Peeping Tom ¹⁹⁶⁰

Michael Powell's first feature film after years of collaboration with Emeric Pressburger virtually spelled his downfall as a filmmaker. Released by Eye Filmmuseum in a brand new 4K restoration. Shy Mark Lewis works as a camera assistant in a film studio; in his spare time he takes pornographic photos. As a child, he was abused for scientific experiments by his father, a biologist who researches the foundations of human fear. He tortures Mark and captures the child's panic on celluloid. As an adult, Mark takes prostitutes with him and films the women at the moment he murders them with a stabbing weapon concealed in the camera. No one knows about Mark's psychopathic behavior, not even the lodger Helen Stephens, who sometimes goes out with Mark in early-sixties London. Peeping Tom was denounced by film critics as 'sick' and 'immoral' upon its release and was almost immediately withdrawn from circulation. It meant the end of Michael Powell's career as a director. The career of leading actor Karlheinz Böhm (known in the Netherlands mainly as Franz Joseph in Sissi ) also suffered a serious blow. Peeping Tom, long since granted the status of classic, is considered a key work on voyeurism and the aggression of the camera. In the early eighties, the film was rediscovered, mainly due to the efforts of Martin Scorsese. Scorsese praised Peeping Tom as " the best film about filmmaking ever made, together with Fellini's 8½ ". After an earlier restoration initiated by Martin Scorsese's Film Foundation, the film has been restored again, now digitally (4K).