Enchanted Evenings: Peeping Tom
November 20, 2024
Enchanted Evenings: The Boundless Cinema of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger
A psychologist experiments on his young son, who grows into a gentle, photography-obsessed man (Carl Boehm) who lives to see fear on others’ faces. Can we sympathize with a murderer? Powell calls this a “tender film,” full of empathy for a twisted soul. With Moira Shearer.
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Passes: $125 | $85 SIFF Members - includes full series access
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Wednesday, November 20, 2024
These days Peeping Tom has been restored by Martin Scorsese’s Film Foundation, championed by critics from Roger Ebert (4 out of 4 stars) to Rotten Tomatoes (critics’ consensus 95% positive), hailed as a masterpiece by filmmakers, audiences and academics, but in 1960 it sparked a condemnatory firestorm and scared away financial backers for future Michael Powell projects. Powell himself plays a psychologist experimenting with inducing fear in his subject, his young son (played by Powell’s son Columba). The boy grows into a shy, gentle man (Mark: Carl Boehm) who works in the commercial film industry, but also creates his own dark, secret cinema, filming victims just before they die by his hand. They will feel the fear that haunts his life. As always in a Powell film, the diabolical is counterbalanced by the life force: a warm, sympathetic woman (Anna Massey) is drawn to Mark, and another, blind, woman (Maxine Audley) can sense Mark’s sickness and foresee it’s healing. Powell stresses that Mark’s sorry state was precipitated by his father’s emotional abuse: “I feel Mark’s anguish, it’s a tender film.” Can we have sympathy for a murderer? Powell puts a touch of his poetic mysticism on the proceedings: when Mark with his camera poses a person he knows has but moments left to live, he tells them, “Look at the sea.” Moira Shearer, Miles Malleson, Brenda Bruce. Eastman Color, 109 min.
- Director: Michael Powell
- Principal Cast: Carl Boehm, Moira Shearer, Anna Massey, Maxine Audley
- Country: United Kingdom
- Year: 1960
- Running Time: 101 min.
- Producer: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger
- Screenplay: Leo Marks
- Cinematographers: Otto Heller
- Editors: Noreen Ackland
- Music: Brian Easdale
- Language: English
- US Distributor: Rialto Pictures