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Dec 13, 2014Nursebob rated this title 4.5 out of 5 stars
Years ahead of its time, this daring psychological drama examines the intricate power play between voyeur and subject, stalker and stalked, and the role of media, in this case home movies, in creating emotional distances. Cleverly set in the make-believe world of cinema...and pornography...director Michael Powell delves beneath surface appearances to reveal some uncomfortable truths; at one point Mark refuses Helen’s innocent request to be filmed as he does not want to see her “that way”, in another scene one of his cheesecake models asks to be photographed so that the bruises inflicted by her jealous fiancé are not readily apparent. In the role of Mark, Karlheinz Böhm is completely captivating, his awkward naïveté and childish attempts to socialize contrasting sharply with his murderous interludes; a man well aware of the demons which poison his life yet powerless, or unwilling (?), to exorcise them. An overlooked cinema classic with a truly chilling finale.