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In 1960 “Peeping Tom” took a ferocious drubbing from the English critical establishment. Powell saw it not as a horror film but ‘a film of compassion, of observation and of memory … a film about the cinema from 1900 to 1960 … the opposite to a realistic film … a reverie’. A withdrawn psychopath, traumatised by childhood memories, films young women as he impales them with the camera’s tripod, forcing them to watch their own death throes in a mirror mounted on the camera. This is rendered genuinely disturbing as we are drawn into identification with the protagonist through Carl Boehm’s subtly controlled performance. Littered with internal cross references, this is a reflexively subversive film about the fascination of cinema, a film which seeks to make voyeurs of us all. Cast also includes Moira Shearer, Anna Massey and Maxine Audley.
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How to watch
Collection
In ACMI's collection
Credits
Collection metadata
ACMI Identifier
313356
Language
English
Audience classification
R (18+)
Subject categories
Crafts & Visual Arts → Photography
Crime, Espionage, Justice, Police & Prisons → Murder
Family, Gender Identity, Relationships & Sexuality → Child psychology
Family, Gender Identity, Relationships & Sexuality → Fathers and sons
Family, Gender Identity, Relationships & Sexuality → Voyeurism
Feature films → Feature films - Great Britain
Food, Health, Lifestyle, Medicine, Psychology & Safety → Child psychology
Food, Health, Lifestyle, Medicine, Psychology & Safety → Obsessive-compulsive neurosis
Food, Health, Lifestyle, Medicine, Psychology & Safety → Psychology, Pathological
Food, Health, Lifestyle, Medicine, Psychology & Safety → Voyeurism
Sound/audio
Sound
Colour
Colour
Holdings
VHS; Access Print (Section 1)