Peeping Tom (Michael Powell, 1960)

Aesthetically speaking the movie Peeping Tom is extremely beautiful, the way it uses colour and images. The main character is a scopophile – I didn’t know that word before I saw the movie – he lives through images and he’s obsessed with filming and replaying them. It’s a kind of parody of what being a film director is. It was the same year as Psycho by Hitchcock, which shocked people within[the realms of] what was acceptable, whereas the depiction of violence in Peeping Tom was considered pornographic. Michael Powell lost most of his friends because he had done that movie, it ended his commercial career, and now it’s considered his best.