Peeping Tom (1960)
Directed by Michael Powell, this British horror thriller — coming to the Criterion Collection in May — follows the very creepy Mark Lewis (Carl Boehm, pictured) as a seemingly shy man who secretly records and murders women.
“The movies make us into voyeurs,” critic Roger Ebert wrote in an evaluation of the film. “We sit in the dark, watching other people’s lives. It is the bargain the cinema strikes with us, although most films are too well-behaved to mention it.”
Martin Scorsese has said the film, paired with Federico Fellini’s 8½, says “everything that can be said about film-making, about the process of dealing with film, the objectivity and subjectivity of it and the confusion between the two.”
“8½ captures the glamour and enjoyment of film-making, while Peeping Tom shows the aggression of it, how the camera violates,” Scorsese has said. “From studying them you can discover everything about people who make films, or at least people who express themselves through films.”
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