Although the style and material of Peeping Tom is almost entirely at odds with anything else in its director’s body of work, and even though it was a film so vilified upon its release that it almost ended Powell’s career, it stands now as yet another masterpiece in an oeuvre filled with them. Mark Lewis (Carl Boehm), terrorised as a child in his father’s psychological experiments, has grown to be a shy, isolated adult, and serial killer.

A film that has kept theorists fascinated for decades, the complexity of its emphasis on voyeurism and the complicity of the audience in the crimes of its central character still makes for uneasy viewing.

Screening as part our Powell & Pressburger season, December 2nd – 20th.

Notes by Kevin Coyne