Peeping Tom, made in 1960, is perhaps one of the most controversial films on this list simply because it destroyed the career of Michael Powell, one of Britain's best directors who'd made The Red Shoes, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp and A Matter of Life and Death. His work on this horror entry was looked on with such disgust that his career never recovered. In the middle of this brilliant piece, though, is the performance of Carl Boehm, the Peeping Tom of the title. Boehme was a theatre-trained Austrian actor who had already appeared in several films before Powell picked him up for the role of Mark Lewis. The performance is incredible in this re-evaluated masterpiece. The film finds Lewis as a photographer of soft-porn pictures of women whilst also working as part of a film crew. He finds an interest in Helen, the girl downstairs, and confesses that his father had committed various psychological experiments on him including recording his son's reactions to extreme events. What Helen doesn't realise is that Mark is a serial killer who finds pleasure in filming his female victims before stabbing them with his tripod, thus capturing their final moments. Boehm might not have received as much praise as that other Germanic actor, Klaus Kinski, but his performance here is a masterwork as he subtly details a sad character who knows he is slowly being locked into a corner through his murderous actions. It is the realism in the work and, particularly in his eyes, that makes this a great performance in a great film.
