Another trio of additions to the 4xblu online store is ready to be revealed. Today’s titles consist of Masters of Cinema’s Pier Paolo Pasolini two-fer, “Pigsty” and “Hawks and Sparrows,” Aki Kaurismäki’s “Ariel,” and Michael Powell’s “Peeping Tom.”
Despite the fact that he’d been one of Britain’s most beloved filmmakers for over two decades, the failure of a string of projects to get off the ground led Michael Powell to conclude that he needed to get with the times and do something more contemporary, such as what Alfred Hitchcock was doing with “Psycho.” Upon its release the film was savaged by critics, many of whom were made uncomfortable by the film’s contemporary setting and its seeming indictment of audiences as voyeurs who derive pleasure from the acts of violence they pay to see committed onscreen. The film torpedoed Powell’s career, but over the years it developed a cult following that included Martin Scorsese, who acquired an uncut 35mm color print of the film, which was restored and given a re-release — a reversal of fortune that led Powell to lament, “I make a film that nobody wants to see and then, thirty years later, everybody has either seen it or wants to see it.”