Eyes of fear

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Movie
German title Eyes of fear
Original title Peeping Tom
Country of production Great Britain
original language English
Publishing year 1960
length 101 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Michael Powell
script Leo Marks
production Michael Powell
music Brian Easdale
camera Otto Heller
cut Noreen Ackland
occupation

Peeping Tom , better known by the title Peeping Tom , is a feature film - Thriller by Michael Powell , in 1959 the UK was filmed.

action

During the day, the inconspicuous cameraman Mark Lewis works in a film studio. His colleagues appreciate him and nobody suspects that as a child he was abused for research purposes by his father, a psychiatric scientist . He regularly woke his son up at night and terrified him. With a camera and tape he recorded the reactions in minute detail: a horror that was memorable.

Mark Lewis makes his own films at night. He is looking for women (prostitutes or extras from the set) whom he approaches under various pretexts in order to film them. While the camera is running, he puts a knife to the neck of the defenseless victims and points the lens at their faces. He not only wants to capture her fear of death, but also the horrified, last look of her eyes in the face of death.

This double life is not revealed: Only with his neighbor Helen, who lives with her blind mother, can Mark slowly open up and develop positive feelings.

background

"Morbid, absurd and embarrassingly tasteless," was the verdict of the Catholic Film Service at the premiere. The German cinema audience was confronted with the lust for violence for the first time and protested violently. The reviews abroad were also devastating.

Michael Powell found no funding for his projects for a long time after the scandal that the film triggered. Karlheinz Böhm's career also suffered a slump. Nobody, at least not in Germany, wanted to see the dream prince of Sissi as "Peeping Tom", as a perverted spanner and woman murderer.

Today the film is one of Powell's masterpieces. The clear and logical script by Leo Marks, the lighting, the color scheme and the detailed furnishings are praised.

Today the film has an international length of 9094 feet = 2772 meters = 101'19 (24 fps) or 97'16 (25 fps). When it was first submitted to the British Censor BBFC on March 22, 1960, it was 9763 feet = 2976 meters = 108'46 (24 fps) or 104'25 (25 fps). The BBFC only approved the film for an X-Rating subject to editing conditions in the length known today. The difference between the BBFC first version and today's version is unclear. The murder of Milly ( Pamela Green ) is said to have been shown in the original version, while the scene in the current version of the film is closed with a fade-out before the murder was carried out.

Peeping Tom premiered in London on April 7, 1960 ; on May 16, 1960 the regular cinema release followed. The American cinema premiere of the film took place more than two years late on May 15, 1962. The US distributor Astor Pictures Corporation renamed the psychological thriller FACE OF FEAR and THE PHOTOGRAPHER OF PANIC. These US versions were drastically shortened to only around 86 minutes (24 fps) and 82 minutes (25 fps).

The German theatrical version had to be shortened by two scenes in 1960 at the instigation of the FSK . One of them was the key scene , the lack of which not only grossly falsifies the meaning of the film, but also leaves the resolution and motivation of the murderer completely in the dark. The German distributor Rank presented the film to the FSK for the first time on August 10, 1960, with a length of 2772 meters = 101'19 (24 fps) or 97'15 (25 fps). At that time, the FSK imposed cutting requirements for approval from the age of 18:

  1. Removed a take towards the end of the film, before the model is murdered, in which the girl is lying on the bed and her bare breasts can be seen.
  2. In the final scene of the film, in which the murderer threatens his victim Helen with a tripod , the shot in which the girl's face can be seen in the distorting mirror with the dagger approaching her is removed .

Both cuts were resolved with a voting ratio of 7: 1; d. that is, one expert in each case voted against the cut. After the shortening, the film was now 2747 meters = 100'24 (24 fps) or 96'23 (25 fps). It was released in this form by the FSK on January 6, 1961, after almost five months had elapsed since the FSK was first presented, and thus had its German premiere on February 17, 1961.

synchronization

There are now two German language versions. The German cinema dubbing was produced in 1960 in the Berlin studio of J. Arthur Rank Film . The German dialogue book was penned by Ursula Buschow , the German dialogue director was Edgar Flatau , a long-time specialist in the German dubbing of British films. Karlheinz Böhm dubbed himself in the theatrical version. There is also a re-dubbed DVD released in 2006 with Martin Lohmann as the speaker for Böhm. The second German version was created because the first synchronization - as described above - was shortened by a few settings and translated in a partially distorted manner.

Reviews

“An ambiguous thriller that caused a scandal when it was made and suddenly ended the careers of Karlheinz Böhm and director Powell. In retrospect, an astonishingly modern film about the connection between curiosity , longing for death and sexual neurosis . "

- Lexicon of international film

Others

Mike Patton named the band Peeping Tom after this film.

literature

Web links

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ German synchronous index: German synchronous index | Movies | Eyes of fear. Retrieved May 10, 2018 .
  2. ↑ German synchronous index: German synchronous index | Movies | Eyes of fear. Retrieved May 10, 2018 .