On Wednesday we were asked to compare a two of the six films we have watched in class and it made me start to think about the movies we have seen and how some of them have certain themes in common.  Most of the films we have watched are all centered on movies themselves.  Singin’ in the Rain, Peeping Tom and 8 ½ in general really focus on the struggle of making a film.  Looking deeper at this theme of movies about movies, I saw a connection especially with Peeping Tom and 8 ½ and how they both centered on this idea for perfection.

Peeping Tom is a film that is centered around Mark a filmmaker in search of perfection. Mark is looking for the perfect shot of fear, which leads him to start killing women hoping for the perfect face of fear that will cause him to stop his search.  In 8 ½ you see the main character Guido unable to make his film because he is uninspired however there are multiple scene to me that suggest that he is actually in search for the perfect women.  Both of these also center on not being able to finish a project because they are too busy trying to attain perfection.

There are many scenes in 8 ½ that show Guidos struggle to find the prefect women.  Guido is surrounded by women a large part of the movie with leads me to think that he hasn’t found the perfect woman for him making him need a different woman for each situation.  Probably one of the more recognized scene is when he is in a room with all of the women in his life and they are all serving a different function for him.  This also apparent within the film he is directing as well because he is unable to cast a female lead.  We can also see his struggle to cast a female lead when pictures of female headshots surround him.   The only perfect women that seems to exist for him with in the film is Claudia who may or may not be real, my interpretation is that she in fact doesn’t exist.  The fact she doesn’t exist helps show that perfection is unattainable for him.

In Peeping Tom, Mark is surrounded by women; much like the character Guido.  However what Mark is looking for in a woman is much different.  In this film Mark has found the perfect woman but he is trying to find the perfect image of fear.  Mark is a much different character than Guido because Mark seems to be trying harder to find perfection even taking to killing women in order to find the perfect face of fear.

While these men are searching for different types of perfection this is an interesting theme that these two very different films share.  In both films you see how the search for perfection is really the end for the main characters; it causes Guido to commit career suicide and leads to the death of Mark. These films are in two different genres but they both make you look at how the search for perfection can really consume a person’s life and cause destruction.