One doesn’t merely watch Peeing Tom; one watches oneself watch Peeping Tom. Such is the phenomenal Brechtian reach of this complex film that one can hardly think about it without placing themselves squarely in the context of its milieu. On the surface may be a thriller with a pathological twist, but deeper down is a jet black study on the psychology of cinema itself, the darkly intrinsic human impulses that make recording and observing the moving image so irresistible. With a shockingly neon-hued, surgically composed mise-en-scène and an unending focus on that most magical and possessive of devices, the camera, Powell’s film is the consummate metaphor for the frighteningly intimate, subconscious allure of watching and making movies. The desire to imprison fleeting moments; the cathartic vicariousness of seeing and living inside captured images; and the attempt to take the most challenging and inscrutable of emotions and transform them into expressionistic mirrors to our souls, Peeping Tom holds up that mirror in front of us, and then we watch ourselves squirm.