penfold

On imdb someone has pointed out a superficial similarity between a genuine American serial killer and Mark Lewis in Peeping Tom.
Not a nice guy, not a filmmaker, but a seedy bloke who posed as a glamour photographer, who took pictures immediately before, during and after his killings.
The potential significance is that his Capital Trial was held in December '58, just in time for news reports to suggest to Leo a photographer/killer, as he pitched to Michael Powell in early '59. No proof, no mention in any book I've read, but highly possible.

Bit of a Bay Window, what??

Amy J

Ahhh I love Peeping Tom, I only watched it for the first time a few months ago - I can't believe what a negative effect the film's release had on Powell's career! I think it is a film that is more appreciated today

Keechelus

Hi friends!

This is my first post, and I should do a proper into -- but I wanted to add a note to the Peeping Tom thread.

As others have noted, Hitchcock's reputation increased with Psycho, while Powell's career was destroyed by the silly reaction to his thoughtful movie.

Perhaps a similar example: Charles Laughton's brilliant Night Of The Hunter was ill-received in 1955, but it is now a classic. Wotta shame we were denied another movie directed by Laughton ... as we lost a potential decade of Powell films after 1960.

-- Brian Williams

m35541

Psycho and Peeping Tom

(a) I doubt if the reaction to Peeping Tom influenced Hitchcock in tinkering with Psycho at all as claimed above. Psycho is an American film and Peeping Tom a British one. Why should Hitchcock care about British press reaction to a British film when he's making an American film for the American market? Hitchcock wouldn't have seen it (if at all) before its US release in the second half of 1961.

(b) I think the major difference between psycho and peeping tom is that in the latter the killer is the audience identifier figure and that's really what upset the British critics. In psycho janet leigh is initially the audience identifier figure and norman bates never really becomes such. Plus in psycho you don't know that bates is the killer until the end - in peeping tom you know the killer from the beginning. Peeping Tom is a film in which you follow the killer around - you don't do this in psycho; for most of psycho you think the killer is an old woman whom you've barely seen. I think this is the key to explaining the different critical reactions to the two films.

(c) I also think the snobby british critics were upset that an arty director like powell was stooping down to making horror films. And that this was set in a contemporary british setting. Psycho was set in America and therefore created an automatic "distancing" effect for british critics. Derek Hill, the left-wing film critic of Tribune (what one could regard as the offical organ of parts of the Labour party) had previously been allowed to write a long rant in Sight and Sound (the BFI's offical rag) in late 1958 saying that horror films were disgusting and what kind of deparaved society would tolerate them. And this when Hammer had only made 3 horror films and there had been 1 Hammer imitiation. It's clear from Hill's article that what really got on his goat was that Hammer's films had been very successful. So the Labour Party and the BFI had already put down their own marker that the "establishment" disapproved of this type of film.

(d) The idea that this destroyed Powell's career. Rubbish. He made The Queen's Guards the following year and several other films subsequently such as Age of Consent. Lets face it - he hadn't exactly made any masterpieces in the previous 10 years so his career was already well into decline when he made Peeping Tom. Peeping Tom didn't destroy his career at all. He perhaps took his critics a bit too seriously but that's his own problem. It didn't bother Terence Fisher what the critics said about Curse of Frankenstein so why should it bother Powell what they thought about Peeping Tom? Trade press reviews were actually quite favourable - it was only the national newspapers that didn't like it.

(e) Was Peeping Tom a box-office flop? Not according to the book Ghouls, Gimmicks and Gold by Kevin Heffernan who records that "the film was a modest commerical success" (pg 130) but not as successful as Circus of Horrors or Horrors of the Black Museum. Unfortunately, Heffernan quotes no figures or source for his assertion.

Is there any evidence at all that Peeping Tom was a flop and "withdrawn" in the UK - unclear to me since reports in the Daily Mail indicate that it was still playing in the West End long after it was allegedly "withdrawn".

Steve Crook

It might have just been another of Hitchcock's marketing gimmicks (he was very good at them) but he refused to give it a press show in the UK

It didn't bother Powell what the critics said, even though he couldn't understand why they didn't understand it.

The deal to make The Queen's Guards had already been made before Peeping Tom was reviewed.

Most people don't say that it totally killed his career but that it was killed "in the UK" and that he wasn't able to make another feature film in the UK. They're a Weird Mob and Age of Consent were made in Australia.

As for the assertion that he hadn't made a masterpiece for 10 years, possibly. It depends on how you define a masterpiece. He had set the bar so high with the films that he & Pressburger made in the 1940s, the films they made in the 1950s couldn't match up to that. But I think that many of the films they made in the 1950s would have been considered to be masterpieces, or at least great successes, if they'd been made by any other director. Films like Gone to Earth (1950), The Tales of Hoffmann (1951), The Battle of the River Plate (1956) [Selected as the Royal Film Performance] etc.


The distributors of Peeping Tom were also the distributors of Horrors of the Black Museum and Circus of Horrors. They were all only given a limited release, being shown where cinemas would take them

Steve

julian_craster

<< They were all only given a limited release, being shown where cinemas would take them>>


Not too sure about this statement........these type of films did good business in 1959-60, and practically all ABC cinemas screened them......


<< Is there any evidence at all that Peeping Tom was a flop and "withdrawn" in the UK - unclear to me since reports in the Daily Mail indicate that it was still playing in the West End long after it was allegedly "withdrawn".>>


No evidence at all. I don't regard MPs autobiography as 'evidence'.......

penfold

It was certainly banned by some local Watch Committees...local committees with powers to ignore BBFC classifications and ban films outright in their areas.....in the case of the committee for Reading, Berks, sight unseen. I doubt they were alone...and a film cannot make money, even in limited release, if they're not being screened in major towns and cities like Reading. (cit. Daily Mail, 25/5/60)

Which Daily Mail report are you referring to? The 8/6/60 Pearson Philips one?? If so, that's only 5 weeks after the Derek Hill review, and two weeks after the Reading report...it refers to an independent chain, and the fact they're still showing it is news, worthy of comment.....the names of the businessmen behind the chain are George and Joseph Cohen; the head of Anglo Amalgamated, producers of Peeping Tom, was Nat Cohen. This might be a coincidence, I haven't looked into it.
If it's another Daily Mail article, I'd love to read it.

Bit of a Bay Window, what??

m35541

It was certainly banned by some local Watch Committees

It was banned in Reading but is there any evidence that it was banned anywhere else. Circus of Horrors also got banned somewhere (name in Pirie's book but I can't remember it). This is a committee of reading town council presumably since cinema censoring legally belonged to local authorities.

I was referring to the Pearson article I think (haven't got my notes to hand) on an(your?) MP website. My inference from this article was that after the Reading ban the Daily Mail were trying to stir something up and noticed that the film was still playing in a West End cinema and publicising the various salacious reviews. This is about 2 months after the initial reviews I think as the Hill review appeared a couple of weeks later than the rest. How long was this after release? Does the article say whether the film stopped playing at the cinema following this pressure (unlikely if owned by the distributors and as a "minority" film from a minority distributor it wouldn't be playing at the Odeon Leicester Square anyway.

The point I'm making is that I think that that the concept that this film was withdrawn/surpressed is exaggerated. Apart from one town council banning it there doesn't seem to be much evidence of this.

The fact that Powell didn't make another film in the UK was I think nothing to do with the film's reaction but more to do with the fact that his career was in decline and he couldn't get financing anyway - after all this was a relatively low budget horror movie financed by AA not a prestige production. The type of movies Powell was interested in making had fallen out of fashion. I saw parts of Battle of the River Plate again last time it was on TV and its a very dated static film fully deserving of being selected for a Royal Command Performance.

Steve Crook

Whether it's exaggerated or not depends on who says what about it

I don't think many people have said that it had a nationwide ban or even that it was suppressed nationwide. What is more usually said is that after the bad reviews, the distributors got cold feet and didn't support it. That's why there isn't much 1960s advertising material available. Most of what is available is from re-issues. It might have been shown in some west end cinemas and in various other ones around the regions. But there were apparently quite a few places like Reading that chose not to show it.

The film premiered on 7 April and was available for general release on 16 May
The anonymous (by a Daily Mail reporter) report is dated 25 May. The Pearson article is dated 8 June. Most of the reviews came out in the week after it was premiered. The Spectator review by Isobel Quigley came out on 15 April and the Tribune review by Derek Hill on 29 April.

But to draw any valid conclusions about all of that I think you'd have to interview the cinema managers and watch committee members in every town in the country to see what effect the reviews and other articles had on them.

Basically, there's been a lot of nonsense talked and assumptions leapt to about Peeping Tom, the way it was released and the effect it had on Powell's career. Because of all that nonsense it's very hard to get to the facts

His career was in decline, but from such a height there was still a lot that he could have done and wanted to do. But the industry and the way it was financed had changed drastically since the 1940s. In the 1940s P&P were in the very unusual position of being able to make whatever films they liked without any interference from the backers (Rank). And that's when they made their real masterpieces.

But when it came to funding films in the 1960s, Michael was never the most subtle or diplomatic person
If someone didn't agree with his artistic vision he was liable to tell them what he thought of them. Not the best thing to do when you want to get funding from people

Also, because of their other troubles (partly due to Gabriel Pascal's Caesar and Cleopatra) Rank had had to severely retrench and had been effectively taken over by John Davies, the accountant. And he never did understand films, particularly the films made by Powell and Pressburger.

The big project that Powell was trying to get funding for through much of the late 1960s and the 1970s was a version of The Tempest. That's a story I would have loved to see him put on film. But alas, it was not to be

Steve

penfold

Firstly, Reading is the only example I have because it's the only example in the BFI cutting microjacket. The cuttings are always hit and miss (Remember, absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence) as to what was kept at the time, and only covers national newspapers, not local papers. Where local paper cuttings do appear in the Microjackets, eg, Canterbury press coverage of A Canterbury Tale, the cuttings have been inherited from a donor long after the event, in that case from Erwin Hillier's private papers. You mustn't assume Reading were on their own. I can't find a reference to Circus of Horror running into problems in either Heritage of Horror or in Tom Dewe Mathew's Censored.
The thing with dates you have to remember is that the first articles are written from a trade show, timed to coincide with a film's West End opening, not it's general nationwide release....this could be a couple of weeks later. There really isn't much time - two weeks- between Reading banning it and the Pearson article....and hardly "Long After"
Re. The BFI and Sight and Sound, the one fairly argued contemporary piece of film criticism in the UK (Outside of Trade papers) was in the Monthly Film Bulletin, written by David Robinson, one of the S&S inner circle. He didn't very much care for it, but he does talk about it in terms very similar to those of David Pirie 13 years later.
So, what you seem to be saying is that Peeping Tom - low budget - actually wasn't a flop, wasn't withdrawn or banned, but actually made money....a 'modest commercial success'. So after having made a modestly commercialy successfull film Powell couldn't get funding in this country subsequently. Why?? You think the controversy had nothing to do with it??
Concerning Battle of the River Plate, I wouldn't call it a masterpiece either, but it was high-profile, and I bet it made money. How many masterpieces are there from the British Studios from '55-60? Discounting Peeping Tom, I can't for the moment think of one. Peeping Tom, if fairly received, could have been the point of revival for Powell's career, as Psycho was for Hitchcock's. Rather, it was, in this country at least, a nail in its coffin....until '78 or so, by which time it was rather too late.

Bit of a Bay Window, what??

m35541

Hmm interesting.

On a sidenote Penfold do you know whether Pamela Green's topless shot actually appeared in the original theatrical release? The BBFC seems to have asked it to be cut and an alternate shot was done per the PG website which seems to have been released in America. On the Optimum DVD there appears to be a composite print used of this scene since the two shots of her on the couch (one topless, one clothed) don't match.

British masterpieces 1955-60

Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)
Dracula (1958)
A Night to Remember (1958)
Ice Cold in Alex (1958)
I'm Alright Jack (1959)
Room at the Top (1959)
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960)

Given that Psycho was preceded by North by Northwest I'm a bit baffled by the idea that it was a "revival" of Hitchcock's career. That would imply that Vertigo and North by Northwest were lurches into the doldrums - a reinvention possibly but not a revival. In fact, his cinema career only went downhill from Psycho - being tied up with TV he didn't make another film for 2-3 years with The Birds and then the mid to late sixties saw his least well received films for a long time (Marnie, Torn Curtain, Topaz).

penfold

In order; not the foggiest regarding Pamela Green, sorry....
Re your list of masterpieces, I have an aversion to Kwai, so count me out of a reasoned response to that one....Dracula sparked a revival in the genre, but a masterpiece in it's own right ?? I enjoy A Night To Remember, but is it any less stodgy and stoical than BoRP as we call it?? I'm Alright Jack...ok, but it's not up to Ealing Classic standards is it?? Room and Saturday Night....interesting and important, but masterpieces....not sure. Ice Cold....yes, I would agree with you on that one...but it's not a huge return for five years of a nation's once-proud industry, is it....
My comment re Psycho was based on the idea I read somewhere that post NNW he too was struggling for film funding....which is why Psycho was made on a near-TV budget using TV crews....as a result of it's success, he was able to go on and get funding for Birds, etc.

Bit of a Bay Window, what??

Steve Crook

Because of its history, there is quite a bit that's suspected of still being missing from Peeping Tom. The BBFC gives it as having been released (passed with cuts) at 108 mins 46 secs. But nowadays it's rare to find anything other than the 101 min version currently available. But nobody knows if the missing footage is all one scene or if it's lots of short bits of a few seconds each.

AFAIK the first UK release did have Pamela topless. But it's a side on shot so it's only one boob. She's lying down and it's only on screen for a few seconds. Blink and you miss it. The scene before that has the bed against the wall. When she's topless it seems to be in the middle of the room. So the cutting of the two shots was never very good

Steve

m35541

I have seen the list of BBFC cuts to Peeping Tom (from the Worldwide DVD Forums website) and it doesn't add up to anywhere near 8m. Plus, several of the proposed snips are present in the Optimum DVD (and presumably the previous releases as well).

I would guess the running time discrepancy is down to last minute distributor/MP edits. It was pretty common to submit a film to the BBFC before the final editing was done back then.

julian_craster

I am sure that Michael Powell shot some extra footage of Pamela Green for 'overseas versions' of PT (where nudity was not censored as much as in the UK), or perhaps even for his own private film library......