279 - Peeping Tom, United Kingdom, 1960. Dir. Michael Powell.

Friday, October 6, 2017

279 - Peeping Tom, United Kingdom, 1960.  Dir. Michael Powell.

Powell has made this one without Pressburger.  His writer is Leo Marks.

Mark Lewis has scoptophilia.  That is what Dr. Rosan calls it.  He loves looking.

Mark is a 1st Assistant Cameraman.  A Focus Puller.  A tape measure puller.  A focal length measurer.  He works at a fictional studio in London.

He also works as a cameraman for "views," pictures of nude women sold under the counter at the corner newsagent.  A newsagent is a newsstand.

Why they are sold under the counter is unclear, as the newsstand has full nude pin-ups openly on display covering every last square inch of wall and window space both inside and outside the building.

The newsagent owner employs Mark in his home studio upstairs above the store.  Milly and the girls hang out upstairs, surrounded by studio lights, awaiting his arrival.

When he photographs Milly, he says, "Look out to sea!"  She reacts.  What?  There is no sea.  He captures her surprise.  We see that he sees that she looked out to see.

He is ever in quest of the right look, but he can never quite capture it.

Mark has a third job, a hobby.

In his free time he is making a documentary using a 16mm film camera.  He develops his own film in his laboratory in his apartment.  His apartment is in the house in which he grew up.  He still owns it.  He is now the landlord.

We open on an opening eye.

Then we begin by looking through the lens of his camera, watching what he watches, seeing what he sees.

We walk the streets.

A woman, Dora, is standing in front of a storefront.  She turns.  She sees.  We see.  She does not know that we see.  She says it will be 2 quid.  She retains a neutral affect.  Her face shows no emotion.

We follow her into Newman Passage.  Newman Passage is a place where Jack the Ripper committed one of his most famous murders.  Dora lives above the Newman Arms.

We watch, always through the lens of the 16mm camera, looking through the viewfinder, the crosshairs.

As she undresses her face transforms to fear.  She sees something above us.  It induces terror.  We cut to black.

We see the scene again, edited, in black and white, on the screen in Mark's laboratory, as he sits beside the projector.  We watch his watching of the film we watched his recording of.

The credits roll.

The name of the Director of Photography, Otto Heller, appears at the moment of climax of the film, a snuff film.

The name of the Director, Michael Powell, appears on top of the projector.

We are about to look into the life of a man who looks into the lives, and deaths, of others.

This film is meticulously, symmetrically, put together.

It is beautifully filmed.  It is thoughtfully written.  It is thoroughly thought through.

The act of looking.

The act of listening.

Being looked at.

Being listened to.

The role of the camera.

The role of cinema.

Psychology and doubles and doubles.

Mark Lewis grew up in this home with a father who was a famous psychologist.  Dr. Lewis studied fear.  He used his son as a test subject.  He filmed and recorded audio of his son's entire life.  He thanked his son in his book.  His son now lives out the consequences of that upbringing.

A home film shows Mark as a boy watching two people make out in a park.

His father, filming, watches Mark watch them.

Mark as an adult, with his neighbor Helen, watches as his father watches as Mark as a boy watches.  (Helen is played by Raymond Massey's daughter, Anna Massey.)

On the commentary track film scholar Laura Mulvey watches as adult Mark watches as his father watches as child Mark watches.

And finally, we watch as Mulvey watches as adult Mark watches as his father watches as child Mark watches.

And all that couple wanted was a private place where they could be together.  Where no one was watching.  If only they knew . . .

Every moment of Mark's childhood is recorded, both film and sound.

The Truman Show came out in 1998.  EDtv in 1999.  8mm in 1999.  Body Double in 1984.  Blow Out in 1981.  Blowup in 1966.  The Secret Cinema in 1968.

There are many more, but not very many before this one.

Except Rear Window in 1954.  Hitchcock is always at the forefront of things.

Michael Powell himself plays Mark's father in the family films.  Michael Powell's son plays Mark as a boy.  He is given a camera as a boy.  As a man, he will kiss it.

Helen's mother is blind.  Yet she sees.  She listens to him working in the room above her room, and she understands that he is up to something.  She ends up being compassionate towards him and urges him to get help.  He responds to her by talking to Dr. Rosan, who in discussing scoptophilia gives Mark information unknowingly about Mark himself.  Mrs. Stephens photographs Mark's face by touching it with her hands.

Mark Lewis, as played by Carl Boehm, is a likeable man.  He suffers.  He fears.  He is lonely.  We sympathize that he was put in this position by his father--yet he is still responsible.  He seems to be opening up to the ministrations of love, as offered him by his neighbor Helen.

Maybe he can stop his crime spree.

Maybe he can escape his cycle of sin.

Maybe he can be redeemed.

Or maybe it will be too late.

We will see three symmetrical killings during the film, or four, all caught on film, using a tripod leg as weapon, and a mirror to enhance the final look in the final moment.

The second one features a stand-in at the studio, Vivian, as played by our beloved dancer Moira Shearer from The Red Shoes.

In the first two he fails to capture the perfect look he is after.  Does he capture it in the third?  We may never know.  Does he capture it in the fourth?  More likely.

Mulvey's excellent commentary likens this film to British Gothic, and we can see parallels between Mark's father and Dr. Frankenstein, and between himself and Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde.

The rich, saturated colors enhance this.

In the end the audience is implicated.

As if the director has turned the camera on us and seen our eyes looking at the screen,

Knowing that we have been watching all along,

And said,

Caught you

Looking.