gave us two stories about disturbed, young men who stab people. England's Michael Powell gave us Mark Lewis in "Peeping Tom," and another Englishmen, Alfred Hitchcock, gave us Norman Bates in "Psycho." In "Peeping Tom," Lewis (Karl Bohn) is a camera man for British movies. He's the focus puller. His profession, however, is murdering women while filming them on a hand-held camera with a knife he's implanted into one of the legs of his tripod. He watches the last moments of their lives over and over again in his home film laboratory.Watching "Peeping Tom," I couldn't help but notice the similarities between Lewis and Bates. Both kill women, though Bates is not gender exclusive. Both are dealing with crippling disturbances brought one by their parents, Norman by his overbearing mother, and Mark by his father, a psychologist of fear who was constantly filming Mark. They are both landlords, Norman has his mother's hotel and Mark has his father's house that he now rents out rooms as apartments. And both are more than a little voyeuristic. True, Lewis doesn't dress up in women's clothes, but when he kills with his camera he's impersonating his father just as Bates is impersonating his mother. Even the first scene between Mark and Helen (Anna Massey) in "Peeping Tom" is eerily similar to the first scene between Norman and Janet Leigh's character in "Psycho."
These are all coincidences, of course. The two movies came out only month's apart ("Peeping Tom" premiered first), they couldn't have been homages to each other, although there are moments in "Tom" that Hitchcock would have envied. But, when watching "Peeping Tom" as a companion piece to "Psycho," we learn a little something about why the latter has become one of the world's most treasured and recognizable movies and why the former was a critical disaster that ruined the career of one of England's greatest filmmakers.
Michael Powell, along with his writer and longtime collaborator, Emeric Pressburger had huge success in the 1940's and 50's with films such as "The Red Shoes," "Black Narcissus," "The Tales of Hoffman," and "The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp," but when Powell (working with writer Leo Marks, not Pressburger) released "Peeping Tom," it all came crashing down. The film was pulled from theaters and reduced its director to making TV programs in between rare features for the rest of his career. Why, when they are both skillfully made, did "Psycho" further elevate its famous director while "Tom" destroyed Powell?
Mark Lewis, the murderer in "Peeping Tom," is a film director. And that is the central element of the movie. While carrying around his camera he tells people he's working on a documentary. He watches his killings in his lab as if he's looking at dailies. He enjoys them, the frightened, horrible looks on the women's faces, because he's gotten a good performance. True, to elicit that performance he had to stab them, but those are details. The first scene between Lewis and Helen, the sweet girl from downstairs that Lewis falls in love with ("I'll never film her," he swears) is telling in many ways; Lewis shows Helen home movies of himself as a young boy, taken by his father, of course. In the films he is being frightened by the man behind the camera. His father throws lizards in his bed, shines a flashlight on his eyes while he's sleeping, terrorizing him to obtain the response he's after; fear (in a sick turn, the father is played by Powell himself and young Mark by Powell's son). Then he shows her films taken of him at his mother's deathbed, her funeral and her burial, and when the next film starts of his father's wedding to his new wife (whom Lewis labels the "successor") Lewis tells Helen, "He married her six weeks after...the previous sequence." Director talk. As a present at the wedding, young Lewis receives a camera.
The best of the murder sequences brings all these elements into focus. Lewis, the cameraman, after a day on set at the studio, convinces a pretty stand-in (Moira Shearer) to stay after hours so he can work on his "documentary." Completely clueless, but plenty pleased to be the star in front of a camera for a change, the stand-in dances around the set while Lewis, the director, gets the lighting right. When it's time for business he tells her to look frightened. When she complains that she doesn't feel scared he describes to her the exact predicament she's in but doesn't realize ("Imagine someone coming towards you, who wants to kill you, regardless of the circumstances." "A madman?" "Yes, but he knows it and you don't.") The scene is perfect in its timing and the little in-jokes that writer Leo Marks has peppered the script with. And when the murder occurs and the body is dumped in a prop trunk on the set, its sets up a later scene. The real director of the real film needs to reshoot a scene because "We must have some comedy in it." The actress in the film (aptly titled "The Walls Are Closing In,") who has struggled to faint throughout the production is looking through trunks on the set, which is made to be a department store. When she finds the trunk with the body in it, her stand-in no less, she faints for real and sets up the film's funniest line.
What distinguishes "Psycho" from "Peeping Tom" is that with Hitchcock's films as with most great scary movies, the audience is let off the hook. Yes, Norman Bates frightens us and we get scared when he murders people, but it's just a story, right? A rogue murderer, isolated out in the middle of nowhere. True, we might lock the door the next time we take a shower in a small motel but for the most part we leave the theater with a little sweat on our brow and a silly grin on our face. We've enjoyed it. Oh, we enjoy "Peeping Tom," too, but Powell reminds us why we like scary movies. For the same reason Lewis enjoys his own movies. To see that look of terror on other people's faces, to share that most private of moments with them. Powell implicates us, throws us all in the same boat with his murderer. Think of yourself in a movie theater, the place is dark and you're watching people, people who aren't aware of you as they lead their private lives. Aren't you a peeping tom? Aren't we all? Powell's film broke the rules by stating that a theater seat is no more than a comfortable tree branch looking into the bedroom window that is the movie screen. That was an extremely uncomfortable idea in 1960 and it still disturbs today. With "Psycho," we get to distance ourselves, "Boy, I'm glad I'm nothing like THATguy!" But, if you enjoy movies, you can't completely separate yourself from Mark Lewis. When the victim of a movie goes down into the dark basement or the spooky attic, and you've ever smiled a little or thought "This is going to be good," then you have something in common with Mark Lewis.
Powell reinforces this idea by making his camera an active observer. It's always looking, peering, peeping, from behind shelves or pillars, from corners or staircases. Many of the shots are of Marks viewfinder on his camera, which gives the feel that the viewer walking is towards the victim. The vivid technicolor, a staple of Powell's films, has extra resonance here. It's not dreamlike, like black and white, or stylized, like other uses of color. The shots, especially through the viewfinder, are colored for realism. We are supposed to be aware that we are looking at something not just watching. All great scary movies horrify us, but "Peeping Tom" doesn't let us forget that they also fascinate us, which is maybe a little scarier than the stuff on the screen in the first place.
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