Capital Celluloid - Day 20: Thursday Jan 20, 2011

Rear Window 6pm & Peeping Tom 8.50pm double bill: Riverside Studios


Sight & Sound ran a feature last year on the lost art of the double bill. Well, all is not lost in the capital with the Rio cinema's Sunday presentations always worth a look.

However, the programmers at the Riverside Studios in Hammersmith are the most innovative and the pairing of Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window and Michael Powell's Peeping Tom today is an exemplary one.

Both movies are justly famous treatises on voyeurism and radical experiments in cinema by two outstanding directors. Both raise awkward questions about the viewer's relationship to the action on the screen and both bear the hallmarks of hugely talented film makers working at the height of their powers.

Peeping Tom is the more directly uncomfortable of the pair for the audience which partly explains its disastrous reception and 'failure' on its release in 1960.

There are numerous articles on the films but I strongly recommend Robin Wood's take on Rear Window in Hitchcock's Films Revisited which contains his original 1960s essay and his thoughts on revisiting the film some 20 years later. 

Peeping Tom continues to fascinate too and its recent revival was the occasion for a fresh look from Josh Saco in The Quietus. Watch the disquieting trailer.