Released in France as Le Voyeur, Peeping Tom is really about le voyeur vu. Anticipating current debates about the nature of film viewing, it aligns the murderous passions of spectator and film director. Yet Michael Powell has claimed that it is "a film of compassion, of observation and of memory?.It's a film about the cinema from 1900 to 1960." It refuses to be consigned to any single genre?.With its pedigree from The Red Shoes and Tales of Hoffmann (director Powell, composer Brian Easdale, actrss Moira Shearer), it disconcerts by plunging into the lower depths of pornography and the middle distance of contemporary British film production. Its self-reflexivity starts with the mirroring of the author's name, Leo Marks, in his fictional filmmaker, Mark Lewis, and extends to the presence of Michael Powell in the home-movie-within-the movie. Perhaps this film is the payment for Sabu's theft of the all-seeing eye in Powell's Thief of Bagdad.-William Nestrick