The Prize of Peril

A television channel starts a new programme. The rule is simple: a contestant is chosen, released into the city and five hunters are put on his trail. If he stays alive for the set time he takes a large sum. The hunters carry real weapons. The broadcast is live and the people in the street watch too; some hide the contestant, some inform on him. François Jacquemard is out of work and in debt; he applies and is chosen. The programme starts. He soon sees that the rules are not what they look like and that the channel does not want him to win. Yves Boisset directs. Gérard Lanvin plays François and Michel Piccoli the presenter; Marie-France Pisier and Bruno Cremer are in the cast. It is a French and Yugoslav co-production, made in 1983. The source is Robert Sheckley's story. Other productions have drawn on the same story; a better known American film with a similar premise was made years after this one. The matter it treats is television's need for an audience; the programme turns violence into entertainment and nobody objects. The film was made long before reality programming spread and its premise came to seem familiar later. The narrative puts the presenter at its centre; the character Piccoli plays is the system itself. The chases were shot in real streets and the crowd is used deliberately. The ending shows the channel winning and offers no hope. Its limit is the production; the budget is low, the pace uneven, and the effects simple. Who it is for: viewers who like European science fiction of the eighties and films that criticise the media. Who it is not for: it is old, plainly made, and the ending bleak.