Peeping Tom

Part of the special series NACHTBLENDE
Night blind: CREEPY PEEKS

"I bet Hitchcock wished he made this." cassandra on Letterboxd

Three months before Hitchock's PSYCHO conquered the cinemas, Michael Powell's exceptional media-reflexive film EYES OF FEAR disturbed its unfortunately far too small audience. It was not until the end of the 1970s, with the help of Paul Schrader and Martin Scorsese, that this work, rich in film theory and genre, received the appreciation it always deserved, and opens the fourth programme of the Nachtblende. Welcome to the CREEPY PEEKS!

Mark Lewis (Karlheinz Böhm) works as a cameraman on film sets during the day and pursues his deranged cinematic obsession at night. He collects self-shot footage of women who are murdered by him with a camera tripod. He is less interested in death itself than in the fear of death captured on celluloid. He thus continues the already rather perverse work of his deceased psychoanalyst father in a perverted way. Mark first comes into conflict with his life project through his neighbour Vivian (Moira Shearer), whom he gets closer to than is healthy for either of them...

The term "Peeping Tom" goes back to an old legend, according to which an entire village in the 11th century was forbidden to look out of the window while a noblewoman ran naked through the streets. One man resisted by succumbing to his urge to look and later to the executioner for this very reason. His name was Tom and since then "Peeping Tom" has been synonymous with the secret peeping Tom. Mark in Michael Powell's film doesn't look through a window or a keyhole. He looks through the (partly hidden) camera, shares his deadly gaze with the audience and turns them into knowing voyeurs.

In PEEPING TOM, the camera is staged as a dangerous instrument, opening up an associative space that also includes current discourses on film theory. Among other things, Powell deconstructs filmmaking as a perverse obsession and thematises power relations that are played out through the gaze, but also on set. Even before the film was released, the director must have told his leading actor that the film would be ahead of its time. He had not foreseen the devastating reviews, the low box office figures and the temporary end of his own career and that of his leading actor Karlheinz Böhm.