1960 was an important year in history of the horror movie. Most importantly it was the year that “Psycho” came out, but it also featured “Eyes Without A Face”, “Village of the Damned”, “The House of Usher” and the less well known “Peeping Tom”. Despite the lower profile, this is a film that heavily influenced Martin Scorsese and many others of his generation. Indeed it’s largely thanks to Scorsese that the film is known at all these days as he helped fund a wider re-release for the movie in the 1978 after it had fallen into obscurity. When the movie was released the critics were disgusted by it and savaged it suggesting it be thrown into a sewer and other colourful language. As a result it was withdrawn from theatres fairly early and effectively ended the career of it’s director Michael Powell.
Decades later, critics revised their opinion. Now they called it one of the greatest horror films of all time. The revision was too late to save Powell’s career. Some people are ahead of their time, but if you are too far ahead the response can be savage. One of the main reasons for the backlash was that some sections of the film involve old movies of the main character and his father. These scenes reveal how the character was abused as a child by his father. The problem here was that Michael Powell chose to perform these scenes with his real life son. There was no actual abuse involved, but it seemed this made critics uncomfortable. Anyway, let’s look at the film itself shall we?
Don’t Let Me See You Are Afraid
The movie opens up with “Mark Lewis” (Played by Karlheinz Böhm), picking up a prostitute. Lewis is secretly filming her with a hidden camera. We see from the point of view of the camera viewfinder as he follows her into the flat and murders her. Later, we see him watching the recording in his dark room. Following this opening we are introduced to the other side of Lewis. A focus puller for a film crew who aspires to become a filmaker. His job doesn’t pay enough to cover his costs though and so he supplements that as a soft porn photographer for a local corner shop. His photos are sold under the counter to select customers.
Lewis is a shy but relatively pleasant person during the day. However he has been secretly working on his own film, a documentary about fear. Mark lives in his childhood home, though most of it is now rented out to other residents. One of which “Helen Stephens” (Anna Massey) has taken a liking to the young man. Mark likes Helen too but doesn’t want her to become one of his victims. He shows her the few films he dares to share with anyone, those of his childhood where his psychologist father abused him to investigate the nature of fear. She is shocked, but supportive. Their relationship becomes tricky because Mark is reaching the end of his documentary and soon he will be unable to keep the two halves of his life separate.
The Eye Of The Beholder
This is a very good movie. There is no denying that. The story has many layers, but the visuals are masterfully put together too. Let’s start with those visuals. This is 1960. Shooting from the first person perspective isn’t completely unknown at this point (Indeed there has been whole movies of it), but showing murders from the killers perspective is pretty new. Psycho of course made use of this two, but here it provides a double function. We’re not simply seeing from the killers eyes, but we’re seeing through his camera. We are seeing effectively a section of his documentary on fear. The movie has made us a voyeur of murder.
This isn’t the only thing interesting visually. Powell uses a technique called colour Chiaroscuro, where he uses a saturated palette with dramatic shadows. The colours are quite aggressive, almost feeling seedy. This is contrasted by the “Old” black and white camera footage of the young Mark taken by his father. This is another interesting one for horror at the time, it is almost a found footage situation. The scenes skillfully portray the abuse that Mark suffered but because of the nature of the home movies these scenes didn’t require much in the way of acting skills, so not a huge surprise he filmed them at home with his own son.
The Price of Obsession
In the film Mark has two obsessions and they are almost indistinguishable from each other. One is his obsession with fear. It is seeing fear that drives him to kill. More importantly though it drives him to capture that fear on camera. That is the real obsession here, Mark is a filmmaker and he is making his masterpiece. Most of the time Mark is a nice enough person, shy even especially around women. But his entire demeanor changes when he is preparing to film a kill. His most ambitious murder is recorded at the studio he works on the set on the very movie he has been working on for his day job. As his victim dances (Warming up for what she is an audition tape), he dashes around adjusting props and cameras. He is focused like a razorblade, his victim is no longer a human but just another prop to get in position.
Mark is driven by obsession. Obsession with his camera, which he takes with him everywhere he goes (Until Helen asks him to leave it behind on a date). There is also Marks original obsession with voyeurism, where the movie takes it’s title. But it is his obsession to finish his documentary and record the faces of fear that drive him beyond all reason. Martin Scorsese felt this obsession reflected the drive of many a filmmaker and the dangerous line they walk in their pursuit of perfect. Considering that, it frames Powell’s direct involvement and the damage it did to his career with the themes of the movie itself. The masterpiece reflects the reality (But fortunately it was only a career killed in real life).
Conclusion
This is an exceptional film and I can see why Scorsese was so heavily influenced by it. Karlheinz Böhm is not an actor I know, but he is exceptional here. The film really is clever and definitely was ahead of its time. As always though I review from the modern day, not in context of how ground breaking something was. This movie has aged remarkably well though. Nothing here really has dated, except perhaps for the color palette but that palette works so well for the movie even this isn’t a problem. This scores a well deserving 8/10
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