Peeping Tom

One of the three classic key films in this programme. Peeping Tom had an impact like a comet from a different galaxy in 1960 in England; the critics competed to express their disgust and aversion the loudest. The film was slaughtered, disappeared from the cinemas on the spot and the career of Michael Powell was broken. It was two decades later before the film was rescued from obscurity thanks to Martin Scorsese and Powell was recognised for his visionary and crucial film. Scorsese called it the best film about film-making ever made, because it exposes the natural aggression of film-making and shows how the camera rapes its victim.The film tells the gruesome story of the young and very traumatised photographer Mark Lewis (phenomenally played by Karlheinz Böhm), who was abused for scientific research in his youth by his father, a biologist investigating the foundations of fear. With the mentality of a concentration-camp doctor, the young Mark was regularly woken from his sleep and scared witless, after which his father filmed his face contorted with fear. Mark can only come to terms with his experiences by surpassing his father in gruesome atrocity: he starts murdering women and records their terrified death throes on film. Peeping Tom is the ultimate film about filmic abuse and voyeurism, that reveals in an extreme way the mechanisms that are encapsulated in every film. (GjZ)