Peeping Tom

A bone-chilling thriller and the antithesis of feel-good Cinema Paradiso-like productions. Following their opera-ballet experiments of the late 1940s and early 1950s, the rest of the decade didn’t bring the Archers much success. The erstwhile innovators suddenly found themselves light years away from new-wave energy. Powell’s Peeping Tom feels like an attempt to restart his relationship with cinema and to blend in with the new cultural trends. Sex, violence, a serial killer, childhood traumas, perversion, and fetishes: the compelling tale of a shy cameraman dreaming of working as a director (a disturbing and unassuming Karlheinz Böhm) was hailed as the “British Psycho.” Indeed, the simultaneous release of two masterpieces about young men murdering attractive women is a unique occurrence in cinema history. Powell’s vision, however, is far more eccentric – a mise en abyme, a claustrophobic horror in which the camera serves as an instrument of torture. Criticized at the time of its release, the provocative, stylish, repulsive, and utterly unnerving Peeping Tom returns in a new, restored version.

Sebastian Smoliński

4K restoration completed in 2023 by The Film Foundation and the BFI National Archive in association with StudioCanal.