Michael Powell’s study of loneliness, voyeurism, and murder
earned him the end of his career from a critical establishment
that found his treatise both unpleasant and unfriendly. The
director of The Red Shoes
(1948) ruminates long and hard on the underside of cinematic
pleasure, serving up a protagonist who has figured out a way to
not only capture his murder victims on film, but to reflect
their own faces at the moment of death back up at them as they
are photographed. Feminist critics, led by Laura Mulvey, would
spend the latter half of the 1970s arguing over the male gaze
that this male filmmaker recognized and explicated more than a
decade before. This remarkable horror story is difficult but
unique viewing: measured, methodical, and conceptually
perverse. (Make sure you see Red Shoes star Moira Shearer as one of cameraman Mark's victims and Powell himself as Mark's sadistic father.)
Nightmares of Depravity: Unlucky 13 Horror Films
DEEP FOCUS
http://www.deep-focus.com/dfweblog/
Reviews by Bryant Frazer bryant@deep-focus.com
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