Peeping Tom: Observation and Obsession in Modern Cinema

“It’s only a camera.”

“Only??!!”

In 1960, Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho made a generation afraid to take a shower. Hitchcock’s tale of voyeurism, murder, and insanity pushed more conservative audiences way out of their comfort zones. By watching the murderous acts and subsequent cover ups of the unstable Norman Bates, the audience became implicated in the crime. The act of viewing the film transformed the audience into voyeurs, accomplices to the murder. 

That same year, a lesser known film was released in Britain that not only made the camera into a voyeur, but also turned it into an instrument of death. Michael Powell’s revolutionary film Peeping Tom tells the story of a reclusive photographer who uses his camera to capture absolute, undiluted fear in his subjects. To inspire this reaction, he uses a knife-like point on his camera tripod to menace his victims, eventually stabbing them in the throat. In addition to this barbaric form of murder, the victim is also forced to watch her own demise with the aid of a mirror mounted on the camera. The film explores the place voyeurism has in our society and questions where the line should be drawn between healthy observation and obsession.

Originally panned by critics, Peeping Tom was condemned for its emphasis on sex and prostitution. These harsh reviews effectively ended director Michael Powell’s career in Great Britain. Many critics took the movie as a personal affront, irritated that Powell would cast a professional observer in the role of a serial killer. The film was rehabilitated in the next few decades by critics and film students that realized the sociological commentary created by the film was much more important than the sexual content.