Peeping Tom

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saw this last night, for the first time. what do you think of it?

the colouring was very different to how i had imagined, i had pictured a dark and brooding shadowy thing, i liked the colour scheme, but...it didnt look like england at all.

shearer was somwhat unusual as helen stevens?

it doesnt pull any punches does it!

and what of theasting of karlheinz bohm?

― charltonlido (gareth), Wednesday, 2 February 2005 13:24 (twenty years ago)

it was strange to hear the "im helen stevens" dialogue, in context, at last

― charltonlido (gareth), Wednesday, 2 February 2005 13:26 (twenty years ago)

Magnificent film; the scene that strikes me right now would be of the old 'Gentleman' in the newsagents, with Mark Lewis just in the side of the later shots. Great piece of 'Englishness', showing what is behind the bluff veneer.

― Tom May (Tom May), Wednesday, 2 February 2005 13:59 (twenty years ago)

see also: the collector.

― lauren (laurenp), Wednesday, 2 February 2005 14:15 (twenty years ago)

I think it is one of my favourite films.

I think it was black and white, originally, in America, for some reason. Scorcese talks about it somewhere.

Shearer is not Helen Stevens, she's the one who ends up in a trunk.

I said that in a Helen Stevens voice.

― Peter Stringbender (PJ Miller), Wednesday, 2 February 2005 14:18 (twenty years ago)

yes, you are right, not sure what i was thinking.

i had always imagined it in black and white, perhaps i had seen a clip of the american release, i dont know. i can see, perhaps, why they changed it, the colouring seems almost too...chirpy (i like it that it does that though)

i like seance on a wet afternoon too, i have things to ask abotu that, perhaps i shall start a thread on that too

― charltonlido (gareth), Wednesday, 2 February 2005 14:29 (twenty years ago)

the bits with MP in are in b/w.

― Miles Finch, Wednesday, 2 February 2005 14:31 (twenty years ago)

I remember watching this with my dad one night when I was about 13 and it creeped out of both of us. I really liked the technicolor, it made everything seem more chaotic, somehow. I would like to watch this again soon.

― jocelyn (Jocelyn), Wednesday, 2 February 2005 15:52 (twenty years ago)

isn't this the film that completely bombed due to risqueness and hitchcock learned his lesson from it? i thought it was classick! felt very awkward sitting through it (which is obv its intention).

― stevie nixed (stevie nixed), Wednesday, 2 February 2005 15:54 (twenty years ago)

(when i saw the title, i thought this was about tom ewing!)

― stevie nixed (stevie nixed), Wednesday, 2 February 2005 15:54 (twenty years ago)

Me too!

― Tuomas (Tuomas), Wednesday, 2 February 2005 15:56 (twenty years ago)

most critics hated it, but it wasn't a total disaster. it was harshly cut for the US release -- but bear in mind 'psycho' also scandalized critics. hitch and powell went way back.

― Miles Finch, Wednesday, 2 February 2005 15:57 (twenty years ago)

Splendid companion piece to Psycho. I saw it circa '88 at American Museum of the Moving Image, with Powell in attendance, and he was visibly moved at the ovation he received. There were also walkouts.

― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 2 February 2005 17:07 (twenty years ago)

It actually just about killed Powell's career from what I read.

Has anyone seen the released at a similar time (and to apparently the same degree of shock) Dirk Bogard vehicle Victim?

― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Wednesday, 2 February 2005 17:19 (twenty years ago)

This is one of my favorite films. I'm not sure it works completely as a Hitchcock style psychological thriller, but it's a more conscious attempt to engage and illustrate pyschoanalysis and film theory - even if it's occasionally corny and ham-fisted. The actual creepiness of Karlheinz Böhm really the film and it's points.

The Criterion DVD has an *Amazing* commentary track from Laura "Visual Pleasure in Narrative Cinema" Mulvey. I very highly recommend it.

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Wednesday, 2 February 2005 18:31 (twenty years ago)

I have two editions of one of those movie guides and the one from the 70s treats it as the work of a pervert (one star at best) but the one from the 90s treats it as genius. Can't remember which guide, Steve (or Steven) something is the main reviewer.

― nickn (nickn), Wednesday, 2 February 2005 21:10 (twenty years ago)

"see also: the collector."

This is one of my favorite films EVER btw. Terence Stamp at one of many peaks.

― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Wednesday, 2 February 2005 21:11 (twenty years ago)

I was assigned "Peeping Tom" as the first required film to watch in a visual-arts-theory-for-artists class a couple of years ago!

― Douglas (Douglas), Wednesday, 2 February 2005 23:13 (twenty years ago)

spencer how was this 1960 film attempting to illustrate 'film theory'? lacan was fortunately just a gleam in the eye of a few parisians at that point. only via althusser did he come to get a clammy grip on feminist film theory a la mulvey. as it happens mp was completely nonplussed by psychoanalytic film theory mulvey/willemen style -- he was politically conservative, after all (oh, a bit like lacan, thinking about it).

"It actually just about killed Powell's career from what I read."

isn't quite true. he still made films, and though they weren't so successful, he was pushing 60 and most of his generation was in trouble (anthony asquith, for example). the critics loathed it, but his film immediately prior to 'peeping tom' weren't particularly successful either.

― Miles Finch, Thursday, 3 February 2005 09:29 (twenty years ago)

Has anyone seen the released at a similar time (and to apparently the same degree of shock) Dirk Bogard vehicle Victim?

Yes, and I even started a thread about it. I have to say I liked Victim a lot more. After reading about the scathing and the subsequent appraisal Peeping Tom received, my expectations were quite high, so I was somewhat underwhelmed by the actual flick. For me, it was just another (admittedly well-made) flick about a disturbed invidual, without much for the viewer to relate to. The fact that it was one of the first of its kind didn't make it any better.

― Tuomas (Tuomas), Thursday, 3 February 2005 11:10 (twenty years ago)

Miles, the film consciously illustrates theory in a number of ways (that's part of the contrivance that I feel makes it a slight failure as a thriller). I mean, he throws in a pyschoanalyst to basically give pointers on the meaning. The guy is filming while he murders women. I don't think it's possible that Powell was not aware of what he was doing. Hitchcock consciously deployed Freudian themes too. I'm not saying Powell said: look, here is the definition of this theory. I'm saying that he was familiar with psychoanalytic and film theory, and worked those themes into the story.

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Thursday, 3 February 2005 17:41 (twenty years ago)

what i mean is that 'film theory' didn't exist in 1960 -- certainly not mulvey's brand of lacanian film theory. one problem with lacan is that his main 'language acquisition' metaphor can be applied to kajillions of films, it's that ahistorical.

― Miles Finch, Friday, 4 February 2005 09:48 (twenty years ago)

Miles, let me just take out the phrase "film theory" and replace it with, the ideas, theories, etc, that formed the basis of "film theory". Obviously, Mulvey didn't write her famous essay until well after the film premiered. Certainly Peeping Tom or something like Marnie are consciously and directly illustrating ideas that very obviously come from psychoanalysis. Also, I don't understand your last statement, or if I do, I don't understand the 'problem'.

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Sunday, 6 February 2005 04:23 (twenty years ago)

nine years pass...

RIP Karlheinz Böhm

http://www.fandor.com/keyframe/daily-karlheinz-bohm-1928-2014

― images of war violence and historical smoking (Dr Morbius), Monday, 2 June 2014 11:27 (eleven years ago)

aw, jeez.

― display name changed. (amateurist), Monday, 2 June 2014 13:17 (eleven years ago)

he's so great in fox and his friends.

― display name changed. (amateurist), Monday, 2 June 2014 13:18 (eleven years ago)

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