources say 30 days). It was a smooth production by most accounts, but all film productions have their share of challenges and interpersonal conflicts. Luckily, he had an excellent cinematographer who could help him to overcome most of the technical hurdles.
“On Peeping Tom, he worked for the only time in his career with Otto Heller. Michael Powell commented that ‘I’d always wanted to work with Otto Heller, I thought his work as a cameraman was wonderful.’ Anna Massey recalled in her memoirs: ‘Our lighting cameraman was the great Otto Heller who had lit many of Marlene Dietrich’s films. He had the most delightful and bubbly personality, not dimmed at all by his age. He adored women and used wonderful blue filters to flatter them.’
Heller was born in Prague and worked in various countries before settling in Britain in 1940. In his black-and-white films he perfected a ‘film noir’ style characterized by high contrast and shadow, and in color his striking work on films including The Ladykillers and Richard III (both 1955) would have suggested him as a suitable candidate to Powell for Peeping Tom…
…Both Pamela Green and Anna Massey imply that Powell was very directly involved in each shot, collaborating with Heller and the camera team rather than leaving them to it. Anna Massey recalled that ‘Before each take, he had to have a row with someone, and it was usually the camera operator, Gerry Turpin, who was the target of his wrath. [Powell] liked to do tremendously long and complicated takes, so everyone’s nerves were already on edge without the added friction provided by the director.’
Looking at the original shooting script does not tell us that much more — most of the camera notes mention generic instructions ‘camera pans, camera tracks’ etc. in scenes which actually use the innovative hand-held point-of-view shots. So, it seems that the script is not necessarily an accurate record of which camera shots were chosen, and why…
… Looking at the lighting separate to the camera technique, Powell and Heller used Eastmancolor (which had previously been chosen for another Anglo-Amalgamated horror film, Horrors of the Black Museum (1959). … Shadow is used expressively, sometimes to withhold information from the viewer – for example, hiding a character or just their face in shadow. The lighting of Helen (flat and bright) is often contrasted with the way her mother is lit with a shadowed face — maybe a visual expression of her blindness, or even the mother’s suspicion towards Mark contrasted with her daughter’s frank openness.
The menace achieved through the lighting (or lack of it) was, according to Anna Massey, also true in real life: ‘The lighting was extremely low-key and atmospheric, and I often felt quite isolated and threatened. I am sure this was Powell’s intention.’” —Kiri Bloom Walden (Devil’s Advocates: Peeping Tom, 2020)
Like many of the best filmmakers, Powell seemed to thrive on technical challenges.
“When [the script] asked the impossible of him, he made it happen. Like one particular scene, where [Mark] is up a gantry in the film studio, and [the script] describes pencils falling from his pocket and landing like torpedoes at the foot of the Police Inspector. To me, those falling pencils were agents dropping into the field, and codes being dropped with them. Powell made that happen.” —Leo Marks (Leo Marks Interviewed by Chris Rodley, Peeping Tom, 1998)
Powell experimented with various prop pencils of various sizes and shot them at different film speeds until he found just the right combination, and it does actually end up being a memorable moment in the film.
“This shines a light on the aspects of filming he really enjoyed — getting technical details right so that every shot was as good as it could be. Powell boasted that the famed producer Alexander Korda had told him ‘Mickey is the greatest technician in the movies!’” —Kiri Bloom Walden (Devil’s Advocates: Peeping Tom, 2020)
Of course, his perfectionism could occasionally result in a slightly tense working environment.
“The filming of Peeping Tom was an absorbing time for me. … Michael Powell was an extraordinary man. He came to the set each day immaculately dressed, a distinguished ferret in a tweed suit and a bow tie. He thrived on tension. I have never known a more electric atmosphere than on the set of Peeping Tom. … Like John Ford, Powell believed in setting up the shots carefully, and then, when the crew were ready, the actors would return. We would rehearse and rehearse until Powell was satisfied that he could get his shot in one take. We never did more than two. Some of the takes were eight or nine minutes long, involving extremely intricate tracking. I learnt an enormous amount about filming from Michael Powell. He was not easy to work with, but he was a true original and a taskmaster. I think he enabled everyone to give of their best.” —Anna Massey (Telling Some Tales, 2006)
Powell’s tendency to be a “taskmaster” on the set was actually necessary if he was to have any hope of achieving his vision. You can’t achieve near-perfect films like Black Narcissus (1947), The Red Shoes (1948), and Peeping Tom without insisting upon perfection from everyone on the set. Unfortunately, this inevitably creates a few clashes of personality. This seems to be what happened between Powell and Pamela Green.
It is important to understand the resentment that Green must have felt towards Powell. She wasn’t a professional actress. She was a nude model. What’s more, she was usually the boss.
“George Harrison Marks and I ran a studio and a publishing company, Kamera Publications. Apart from posing myself, I trained models to work for our Studio. We produced four monthly magazines for which I was responsible. We also were branching out with 8mm ‘Glamour’ films. I had not yet given any thought to acting in the movies.” —Pamela Green (The Filming of Michael Powell’s ‘Peeping Tom,’ pamela-green.com)
In light of all of this (and certain vague comments about the Green’s belligerent attitude and refusal to take direction), it seems safe to assume that she was more accustomed to giving orders than taking them. Being directed by anyone would have rubbed her the wrong way, and she was thrown into a production with one of cinema’s most exacting directors. As a result, her memories of the production don’t tend to be flattering. She tends to paint Powell as a kind of Jekyll and Hyde personality — with added emphasis on the Hyde persona. “Powell was a strange man to work with, cold, somewhat remote; a sarcastic tongue,” she remembered. “He seemed to enjoy humiliating the actors, and certain ones would be his whipping boys and [sometimes] it was me.”
This gives her recollections an exaggerated quality, but it is worth including a few of her recollections here since they are some of the only anecdotes that we have from the film’s production. Apparently, Green’s opinion of Powell was established on her very first day on the set. They were shooting the first scene between Mark and Milly (with Susan Travers as Lorraine in the background).
“Carl [Böehm] fluffed a line on a take and stopped. … I automatically cut in with my line, allowing him to pick up and go on. ‘CUT.’ Powell came over with a voice like ice and said ‘You are an actor and should at least know your lines. She (indicating me) has never stood on a film set before, but she covered you like a professional.’
‘Thanks a lot,’ I thought. I could see from Carl’s face that it was going to be a ‘Hate Green Week.’ Now I knew; do not try to help your fellow actors. Look after number one.” —Pamela Green (The Filming of Michael Powell’s ‘Peeping Tom,’ pamela-green.com)
Green herself would soon be in the line of fire.
“I had put on the flowered negligee and was standing being lit by Otto, when the storm broke. My costume was wrong. It was not transparent enough, and I looked like a bale of material. (I knew that.) Why? … Because it had been lined with a pink lining for decency’s sake.
‘Then take it out now!’
I took off the offending garment and the Wardrobe Lady, making sure that I was covered with not a hint of flesh showing that might drive the crew wild, cut out the lining with a pair of scissors. I put it back on and was re-lit. The cameraman thought it was too transparent with the lights shining through it; they shifted the lamps.
I took off the offending garment and the Wardrobe Lady, making sure that I was covered with not a hint of flesh showing that might drive the crew wild, cut out the lining with a pair of scissors. I put it back on and was re-lit. The cameraman thought it was too transparent with the lights shining through it; they shifted the lamps.
I was measured and my marks put down on the floor, my dialogue and movements checked. I had to be careful to stay in one position at the head of the bed, for the set was very narrow, and restricted. Camera, Action — and we were away with the scene where I am berating Mark for calling me in to pose for him: I am angry. ‘CUT!’ yells Powell. ‘Why are you not moving about, you are supposed to be angry with him, just don’t stand there. Throw yourself around the set.’
Fear overcome; my temper flared. … Was I not supposed to stick to the markings that had been put down especially? Back came the answer, ‘yes.’ I had to stick to the marks.
Temper really gone, I turned to Powell and yelled at him ‘Why don’t you make up your bloody mind.’ The English Gentleman returned. He became charm itself, and we did the scene again.” —Pamela Green (The Filming of Michael Powell’s ‘Peeping Tom,’ pamela-green.com)
The following day would be even worse.
“On arrival at the Studio next morning, I found the waspie and the short top. Otto appeared, patted my hand, and said, ‘not to worry,’ and soon Powell himself appeared. The shot, he told me, was something that had come to him last night. He wanted to film my image in the back of Mark’s camera, which was a Linhof 5X4 view camera. The image would be upside down and would fill the screen. For this shot, he needed only me. I stood on the set and Powell looking through the back of the camera, told Otto to light me.
Four Arcs were arranged to light me, still looking through the back of the camera. Powell asked for more light. The image was not bright enough. Otto took a reading on his meter. The movie camera was in position. Powell was not satisfied. [He] still [needed] more light. Then, he asked for the Fresnel glass to be taken off one of the Brutes. Otto protested, ‘No Michael, it is too dangerous.’
Powell took no notice and had the glass taken off another Arc, and yet another. Bill [Partleton], checking my make-up warned me ‘Don’t look at the lights, Pam’ — then turning to Powell, ‘For Christ’s sake, you’ll blind her.’ I felt my skin beginning to burn, red patches appeared on my arms and shoulders. I tried not to look at the blaze of light coming from the four naked Brutes burning in my face.
Powell watched my discomfort with a slight smile on his face. Eventually, the shot was over, and the Arcs quickly killed. Bill came hurrying over to me. First, he took off the false eyelashes, then in the makeup room, cleaned my face of all makeup. ‘That shot should never have been permitted.’ I didn’t know that a bare Arc could blind. I had felt it was more of a trial of strength between Powell and me — especially after the set the previous day.
[The] next morning when the alarm clock went, I tried to open my eyes and found that I couldn’t. They were badly swollen. I was helped down to the waiting car, and [to] a shocked driver when he saw my face. Bill, awaiting me in make-up looked grim. Seizing my arm, he guided me onto the set where he dragged me up to Powell. ‘Look at her face, will you?’ Powell turned, glanced at me and said, ‘Make sure that she is ready [and], on the set, and made up for 9 a.m.’” —Pamela Green (The Filming of Michael Powell’s ‘Peeping Tom,’ pamela-green.com)
Green’s belief that Powell did this out of some sort of “trial of strength” is unlikely considering his reputation for getting the shots that he wanted, but it doesn’t sound like a very pleasant situation in any case.
“We were now on the final part of the scene where Milly lies down on the bed and is killed. The last two lines of dialogue being ‘Are you safe to be alone with?’ — a long pause as she lies against the pillows — ‘It might be more fun if you weren’t.’
Late afternoon and Carl and I were standing by the bed when Powell called out brightly, ‘The next shot is where you strip.’
‘This is where I don’t strip! There is nothing indicated in the script that I am completely in the nude, nor has it ever been discussed,’ I replied.
‘But you strip for men,’ said Powell.
‘I pose nude for my partner who is a photographer, and that is my job. I am not a stripper on a stage.’
Looking around the stage, I noticed that it had become very full of people who didn’t belong there. The cast from one of the Carry On films were watching from one corner, The League of Gentlemen currently being filmed with Jack Hawkins had come to have a look also. What to do now?
The crew, since the beginning having discovered that I was very new to all this, had adopted me. I was their ‘child,’ any problems I could ask them, any technical terms, they put me wise. In the tea break, the gaffer sparks quietly came over to me. I explained if it was essential to the story and if I had to strip, I did not mind the crew being present. It was the strangers hanging around to have a look at a nude girl that I would not tolerate. I wasn’t a peep show. The Gaffer told me what to do. ‘You just say clear the set and put the drapes up.’
This I did, to the considerable surprise of Michael Powell, who looked as if he were doing sums in his head. I could read on his face, ‘Who has been showing her the ropes in all this.’ To Powell, I said, ‘Look, I don’t have to stand around on your film set, the money that you are paying me for three weeks work on your picture, I earn in one day at my own studio. So, while you make your mind up, I’m going.’ I picked up my coat, which happened to be a very beautiful dark brown mink, put it on and walked off the set. Powell immediately capitulated…
…Nude shot must be made up all over, and I was rushed into the nearest dressing room. … In no time, I was covered…
…I took up my position by the bed. Looking across to the camera, I saw two young boys — about seven and eight years old — sitting on the floor in front of the camera. Powell caught my look. [He] said that they were his sons, and he wanted them to watch the scene. I could not be bothered to argue. I took my position for the first take. It had been decided to shoot two versions of the scene.
Take number one, with the camera at the head of the bed; I did my line, turned, laid down on the bed, and with the negligee parted to show the breasts partially covered gave my final line. The second version and take two. The camera looking down on my body, I did my line, ‘Are you safe to be alone with,’ then laid down, opened the negligee, so one could see my nude body and said my line again, ‘It might be more fun if you weren’t.’ Cut to close up of me, end of scene. It was amazingly easy, no one in my eye line — just the lens of the camera looking down on me.
Another take as Otto wanted to change the lighting a little. … I remained there for the stills camera to do a picture. Suddenly, I was aware that a stranger was at the foot of the bed with a camera pointing straight up my naked body. I sat up quickly, ‘From that angle, no pictures, get him off the set.’ With great speed the nearest electricians pounced on him, whipped away his camera, and slung him off the set. Some photojournalist had got wind of the fact that there was a nude on F Stage. I was the first nude in a feature film in England.” —Pamela Green (The Filming of Michael Powell’s ‘Peeping Tom,’ pamela-green.com)
Interestingly, Green recalls that Powell was “gentle, kind, and totally charming” when he wasn’t directing a scene.
“He had an extra set built for an exterior of Hyde Park and a small row of shops. I stood wondering how they managed to give the effect of such a large Park. Powell saw me looking at it and came over. I was puzzled at the lamp posts disappearing into the distance, a real full-sized Oak Tree with bushes and grass, and all around the London skyline of rooftops and chimneys. ‘Walk down the path with me.’ We did; the first lamppost was of a normal size, the second much shorter until they finished up at practically knee height. Powell explained that it was a perspective set. He took me over to the camera and told me to look through — again charm itself. … I asked him why he was such a pig on the set but so helpful and nice now. He just smiled and said nothing.” —Pamela Green (The Filming of Michael Powell’s ‘Peeping Tom,’ pamela-green.com)
Even with the personality clashed between himself and Green, the production was remembered rather fondly by the director. “All of us who had worked on the film had spent a very happy time,” Powell later remembered. “It was a film full of humor and compassion…” Unfortunately, there were those in Britain who disagreed.
The legend of the film’s very short release is now quite well known, but it is rather difficult to paint an accurate portrait of just how scathing the film’s critical reception at the time. “The reception of the film? A disaster for me,” Powell insisted. “Such a scream went up that hasn’t happened since Sodom and Gomorrah. They ruined it.” The trouble began when critics and distinguished guests were invited to a small premiere of the film.
“We came, all innocently, to the opening at the Plaza Cinema, just around the corner from Piccadilly. It was owned by Paramount and is a florid and friendly house. It was not an official premiere, but a lot of people in the business were there. Karl and I wore black tie, and I think I even sported a buttonhole. When the show was over, we waited in the lobby for our friends. But we had no friends. They passed us with averted gaze. It was obvious they just wanted to get off the hook, go home, and forget about it — and us.” —Michael Powell (Million Dollar Movie, 1992 / 1995)
Carl Böehm also remembers this night.
“What then happened I can never forget in my life. There were some very famous people invited as honorable guests, and Mickey Powell and myself, we stood outside in the foyer, and when the film finished there was an absolute deadly silence and we stood there and the doors opened and first at the doors were the honorable guests […] And then they came down, and they walked towards us, and suddenly they turned to the left, and they went outside even without looking at us — without shaking hands, oh well forget it, but they weren’t even looking at us […] We were speechless, we looked at each other, we waited till somebody at least would comment … but nothing.” —Carl Böehm (as quoted in “Devil’s Advocates: Peeping Tom,” A Very British Psycho, 1997 / 2020)
The worst was yet to come. Powell included excerpts from many of the scathing reviews in his autobiography:
“…It was discovered by the critics to be art with a capital A — A prostitution of the arts. It was salacious, rapacious, pornographic, and unutterably boring for critics, who had to sit through this mishmash of sex and murder. It was an insult to the film business, it out-cocked even the worst of Hitchcock. In fact, it was all cock. What should be done with a film like this? It should be flushed down the water closet, with every responsible critic in London gleefully hanging on the chain:
‘In the last three and a half months … I have carted my travel-stained carcass to some of the filthiest and most festering slums in Asia. But nothing, nothing, nothing — neither the hopeless leper colonies of East Pakistan, the back streets of Bombay nor the gutters of Calcutta — has left me with such a feeling of nausea and depression as I got this week while sitting through a new British film called Peeping Tom (Plaza). I am a glutton for punishment, and I never walk out of films or plays no matter how malodorous. But I must confess that I almost followed suit when I heard my distinguished colleague Miss Caroline Lejeune say: ‘I am sickened!’ just before she made her indignant exit. … Mr. Michael Powell (who once made such outstanding films as Black Narcissus and A Matter of Life and Death) produced and directed Peeping Tom and I think he ought to be ashamed of himself. The acting is good. The photography is fine. But what is the result as I saw it on the screen? Sadism, sex, and the exploitation of human degradation.’ (Daily Express, Len Mosley)
***
‘It’s a long time since a film disgusted me as much as Peeping Tom. … This so-called entertainment is directed by Michael Powell, who once made such distinguished films as A Matter of Life and Death and 49th Parallel. … I don’t propose to name the players in this beastly picture.’ (The Observer, Caroline Lejeune)
***
‘The only really satisfactory way to dispose of Peeping Tom would be to shovel it up and flush it swiftly down the nearest sewer. Even then, the stench would remain. . . . Obviously, there’s a legitimate place in the cinema for genuine psychological studies. But this crude, sensational exploitation merely aims at giving the bluntest of cheap thrills. It succeeds in being alternately dull and repellent. It is no surprise that this is the work of Michael Powell who displayed his vulgarity in such films as A Matter of Life and Death, The Red Shoes and Tales of Hoffmann, and the bizarre tendencies of his curious mind in A Canterbury Tale, where the story consisted of Eric Portman pouring glue into girls’ hair. In Peeping Tom his self-exposure goes even further. He not only plays the sadistic father but uses his own child as his victim.’ (Tribune, Derek Hill)
***
‘It turns out to be the sickest and filthiest film I remember seeing … children’s terror used as entertainment, atrocious cruelty put on the screen for fun. And the main character, and madman murderer, is played all through as hero — handsome, tormented, lovable, a glamorous contrast to the heroine’s alternative youths … and in the end her romantic sprawl beside the beloved killer is implicitly sickening.’ (The Spectator, Isobel Quigley)
***
‘Ugh! Obviously, Michael Powell made Peeping Tom in order to shock. In one sense he has succeeded. I was shocked to the core to find a director of his standing befouling the screen with such perverted nonsense. It wallows in the diseased urges of a homicidal pervert, and actually romanticizes his pornographic brutality. Sparing no tricks, it uses phony cinema artifice and heavy orchestral music to whip up a debased atmosphere. … From its slumbering mildly salacious beginning to its appallingly masochistic and depraved climax, it is wholly evil.’ (The Daily Worker, Nina Hibbin)
***
‘Perhaps one would not be so disagreeably affected by this exercise in the lower regions of the psychopathic, were it handled in a more bluntly debased fashion. One does not, after all, waste much indignation on the Draculas and Mummies and Stranglers of the last few years; the tongue-chopping and blood-sucking, disgusting as they may be, can often be dismissed as risible. Peeping Tom is another matter. It is made by a director of skill and sensibility: the director whose daring and inquiring eye gave us the superb camera obscura sequence and the entry into the operating room in A Matter of Life and Death.
The same stylist’s view it is which now and then makes the torturer’s stuff of the new film look like the true imaginative thing, the Edgar Allan Poe horror, instead of the vulgar squalor it really is.
Then one remembers that even in his best period, Michael Powell would suddenly devote his gifts to a story about a maniac who poured glue over girls’ hair. He has got beyond glue here. He has got to the trick knife lovingly embedded in the throat, to the voyeur with sound effects, to a nauseating emphasis on the preliminaries and the practice of sadism — and I mean sadism. He did not write Peeping Tom; but he cannot wash his hands of responsibility for this essentially vicious film.’ (Sunday Times, Dilys Powell)” —Michael Powell (Million Dollar Movie, 1992 / 1995)
We might add to these examples a review by William Whitebait that appeared in the New Statesman as it mirrors all of those that Powell listed:
“Peeping Tom stinks more than anything else in British films since The Stranglers of Bombay … What worries me is that anyone could entertain this muck and give it commercial shape.” —William Whitebait (New Statesman, April 9, 1960)
All of this negative criticism would have a horrible effect upon the film’s release. Powell later insisted that Nat Cohen “was scared out of his tiny mind.”
“And Nat? … and Stu? … The two executives of Anglo-Amalgamated Films? Wouldn’t you have thought that they would have spent a little money and taken space in the newspapers, and said, ‘This is what the critics say about our wonderful film. Now you, the public, come and see for yourselves, and see what a wonderful film it is, and what lousy critics we have.’
But did they? Not on your nelly! They yanked the film out of the Plaza, they canceled the British distribution, and they sold the negative as soon as they could to an obscure black marketeer of films who tried to forget it, and forgotten it was, along with its director, for twenty years.
Leo Marks was philosophical. After all, he had received, and cashed, his check on the first day of shooting and was already planning his next film. He made no criticisms, but in a very subtle way he managed to convey that if he, the author of the original screenplay, had been consulted more, and if his two long important dialogue scenes — the one between Mark and his girlfriend, the other between Mark and his star struck victim — had not been brutally dropped in the editing stage, his film — it was already his film — might have had a different reception…
…Peeping Tom had cost £135,000, and in the ordinary course of events would have recovered that cost within three months. Instead, and according to the latest accounts sent to me by the distributor of the film, it has taken twenty-nine years. The American rights were sold, or given, to Astor Pictures, which was trying to distribute European films in art houses and eventually went bankrupt. It is one of the peculiarities of independent film productions that you recover the cost of your venture within the first six months of distribution — or never.
If Nat and Stu had jumped into the ring and slammed the critics as fiercely as they slammed me, the film would have become airborne and would have had its champions in England — like Bertrand Tavernier in Paris, where they retitled it, inevitably I’m afraid, as Le Voyeur. A better title would have been ‘Le Cineaste.’ This was before Bertrand became, himself, one of France’s most distinguished directors. At the time he was one of its most notable film journalists. He invited me to Paris and interviewed me and kept the film alive. He saw to it, over the years, that I was not forgotten in France.” —Michael Powell (Million Dollar Movie, 1992 / 1995)
It is very difficult to determine just exactly why the film was so passionatly despised by most of the British critics. We say “most” because certain trade publications did offer more level-headed opinions about the film. For example, Kinematograph Weekly called the film a “first-rate British shocker” that manages to be “thoughtful as well as sensational” and praised Carl Böehm “outstanding” performance before enthusing that “it should fascinate and grip the majority.” The hostility came from the newspapers and magazines.
One of the most obvious reasons for their vitriolic attack is the simple fact that British critics had a reputation for being biased against the horror genre in general. Danny Peary made this observation in his original volume about cult movies:
“There are numerous reasons why Peeping Tom was greeted with such hostility in England. For one thing it fell under the broad classification of ‘horror movie,’ and horror movies had always been in disfavor in that country: Horror movies come from a German cinema-theater tradition, and Britons have never been keen on letting the genre become part of their culture. In the late fifties a few British-made horror films were released — Jacques Tourneur’s Night of the Demon (1957) and Hammer Studios’ initial horror efforts, The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) and Horror of Dracula (1958) — to be given the tag of disrespectability by the daily press (which would become quite receptive to Hammer films a few years later); but prior to this — other than Dead of Night (1946) — you will find few British horror films. (Even horror films that were imported from America often were given an ‘X’ certificate, which meant they couldn’t be seen by children, and this consequently limited their bookings.)” —Danny Peary (Cult Movies: The Classics, the Sleepers the Weird, and the Wonderful, 1981)
It has also been pointed out by numerous sources that one of the most common complaints about the film concerns the home movie scenes that feature Michael Powell with his own son.
“They took exception to it, thinking that it was wrong for him to expose his own son to such dark subject matter. They thought that by casting himself as Dr. Lewis he must in some way condone the Doctor’s sadistic research, submitting his own real-life son to similar horrors to those committed in the film’s narrative.
The British Board of Film Classification, in an article written for their website, states:
‘The general reaction [to the film] was a mixture of repulsion and disgust — not least over the casting choice of Powell’s own son, Columba, as Mark as a child, with Powell himself playing the dictatorial father of the hapless child who in adulthood becomes a serial killer. Powell had chosen to use his son in the film because he thought he would get a more realistic performance from the boy than if he had used a child actor. But there was a strong reaction to the scenes which present Mark’s father conducting experiments on the child as part of his study of the psychology of terror.’ But although the film critics (who knew Powell well) reacted in that way it could be argued that it’s likely an ordinary viewer would not have been aware of this curious meta-casting.” —Kiri Bloom Walden (Devil’s Advocates: Peeping Tom, 2020)
This complaint is simple minded to the point of being ridiculous. Would it have been any less damaging for a child actor who would have to work with a group of strangers on the same scenes? Columbia later pointed out that it is “just a film.” If a small child can tell the difference between make believe and reality, then film critics should be able to discern the difference as well. “I had no idea that critics were so innocent,” Powell would later say in an interview with City Limits in 1986. They aren’t. They are merely self-righteous.
Leo Marks had his own explanation for their assault upon the film.
“Apparently, they were expecting to see something crude and violent and salacious. The company which actually made the film had a reputation for cheap horror stories. They were not expecting to see anything remotely serious, and they reacted very subjectively.” —Leo Marks (Leo Marks Interviewed by Chris Rodley, Peeping Tom, 1998)
However, this vague explanation isn’t particularly convincing (or satisfying). Kiri Bloom Walden offers a slightly more convincing reason behind the attack.
“Powell, with his creative partner Emeric Pressburger (together known as ‘The Archers’), had become a loved and respected creator of some of the most highly rated and popular British films of the preceding two decades. There were expectations of what a Powell film should be like, and Peeping Tom did not meet those expectations.” —Kiri Bloom Walden (Devil’s Advocates: Peeping Tom, 2020)
There may be something too this explanation. After all, there is nothing more cancerous to a film than a viewer’s own pre-conceived notions as to what it is or should be. Michael Powell had his own suspicions as to why the film was so viciously received.
“When [the critics] got me alone and out on a limb with Peeping Tom, they gleefully sawed off the limb and jumped up and down on the corpse. So, it was Powell all the time, eh? We suspected Emeric Pressburger with his Continental background, but now we know it was Powell, the sadist, who poured glue on girls’ hair, or splashed buckets of blood all over Moira Shearer lying on the railroad tracks, when she should have been allowed to die neatly and tidily, like a British ballerina. Let’s go get him! And did they? Sure, they did.” —Michael Powell (Million Dollar Movie, 1992 / 1995)
American critics weren’t as harsh, but it was only released in this country in a heavily censored version on the “grindhouse” circuit. It turns out, however, that the film would be revived from the dead. It was only a matter of time. It would actually happen quite slowly when very few Cinemaphiles were looking.
There was a period in the seventies when the film was a difficult to see curiosity, and this created — in certain individuals — a powerful desire to see it. As a result, it became the ultimate “cult movie.” In turn, certain scholars began to reassess the film’s cinematic merit. For example, “A Biographical Dictionary of the Cinema” offered a positive take on Peeing Tom as early as 1975:
“Peeping Tom, Powell’s most completely realized and intellectually somber film. Full of dark jokes — including his own presence as the cruel father — it also shows Powell’s sense of the cinema’s own contribution to frenzy. The central character is a moving portrait of the imaginative young man who is unsociable with real people but familiar with the stars of movies. He is a shy focus puller who takes film of girls using a tripod that contains a swordstick. The stuck victims goggle horribly at the picture they make in the reflector above the camera; and so reaction stimulates the spectacle even further. The film was reasonably criticized as an exercise in De Sade’s principles, and it is the one work in which Powell has discarded all inhibitions.” —David Thomson (A Biographical Dictionary of the Cinema, 1975)
However, it would take another controversial filmmaker to bring the film back into mainstream consciousness.
“A key figure in the rehabilitation not only of Peeping Tom, but ultimately Michael Powell’s entire oeuvre, was director Martin Scorsese, who grew up watching The Archers’ films on TV and very much admired Powell from an early age. … In 1979, as a newly-successful director himself, Scorsese found he had the money and the industry clout to acquire and re-release Peeping Tom. As Thelma Schoonmaker (Scorsese’s editor and Powell’s second wife) recalls in an interview, ‘Marty raced back to America and said, ‘‘I’ve found him, I’ve found him! Bring him to the Telluride Film Festival, we’ll enter Peeping Tom in the New York Film Festival,’’ and it was a huge hit there. It was as if a bomb went off. People like Francis Coppola saw it for the first time, and Marty put up his own money to partially fund the re-release of the movie’
Scorsese met Michael Powell in 1975 and the two had become friends. Scorsese was motivated to re-release the film partly because of this close friendship, but also because of all of the films Powell had been involved in, Peeping Tom had a special resonance with Scorsese. Talking in a 2010 interview, he commented that ‘It still speaks to me … I am still surprised at times by how disturbingly beautiful it is.’” —Kiri Bloom Walden (Devil’s Advocates: Peeping Tom, 2020)
The screening at the New York Film Festival was a triumph. Suddenly, critics were singing the film’s praises. As a matter of fact, certain critics who had originally trashed the film when it was released in 1960 soon became desperate to claw their way to the right side of history with a positive reassessment of the film.
“One very respected critic called Dilys Powell came up to me after the press show and said: ‘Don’t you do that again!’
Many, many years later, when she was in her eighties, she recanted in the Sunday Times — which is wonderful for a woman of that age, that upbringing, and that prestige. She re-reviewed Peeping Tom and hoped to apologize to Michael Powell.” —Leo Marks (Leo Marks Interviewed by Chris Rodley, Peeping Tom, 1998)
Her reassessment went as far as to call the film a “masterpiece.”
“Michael Powell has long been known as one of this country’s most distinguished filmmakers. But when, in 1960, he made a horror film, I hated the piece and, together with a great many other British critics, said so. Today, I find I am convinced that it is a masterpiece. If in some afterlife conversation is permitted, I shall think it my duty to seek out Michael Powell and apologize. Something more than a change of taste must exist.
The original story and screenplay come from Leo Marks; at their center is a cameraman (played by Carl Boehm) whose scientist father used him in childhood in a study of fear. The boy grows up obsessed by images of the human face frozen in extremes of terror. He multiplies them by him- self photographing death, and, in fact, becoming a multiple killer.
With so gifted a director this can hardly be anything but a frightening movie, but its object is the examination of emotion and not titillation. Interesting that it should be revived now when there has been much concern about the influence of cinema. All the more reason to distinguish between the serious and the merely sensational horror. Reading now what I wrote in 1960 I find that, despite my efforts to express revulsion, nearly everything I said conceals the extraordinary quality of Peeping Tom. See it and spare a moment to respect the camerawork of Otto Heller.” —Dilys Powell (Dilys Powell’s Film of the Week, Sunday Times, June 1994)
Suddenly, critics held the film up as a shining example of brilliant personal filmmaking (it currently has a 95% rating on Rotten Tomatoes). Roger Ebert even included it in his list of “Great Movies.”
“The movies make us into voyeurs. We sit in the dark, watching other people’s lives. It is the bargain the cinema strikes with us, although most films are too well-behaved to mention it.
Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom … broke the rules and crossed the line… It didn’t allow the audience to lurk anonymously in the dark but implicated us in the voyeurism of the title character. … Other movies let us enjoy voyeurism; this one extracts a price.
Powell (1905-1990) was a director who loved rich colors, and Peeping Tom is shot in a saturated Technicolor with shots such as one where a victim’s body under a bright red blanket stands out against the gray street. He was a virtuoso of camera use, and in Peeping Tom the basic strategy is to always suggest that we are not just seeing but looking. His film is a masterpiece precisely because it doesn’t let us off the hook, like all of those silly teenage slasher movies do. We cannot laugh and keep our distance: We are forced to acknowledge that we watch, horrified but fascinated.” —Roger Ebert (Great Movies, May 02, 1999)
Is there anything left to be said? Peeping Tom has found its rightful place as one of cinema’s classic thrillers.
The Presentation:
5 of 5 Stars
Criterion protects the two discs in one of the clear cases that is the standard for Criterion titles and includes a dual sided insert sleeve that includes a new cover design by Eric Skillman. It is a much better than the original one sheet used for the film’s short lived theatrical release, but it isn’t quite as good as the poster used for Studio Canal’s 4K Restoration re-release of the film. Fans should appreciate it though. Meanwhile, the interior includes an image from the film itself.
This case also houses an illustrated pamphlet that features an essay entitled “He Has His Father’s Eyes” by Megan Abbott. The customary transfer information and other acknowledgements are also included.
The static menu showcases the artwork seen above, and the layout is like all other Criterion menus (which is a good thing). It’s very intuitive to navigate and should pose no problems for those who have never owned a Criterion Blu-ray.
Picture Quality:
4K UHD: 5 of 5 Stars
Criterion’s new 4K UHD disc showcases a brilliant 4K restoration of the film. The restoration team scanned the original Eastmancolor negative at a 6K resolution before completing their digital cleanup in a 4K environment. This 4K UHD transfer was taken from that master and is presented in a ratio of 1.66:1. It isn’t surprising to learn that the transfer approaches perfection. Fine detail constantly impresses, colors are incredibly vibrant and vivid, and image stability is flawless. Depth, density, delineation, and clarity are all consistently solid and often impressive. The overall presentation looks very filmic, and the restoration work has resulted in an incredibly clean image.
Blu-ray: 5 of 5 Stars
The Blu-ray is nearly just as impressive! Of course, the 4K UHD disc’s high dynamic range and added resolution does give it the edge. Even so, everything that we wrote about the 4K UHD transfer could be said for this transfer as well. (This isn’t terribly surprising considering the fact that they were taken from the same master.) This is a nearly perfect Blu-ray rendering of the restoration.
Sound Quality:
5 of 5 Stars
Criterion’s 1.0 LPCM audio track is a flawless representation of the film’s original audio. All elements are well prioritized, and dialogue is clean and clear throughout. Screams in the film never become distorted, and the music is well supported by the transfer as well. Purists will certainly be pleased with this track. The film has never sounded better on any home video format.
Special Features:
4 of 5 Stars
4K UHD
Feature Length Commentary Track with Ian Christie
Ian Christie is the author of a number of books on Powell’s career — including “Arrows of Desire: The Films of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger” and “A Matter of Life and Death (BFI Film Classics),” and he edited a book of essays entitled “Michael Powell: International Perspectives on an English Filmmaker.” This is in addition to other books about cinema (“Robert Paul and the Origins of British Cinema,” “The Art of Film: John Box and Production Design,” “The Film Factory: Russian and Soviet Cinema in Documents, 1896-1939,” “Eisenstein Rediscovered,” and several others.
The point is that Christie knows his subject well, and he offers a scholarly deconstruction of the film and its place in Powell’s career. The track has appeared on other home video releases of Peeping Tom as well, but it is nice to have it carried over to this new Criterion edition. It would be difficult to find anyone who could offer a more informative track.
Feature Length Commentary Track with Laura Mulvey
Laura Mulvey is also knowledgeable, but her scholarly output never focused upon Powell’s career. She is author of “Death 24x a Second: Stillness and the Moving Image” and “Afterimages: On Cinema, Women and Changing Times.” The trach was recorded in 1994, and probably appeared on a laserdisc release of the film before being included on Criterion’s DVD edition in 1999.
She discusses the film and its poor critical reception in Britain upon release, offers a bit of theoretical analysis, and much more. There are moments when she slips into describing the onscreen action, but she offers enough information to make this track more than worthwhile.
Blu-ray
Feature Length Commentary Track with Ian Christie
Feature Length Commentary Track with Laura Mulvey
Both commentary tracks are also included on the Blu-ray disc, and this is where all of the other supplementary materials are housed.
Introduction by Martin Scorsese — (02:10)
It’s always nice to hear Scorsese discuss film, and this fact elevates this introduction. However, he doesn’t have much time to offer much food for thought in these two minutes.
A Very British Psycho — (50:41)
A Very British Psycho is a “Channel 4” documentary from 1997 that was directed by Chris Rodley that tackles the subject of the film’s release and the negative critical reception that destroyed its distribution and box office. However, much of the program focuses on the life of Leo Marks. It includes original and archival interviews from the likes of Leo Marks, Michael Powell, Carl Böehm, Pamela Green, Anna Massey, Columba Powell, David Robinson, Alexander Walker, Derek Hill, Geoff Andrew, Charlotte O’Sullivan, Saskia Reeves, and Robin Denniston. SOE coders and operatives like Princess George Galitzine and Penny Wyvol-Thompson are also on hand to discuss the screenwriter’s important wartime work. It is probably the most substantial supplement on the disc, and fans will be happy to see it carried over from the old Criterion DVD edition.
The Eye of the Beholder — (18:48)
Olivier Serrano’s The Eye of the Beholder was produced by Canal+ and Image UK Ltd. for a previous Blu-ray edition of the film back in 2005. Carl Böehm, Columba Powell, Martin Scorsese, Thelma Schoonmaker, Laura Mulvey, and Ian Christie are all on hand to discuss Peeping Tom, the negative reception that it received upon release, and its legacy. It could be called an “appreciation” of the film. It adds enormous value to the disc.
Interview with Thelma Schoonmaker — (10:24)
The archival interview with Thelma Schoonmaker is a nice but slight addition to the supplemental package. She discusses the film and the negative reception that it received upon release, Martin Scorsese’s admiration for Michael Powell and Peeping Tom, Michael Powell’s retrospective thoughts and feelings about the movie, and more.
Restoring Peeping Tom — (14:56)
This is a featurette that examines the work that went into creating the new 4K restoration of Peeping Tom. Seth Berkowitz (Cineric’s Digital Film Restoration Supervisor), Simon Lund (Cineric’s Director of Technical Operations), and Daniel Devincent (Cineric’s Director of Digital Operations and Colorist) are all interviewed here. It’s a great addition to the disc and will be of special interest to anyone who is curious about the subject.
Theatrical Trailer — (02:27)
Finally, we have the film’s original theatrical trailer. If I’m honest, I feel like a better trailer could have been created to sell the film, but it is interesting to see what was used way back in 1960.
What Isn’t Here?
Previous DVD, Blu-ray, and 4K UHD editions of the film have produced a few supplements that aren’t included on this release.
The Strange Gaze of Mark Lewis was a featurette that included interviews with Bertrand Tavernier, Charles Drazin, and Olivier Bouvet. This appeared on an old Studio Canal DVD “Special Edition.”
Visions of Voyeurism: Peeping Tom by Christopher Frayling is essentially a twenty-eight-minute interview with Christopher Frayling (a film historian). He discusses the film and his own relationship to it in some depth. This program appeared on a British 4K UHD edition of the film released by Studio Canal.
Also on that edition was a twenty-eight-minute conversation between Rhianna Dhillon and Anna Bogustskaya called Take Me to Your Cinema: The Legacy of Peeping Tom.
Finally, an old Criterion DVD edition of the film included a Stills Gallery that isn’t carried over to this edition. Most casual fans won’t miss these supplements, but we like to let people know what is out there.
Final Words:
Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom (1960) is essential viewing for genre fans, and Criterion’s 4K UHD + Blu-ray Combo package is as close to perfect as one could have anticipated. Highly Recommended.
Note: While we were provided with a screener for review purposes, this had no bearing on our review process. We do not feel under any obligation to hand out positive reviews.
All of the screenshots in this article are taken from the Blu-ray and are heavily compressed. They do not accurately represent the image quality of either format.
Blu-ray Downlow 