ABSTRACT
1960, 1972: two dates which have marked the annals of writing on film and which correspond to the first public showing of Michael Powell's Peeping Tom and of Sam Peckinpah's Straw Dogs. The violent critical reaction to these two films, which, I would suggest, can be seen as a form of collective pathology, still has lessons for us today: Charles Barr's trenchant article is as relevant now as it was in 1972. 1 It is with this study, one of the most incisive and intelligent I have read on some of the most urgent and fundamental questions that this volume is addressing, that I shall start the ball rolling.
