My Experience at “Restored and Rediscovered: A Film Preservation Festival”
This was such a wonderful Saturday!
I’m grateful I can frequently spend time with one of my best friends, Hameed. We often meet on Saturdays, and it’s always a wonderful time. For my birthday earlier this year, he treated me to a film at the Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville, New York. I’ll remember that day for the rest of my life.
The Jacob Burns Film Center has become our go-to spot for movies when we’re meeting up. It’s been a favorite of Hameed’s for a long time, and I’m so grateful he’s shared it with me. It’s an intimate and sleek space with a few auditoriums. The decor is contemporary while also being warm and inviting at the same time. The center screens popular new releases as well as a variety of international and independent films. It also hosts events on film history and filmmaking craft. The center truly is a cinephile’s dream, and that’s why Hameed and I love it so much.
During May, the Jacob Burns Film Center hosted “Restored and Rediscovered: A Film Preservation Festival.” This festival screened films that have been recently restored. It also celebrated film preservation and recognized The Film Foundation, a group of filmmakers dedicated to preserving films by converting them into formats that can last longer. One of the founding members of The Film Foundation is Martin Scorsese, one of my favorite directors.
Last Saturday, Hameed and I attended a screening that was a part of this festival. We watched the 1960 thriller Peeping Tom, directed by Michael Powell, written by Leo Marks. The film is about a filmmaker who is also a serial killer obsessed with filming the last looks on his victim’s faces in order to document what he deems to be genuine fear. A still from this film in which the main character is using a camera was used in several posters and promotional images for the “Restored and Rediscovered” festival.
Peeping Tom is a film I’d heard of when I was younger and exploring horror cinema. I hadn’t been able to watch it until last Saturday. I’m grateful that my first viewing of the film was in a lovely auditorium in a stunning 4k restoration, which was done by The Film Foundation and BFI National Archive in association with STUDIOCANAL.
I had known that some of the screenings at the festival were accompanied by live question-and-answer sessions with film scholars, but I was so pleasantly surprised to learn that the screening Hameed and I got tickets to at 4pm that Saturday included a Q&A with the legendary film editor Thelma Schoonmaker, a frequent collaborator with Martin Scorsese since the 1980s. She’s edited some of my favorite films, including Raging Bull and The Departed. Also, I didn’t know this before the Q&A, but I learned that Schoonmaker was married to Michael Powell for the last years of his life. She shared some amazing insights about both Powell and Scorsese.
It was such a great event, and it was so smooth and easy to get to. All Hameed and I did was arrive at the Jacob Burns Film Center about thirty minutes before the showtime. The tickets were the same as the standard tickets at the center; there was no excessive upcharge.
I’ll spend the rest of this discussion sharing my thoughts on Peeping Tom and the Q&A with Thelma Schoonmaker.
The opening scene of Peeping Tom is a city street at night, with neon lights glowing through the thick shadows. A man holds a film camera close against his body, concealing it with his long coat as he records what he sees. The movie inhabits the point-of-view of the man’s camera as he approaches Dora (Brenda Bruce), a sex worker who agrees to let him come to her place. The camera follows Dora as she leads the man to her room. When she sits on her bed, the camera closes in on her as her eyes widen in fear. She screams in horror as the camera continues to close in on her. The film cuts to a room where the assailant is projecting the footage he has just recorded. The next morning, the same man films the police as they carry Dora’s body out of her room and begin their investigation. In the light of day, us audience members meet our killer and main character, Mark (Carl Boehm). By day, Mark works at a film studio and also shoots models for a small porn shop. By night, he kills women while filming their final moments.
Mark is a deeply disturbed and troubled man, and Boehm portrays him skillfully. He walks in the shadows and glances furtively at the world around him, as if he doesn’t want anyone to see him. He locks himself in the upper room of the building he shares with neighbors who barely know him. Much of his time is spent developing and screening the horrible footage he takes, and he moves around his workspace with jittery energy. This secrecy and anxiety of course has a malevolent reason, since Mark hopes to conceal his crimes, but his behavior around his crimes has a shameful dimension as the film progresses.
Mark reveals himself to be someone who struggles against his wicked urges. His wide eyes are both probing and also filled with sadness. His internal struggle heightens when his neighbor Helen (Anna Massey) enters his life. She comes to his room one night to share a slice of birthday cake from her own party. Her act of kindness leads to her asking him questions and him sharing details about his life. He brings her to the room where he develops his films, and he shows her films that his father, a renowned psychologist, took of Mark as a child while conducting experiments on him. These experiments often put Mark under psychological pain. We audience members therefore learn that, tragically, Mark is continuing the work of his wicked father. He wants to put this all behind him as he gets closer with Helen and begins dating her.
I won’t reveal any more of the film. I do recommend fans of horror or thrillers to give this a watch.
Mark is a monstrous character, but he is not reduced to his monstrosity. We are aghast by his crimes, but we witness his conflicting drives. Through this multifaceted central character, the movie establishes a connection between studio films and porn productions, filmmaking and voyeurism, sex and violence. It also implicates the audience, by adopting the perspective of Mark’s camera many times and by showing pieces of his ghastly footage. The way Mark is obsessed with documenting his violence, are we as audience members not also fixated on his actions? Are we viewers not also experiencing morbid curiosity, if not outright perverse fascination, in observing Mark and his twisted crimes?
The depiction of violence on screen, its reasons and purposes, is a topic I think a lot about. Peeping Tom seems to suggest that there is a moral judgment in how violence ought to be depicted because Mark’s killings and his filmings are inseparable. The filming is part of the crime.
It’s a heavy, dark film, but it never falls too deeply into shock or luridness. Despite its intense subject matter, the film has much restraint in not depicting excessive violence or exploitation. Mark’s footage is shown right up until the moment of violence, but no more. Very little violence is actually depicted on-screen. The film is much less graphic than, just as a point of comparison, John Carpenter’s Halloween, a horror classic and one of my favorite films, which also illustrates much restraint for a film about a serial killer. Peeping Tom is a film about voyeurism and violence, but it never devolves into torture porn. It is predominantly a dark character study.
In her Q&A afterward, Thelma Schoonmaker commended the cinematography by Otto Heller and drew attention to one of her favorite scenes. A character stumbles into Mark’s workspace and watches a film of one of his crimes. The movie stays in close-up of the character’s face contorting in shock. Through the character, the horror of Mark’s crimes is conveyed, but their details are not depicted in this moment. This discussion by Schoonmaker helped me realize the film’s restraint and its adherence to a classic principle of horror stories: what the audience imagines is far more terrifying than anything the artist can depict.
Schoonmaker also pointed out an incredible detail. When Mark is showing Helen pieces of footage taken by his father, one clip shows young Mark standing next to his father. Schoonmaker revealed that the actor for Mark’s father is director Thomas Powell himself. The themes of viewers and filmmakers being implicated in the violence on-screen was clear to me as I was watching the movie, but this insight further enhanced that theme. Powell perhaps understood his own implication as a filmmaker by casting himself as Mark’s father; he gave birth to Mark’s monstrosity.
The Q&A overall was incredible, and I appreciated Schoonmaker sharing details about her career and her love of film. She explained that both Scorsese and Powell as filmmakers haven’t been interested in heroes or villains, but instead in characters that exist in the gray area in between. She also expressed joy at attending film festivals with large audiences of people from all ages, including younger viewers. She talked about how Scorsese’s love of film is both wide and deep, with knowledge of the entire bodies of work by filmmakers from around the world. She proudly explained that The Film Foundation works to preserve and restore films internationally.
I love art, and this experience has made me ponder how long art can last. As Schoonmaker explained, so many films have been lost forever. This is of course true of art in all media. How many songs, books, and movies that I love with my whole heart will be lost in time, unable to be experienced by future generations? How much of my joy will they be able to share in decades and decades from now? This awareness saddens me, and I therefore appreciate The Film Foundation because the foundation’s work allows art to reach more audiences. I do believe that art achieves its power when it is experienced. Creator and audience are necessary to make the magic.
I also appreciate that the Jacob Burns Film Center held this festival to share insights on the preservation and restoration process. The center is a non-profit, and I value how it strives to share art and education. This brings me back to my discussion about the importance of libraries. In an ideal world, the Jacob Burns Film Center would have enough funding to screen films and host events with free tickets. In an ideal world, there would be more public libraries, and art galleries and museums would also be free. Knowledge and art would be available to all who want it.
We don’t live in that world. In order for that world to come, we need to support people, both private individuals and members of government, who champion art and education. We need to support local art institutions like the Jacob Burns Film Center so that they can continue their work.
It was such a wonderful Saturday. I hope more events like this happen around the world in the future, and that more film lovers can experience that joy and gratitude that Hameed and I did.
Agree with Azeem. I love old restored classics, however not a horror fan. Haven't even seen Psycho
Movie restoration is so important. I'm glad you're putting a spotlight on it!