Peeping Tom

Released by StudioCanal Michael Powell's derided upon release but now lauded 1960 masterpiece is issued with a new 4K restoration release.

Starring Bohm and a plethora of British acting talent from the late 1950s, this is a rich and lush film ripe for the technical upgrades a restoration will provide.

His tale of voyeurism and a sympathetic serial killer, the film was released the same year as Powell's countryman Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, a film that shares similar DNA and has had a shared revisionism to them both.

Carl Boehm elicits such a depth of vulnerability to the killer Mark, his aloofness and foreign-ness playing into the hands of the viewer. A criticism that would be aimed at Anthony Perkins' performance, the appeal of finding something within somebody evil made it seem unseemly for filmgoers, but the 1960s was a dawn of a new era of film-making with colour everywhere and new horizons abounding.

Having watched the film years ago, one forgot that the mother of Helen (Anna Massey), the girl downstairs who Mark takes a shine to, is in fact blind therefore she cannot be a victim of Mark. It is such a clever narrative idea in terms of character growth, development and a layer of intrigue for all.

As ever with Powell, there is a richness in the cinematography and the detail of production polish is paramount to the film being so well admired by all comers especially Martin Scorsese.

Powell does wonderful tricks with editing, sound design and a use of location - he borrows from Hitchcock in terms of building up tension such as with Moira Shearer's death where he constant moving puts us on edge as Mark hovers around her creating a murder scene without her knowing.

Peeping Tom is out on Blu-Ray/DVD from StudiocanalUK. Special features include an essay by Sir Christopher Frayling, a featurette Restoring Peeping Tom, intro by Scorsese, interview with Thelma Schoonmaker (2007), Powell's wife and an audio commentary by Ian Christie.