PEEPING TOM

UK, 1959, 109 minutes, Colour.
Carl Boehm, Moira Shearer, Anna Massey, Maxine Audley, Esmond Knight, Michael Goodliffe, Shirley Ann Field, Jack Watson.
Directed by Michael Powell.

Peeping Tom is a strange thriller. It was severely criticised on its first release as being a lurid objectionable melodrama. Since then, it has achieved something of a horror classic. It was written and directed by the writing,. producing and directing team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger who had been responsible for a wide range of films from the '40s including The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, A Matter of Life and Death, I Know Where I'm Going, Black Narcissus. With an interesting cast, they explore madness, horror, voyeurism, and link it with film-making.

Colour was important to many of the Archers films and they use it to strong effect here. The film may be seen in the changing patterns of the British film industry from the '50s to the '60s including the establishment of the Hammer Studios and their tradition of horror films, especially the Dracula and Frankenstein series.

1. The impact of the film? In its time? Later cult and classic status? An effective psychological horror story?

2. The work of the Archers? Their exploration of British themes? British horror? Styles of colour, sets and decor? Studios and cameras? Flats? London and the suburbs?

3. The musical score, the piano accompaniment (especially for the silent film)? The range of film clips and their use?

4. The title of the film: voyeurism? Fact, psychological background, compulsion? The film as a portrait of a voyeur and his madness and its consequences? A study of voyeurism? Fear? The audience made to be voyeurs of the victim? The psychology of voyeurism: curiosity, prurience? The association with film-making and watching?

5. The psychological background: Mark's father, his skills, the tests? Filming everything? The boy wired for sound? His writing his books and using his son? The tapes and films? The voice-over and the ending? The morbid aspects of this for the father, for the son? The laird and his son? The mother and her death? The new marriage? The present of the camera? The influence of this environment on Makk?

6. The horror techniques: colours and lighting, the Jack the Ripper style of the deaths? The prologue and its ghastliness? The prostitute and her death, the replay? The killing of the stand-in and the discovery of her body? The photographer's model? Mark filming the police and their investigations? The finale and the revelation of the distorted mirror in front of the camera, the morbid filming of the women and their actual dying? The set-up for Mark's own death?

7. Mark: in himself, sympathetic or not? The murders? Alone? In the block of flats? The family downstairs? Helen's birthday? His watching the photos, the films, processing his film? Showing Helen the biographical -,-films? Seeing him at work, filming the investigations? The relationship with the dancer (and the delight of Moira Shearer who had worked with the Archers for The Red Shoes)? The

outing with Helen? Helen's mother sensing trouble? The talk to the psychologist friend? The set-up? His sparing Helen? Killing and leaving the film?

8. Helen, her birthday, watching, liking Mark, sharing with him, her interest in his work, the outing, the discovery of the truth, the threat?

9. Helen's mother and her apprehensions, her blindness (and the irony of the contrast with the voyeur)? Her visit to Mark's room and being able to detect and feel uneasy? Her powerlessness? Feeling faces to see?

10. The police, their psychological investigations? The victims - the prostitutes, the actress, the morbid comedy with the soap opera, the ineffectual actress and the continued filming? The funny turn?

11. The background of films, studios, film-making, cameras, techniques, processes?

12. The value of this kind of psychological horror film? The visualising of ugly aspects of human nature? Exploration of themes via empathy and shock?