I understand why academics like this movie as the central idea (photographer kills people with his camera as he’s filming them) offers so much scope for analysis – we the viewer are part of the crime, what is voyeurism, etc, etc (it makes a great double bill with Rear Window and/or Vertigo). Michael Powell produced and directed but despite the arrow hitting the target at te beginning there’s no Emeric Pressburger. Leo Mark’s script is still pretty good. I don’t love this film like others do but it’s a good solid psycho thriller, very much ahead of it’s time (it’s really a film that should have been made in the 90s/noughties).
Carl Boehm speaks with a Germanic accent – and he’s another of Powell’s sympathetic Germans. This one isn’t a Nazi but it’s rare we get such a humanised serial killer – it was all dad’s fault for being mean, and he struggles to not girl the girl he’s in love with. To counterbalance this, some of his victims are humanised – Moira Shearer’s stand in seems really nice and her death is a real tragedy.
Boehm is effective, Anna Massey over-acts (or maybe I just find her annoying), as does the shrink. Frank depiction of sex at the time, memorable climax. I felt it got a little slow around the middle and I didn’t buy Massey being so into Boehm.
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