Death Watch

Illness has been beaten and people no longer die in pain. So dying has become rare, and like anything rare it can be sold. A television channel makes a programme: the last days of a dying person will be broadcast live. Katherine Mortenhoe is told she has a few weeks. She refuses the offer and disappears. The channel sends a man to find her. A camera has been fitted in Roddy's eye; whatever he sees is broadcast, and there is a condition: he must never be left in the dark or he will go blind. Roddy finds the woman and becomes her travelling companion. Bertrand Tavernier directs. Romy Schneider plays Katherine and Harvey Keitel plays Roddy; Harry Dean Stanton and Max von Sydow are in the cast. It is a French, German and British co-production. The film was shot in Glasgow; the city is used as the future with no science fiction set dressing added. The matter it treats is watching someone else die; the film builds it in 1980, long before reality programming. The narrative makes a victim of the man carrying the camera too; Roddy cannot sleep and must stay under light. The character of Katherine is not someone reconciled to her illness; she runs, and she is angry. The narrative turns in the middle and the truth about the illness changes. The film drew little attention on release and was reassessed years later. Its limit is pace; the narrative is slow, the science fiction elements few, and the ending still. Who it is for: viewers who like quiet science fiction and films that criticise the media. Who it is not for: it is slow, sombre, and the ending bitter.