On Thu, 24 Oct 1996, following comparisons between "Peeping Tom" (1960, Powell) and "Psycho", Peter Latham wrote: > My questions for the list are how did these two very different (but > British born) directors come to share so similar a view? And with such > similar views, how could these films have had such directly opposite > results for the careers of their directors? In this regard, it should be > noted that "Psycho" augmented Hitchcock's already magnificent reputation, > while "Peeping Tom" badly damaged Michael Powell's for a time. On my MA course (taught by Charles Barr) last year, precisely this comparison was made: and several of us in seminars attempted to address it by tracing their two careers back to the point at which H[itchcock] emigrated, when his career had already been well established, and P[owell], having just achieved his first critical (although not popular) success with "The Edge of the World" (1937), made the decision to remain in the British film industry, despite what was clearly an impending war. The answer, I feel, lies in what happened to P during the period 1946-60. During the war, he vociferously attacked his former colleagues, including H, who had gone to America, denoucing them as "traitors", and suggesting they had "gone with the wind up" to the safety of California shortly after (or in some cases before) 3/9/39 (Daily Mail, 2/1/40, p. 17). P was one of the direct beneficiaries of the huge increase in institiutional support (from the Ministry of Information) and financial support (from the Rank Organisation) which turned British film production around during the war, just as H was able to exploit the production facilities of Selnick's company. At the end of the war, these similarities ended. Without the exigencies of war and the nationalist discourse that had enhanced the popularity of such films as "49th Parallel", "Blimp" etc, the poetic realism that was P's hallmark fell flat - both "Black Narcissus" and "The Red Shoes" lost money, and after the latter, Rank declared that P would never work for him again (G. Macnab, "J. Arthur Rank and the British Film Industry", London, 1993, can't remember page ref) H, on the other hand, increased his prominence within the Hollywood establishment, as 'his' genre - the suspense thriller - was one with which the mass-cinema audience could indentify (Cf. Ford and the western). P, on the other hand, became steadily more remote from his public - his romanticist depictions of 19C popular literature and musical culture, like "Gone to Earth", "Oh Rosalinda" and "Tales of Hoffman" can be seen on a textual level as precursors to "Peeping Tom" (for example, the Moria Shearer character in "Hoffman"), but they made no concession to the mainstream audience, and so did not enhance his stock within the film industry at all. The other identifiable strand to P's work in the 1950s was his three revisionist war films, "The Small Back Room", "Battle of the River Plate" (for a detailed discussion on this, see Tony Aldgate's article in the most recent issue of 'History Today') and "Ill Met by Moonlight". These are much more difficult to place into the context of "Peeping Tom", but they too would have alienated audiences more than, say, "Reach for the Sky". Thus, by the late-1950s, H's work was being critically acclaimed largely due to his reputation, whilst P was seen to have declined steadily throughout the decade. These are divisive terms, and I can't really work out the relationship between critical responses and popular acceptance/rejection, especially where British film criticism comes is involved. But, addressing the "Peeping Tom/"Psycho" issue, one point immediately comes to mind: the 'serious' press critics who had established themselves during the war - C.A. Lejeune, Dilys Powell, Paul Holt, Roger Manvell, Basil Wright, etc. (Winnington died in 1953) were the very people who slated "Peeping Tom". I'm 99% sure (but will look this up) that it was Lejeune who made the notorious remark that it should be "taken from the projection room and flushed down the nearest drain, but even then the smell would linger". To sum up, then, P had steadily distanced himself from the institutions of the British cinema, whereas H had grown in stature throughout the decade. The critics and the public, therefore, were probably more willing to accept something challenging from a "local boy made good" than the by now remote Powell. Leo Enticknap PhD student, University of Exeter, UK ---- To signoff SCREEN-L, e-mail [log in to unmask] and put SIGNOFF SCREEN-L in the message. Problems? Contact [log in to unmask]