Peeping Tom

Michael Powell was teamed up with Emeric Pressburger for a long time, working on all types of film genres including detective films, fantastic films, melodramas and musicals... Peeping Tom was so astonishing that it shattered Powell's career. In 1960, the obsession of a protagonist who gains pleasure out of filming the fear on his victims' faces in the face of death was just as shocking as Powell's non-judgemental way of filming a serial killer not as a monster, but as someone who is sick. Powell himself plays, perversely, the psychologist who filmed Mark Lewis's terrified reactions as a child. But it is above all the obsession with the image which is under investigation here: "In Peeping Tom, we enter directly into the small world of directing, and this is very strong because of the sordid theme. Everything happens as if cinematographic technique was an accomplice to murder, with the spectator taking on the guilt" (M. Scorsese).