Peeping Tom

Criterion has provided an essay and a film commentary on the alternate audio track by “film theorist” Laura Mulvey, which occasionally covers the film’s production history, but otherwise is confined to an analytical discourse on the deep meaning Powell conveys on screen.

Peeping Tom is the profoundly disturbing story of a cinematographer, recalling his traumatic childhood, his sexual crises, and his fatal revenge as an adult. The film explores a deep mix of eroticism, exploitation, obsession, and violence, inevitably lending to both a vivid and compelling story of psychological daring. The story is told from the killer’s point-of-view who films the deaths of his victims. Made in 1959 (and released theatrically in 1960) by the talented British director Michael Powell, Peeping Tom stirred great controversy in its era and gradually acquired a cult reputation.