Michael Powell’s notorious Peeping Tom returns to cinemas this week ahead of the new Blu-ray release on the 22nd of November to celebrate the film’s fiftieth anniversary.
While it has gathered a rabid fanbase the forthcoming cinema and home entertainment release from Optimum will be the first chance many will have had to experience the film.
Peeping Tom enjoys a relatively scandalous reputation and there’s little doubt that audiences of 1960 would have found the film provocative and uncomfortable, indeed seeing it again today there are images in the film which still get me. The scenes towards the end have moments I felt genuinely unsettled by so the film certainly retains its power.
Whether it has anything deeper to say about voyeurism and violence it is hard to say – it works as a psychological thriller, offering a portrait (perhaps sometimes painted with a broad brush) of a disturbed man obsessed with the final moments of life, and Powell has a few random pockets of madness in amongst the dubious moral viewpoints of the film, such as his appearance as the father (and psychological cause) of the Peeping Tom.
Ostensibly the story of a sadistic murderer who uses a nasty technique to kill (one that is revealed only at the end), Powell stirs into the mix elements of sight and gaze, their power and danger, repression and release and the capturing of life and death. It is less subtle than it is disturbing and the psychological depth of the complicity between audience and the killer which gives the film its uncomfortable feeling isn’t as well conveyed as, for example, this moment in Rear Window,
The transfer is wonderful. The colours are fresh as a tabloid scooped from the printing press, with a lurid vibrancy and I noticed the vast improvement in the clarity of the POV shots in particular. Typically I’ve noticed that my favourite Blu-ray transfers come from this time, and for the restored picture and colour alone I’d recommend picking up this disc if you’ve any interest in seeing it. Martin Scorsese pops up to introduce the film and there’s no doubting the man’s love for Peeping Tom, I have to conclude that it has moments which unnerved me, and I enjoyed the film and was glad to see it restored to this high standard.
Special Features include:
- Audio Commentary with Ian Christie
- Two documentaries – ‘Eye of the Beholder’ and ‘The Strange Gaze of Mark Lewis’
- Interview with Thelma Schoonmaker
- Restoration comparison
- Trailer and a Still Gallery
- Introduction by its famous champion Martin Scorsese.
Peeping Tom will be in cinemas on the 19th of November and the Blu-ray is out on the 22nd of November.
