Michael Powell's Peeping Tom is a movie about a man named Mark Lewis, played brilliantly by Carl Boehm. It is a character study masquerading as a psychological horror movie. The film begins with a brutal murder, from the killer's point of view, behind a camera lens. Later that night, he watches that same footage, just as we have watched it. We are immediately implicated as viewers and voyeurs--we feel the same thrill that he does. The rest of the movie attempts to explain how we got to that point; it asks us to empathize with him, and it succeeds. It is unsettling how little time it takes. The story unfolds effortlessly. I was absorbed from the first frame to the last. With no way of predicting what would happen, I no longer tried. I simply waited in fear of the events to come. And the finale is so utterly haunting that I do not think I will forget it any time soon.Technically, cinematically, it is a masterpiece. The editing feels natural, the camerawork fluid. Subtle choices in composition and movement contribute to both mood and analysis. Such a union of art and entertainment is what determines a true master director. Powell is the equal of Hitchcock, Kurosawa, Scorsese, and other such icons. How I had not seen any of his works until now is a mystery even to me. This is a phenomenal film.
IMDb link: http://imdb.com/title/tt0054167/