Man is marked, as a species, by his need to document. Even
the earliest cave-paintings are attempts, however crude, to make immortal a moment
in time and to relive it forever. It was only natural that we should invent the
movie camera, as it is the ultimate documenting machine, and it is even more
natural that we should incorporate sound into the films; the more that is being
documented, the better. The camera as a symbol has been around since the early
days of cinema, such as in Dziga Vertov’s Man With A Movie Camera, and even a
film as recent as Mark Romanek’s One Hour Photo highlights how a man can become
obsessed with photographs, projecting his own images and fantasies onto them. Indeed,
living in the “selfie” generation that we do, where a USP of a phone is how many
megapixels it has, we can see that this obsession with documentation is not
slowing down. It is simply something that defines us as human beings.
Michael Powell’s “Peeping Tom” is about documentation, and
the attachments a man can have to a camera. The opening scene, which was
obviously an influence on John Carpenter’s “Halloween”, sees the subject of
this film, Mark Lewis (Karlheinz Bohm) follow a prostitute with a camera
concealed in his coat. We take the perspective of the camera, and follow her
into the room where Mark murders her. The next day, Mark returns to the crime
with his camera again, filming the police looking for evidence, the body being
placed into the ambulance. A man in the crowd spots him and questions him. He
claims to be with a newspaper; the Observer.
It is clear from the outset that Mark is lonely. His eyes
have a habit of bulging, and they reminded me of Peter Lorre’s portrayal of the
paedophile in Fritz Lang’s M, another film which tried to make us understand
the mind of a psychopath. His manner is awkward and his voice is clipped and
strange, yet people are drawn to him, and he is not exactly unpopular. Women seem
to like him, and one person at the film set he works for keeps badgering him
about a collaborative project. But he likes to spend his nights alone, watching
and rewatching the footage of his murders. It becomes apparent that his
ultimate goal is to photograph the exact moment of death, by concealing a knife
in the tripod of his camera. We learn about Mark, and his cruel treatment at
the hands of his father, but we never truly pity him; he’s just too evil for
that.
Pay close attention to how Mark is framed; more often than
not, it is either next to or hunched over a camera. One key sequence sees him
taking a woman called Helen (Anne Massey), who he is genuinely, emotionally
interested in for a date. She requests that he leave his camera at home, but he
is reluctant, and clutches onto it for dear life. It has become an appendage to
him, a third eye. Indeed, we learn to view it as a distancing tool. Mark is
clearly a person who has trouble with emotional attachment, so he steps back
behind the camera, distances himself from his subject, and acts how he wishes.
Perhaps this explains our fascination with cameras; it
allows us to be removed from what is in front of us.
Powell’s direction helps immeasurably; there are a lot of
bold colours on this film, and a lot of reds, and a number of moments see a
person being startled by having a light shined on them. One thing the film is
very good at doing is showing how intrusive the act of having a camera put on
you actually is; we like to document, but we do not necessarily like to be
documented. Powell milks these little moments from Leo Mark’s brilliantly
objective screenplay cleverly, and for a film that is so heavily involved in
the nature of film-making, it is fitting that the film is as meticulously
directed as it is. He is also careful to place the camera just a little bit too
close to his material; we feel as though we are intruding, and as though the
light is being shined on us in turn.
I cannot help but observe that whilst the film does seem
rooted in its time, it is undoubtedly more relevant than ever. As I have said,
we are living in a time now where we are all basically film-makers. Home movies
are becoming more and more prevalent, such as the 7 second “Vine” videos which
litter Youtube, the ready availability of pornography, the Snapchat phenomenon.
We simply like to film things. To this end, this film is a cautionary tale. If we
all like to document things, then it stands to reason that some of us will want
to document the darker impulses of the human behaviour. In an age where the Internet
makes the most gruesome and terrible videos imaginable accessible to all, this
film is a necessity.
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