Martin Scorsese on the pioneering horror that shows “how close moviemaking could come to madness”
For many filmmakers, the act of writing and shooting a movie is an intense and obsessive process. Take someone like Stanley Kubrick, for example. He made his actors do hundreds of takes, and the research he did for each film bordered on madness. His attempts to make a movie about Napoleon fell through, but that didn’t stop him from excessively gathering as much information as physically possible in two years, practically becoming a scholar of the political leader in the process.
Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom explores themes of madness and obsession, with the titular character, Mark, driving himself to insanity as he commits crimes, films them, and watches them back. For Martin Scorsese, it acts as a wider commentary on “how close moviemaking could come to madness”.
Scorsese is a massive fan of Powell and Emeric Pressburger, with whom Powell typically co-directed. Yet, for Peeping Tom, Powell went solo, and his film shocked the nation. It was 1960 – the slasher genre had not yet been conceived, and even the groundbreaking Psycho wouldn’t be released for a few more months. Peeping Tom was a huge step for horror, and while we hardly see any gore, Mark’s obsession with murdering women, paired with the POV shots we get from his hidden camera, was revolutionary.
The movie explains Mark’s preoccupation with filming women’s dying moments as related to his troubled childhood. His father, a famous psychologist, used Mark as a guinea pig for his experiments on fear, and as a result, Mark grew up fascinated by the idea. With every kill, he captures the look of pure terror on his victim’s faces, and nothing seems to stop him from capturing the perfect shot. He can’t even stop himself from watching the videos while in the company of his blind neighbour – he has to fulfil his urge.
To Scorsese, the film is a clear metaphor for the ways that filmmaking can become a deep obsession. He called the movie a “frightening experience” and “also a thrilling one because it gets close, very close, to the heart of the impulse deep within filmmaking.” The director called the process of making films “exciting” and “intoxicating,” adding, “that can get a grip on you, and unless you’re very careful, it won’t let you go.”
The filmmaker then described the intimacy of taking someone’s photograph and how many people believe it steals a part of a person’s soul. Thus, making films becomes a very intense process, and because of the oversaturation of images we have in the present day, we often forget its power. “Powell dared where no one else had dared before him to show us how close movie-making could come to madness. How it could eat you up.”
In the end, Mark’s impulses get the better of him, and he surrenders to his project, stabbing himself in the neck with the same blade he used to kill his victims, which emerged from the leg of his camera tripod. Scorsese believes that Peeping Tom is one of the finest things that Powell ever made, explaining how “Michael was always showing us how necessary art is, and how far it can drive you and your passions. And he was also showing that it could consume you if you weren’t careful.”
