La mort en direct

Plot synopsis:
The film is set in a future where death from illness has become extremely unusual. When Katherine Mortenhoe (Romy Schneider) is diagnosed as having an incurable disease, she becomes a celebrity and is besieged by journalists. The television company NTV (headed by Vincent Ferriman) offers her a large sum of money if she will allow her last days to be filmed and made into a reality television show – they have already spied on her as she is told of her diagnosis (her doctor is colluding with them) and prepared posters for the show which show her face (to her annoyance when she sees the posters on display before they have contacted her).
Katherine pretends to agree but evades NTV's employees and goes on the run with the assistance of a casual acquaintance called Roddy (Harvey Keitel). The audience knows – but she does not – that Roddy is, in fact, a senior NTV cameraman who has undergone an experimental surgical procedure which implants cameras and transmitters behind his eyes, so that everything he sees is relayed back to NTV, who use it as the basis for their reality show. Roddy has done this mainly for money to give his estranged wife and their son. A side-effect of the procedure is that he will go blind if he experiences more than a short period of darkness; he uses drugs to keep awake, has learned to sleep for brief periods with his eyes open, and carries a flashlight which he shines on his eyes at night. Meanwhile, Katherine's doctor has discovered that she is not actually dying and he informs NTV who tell no one and continue with the show, broadcasting an edited version of Roddy's feed.
Continuing on the lam, Katherine asks Roddy to take her to Land's End. The two arrive and sit on the beach and have a long talk. Katherine then asks Roddy to take her to town and buy her some lipstick. He persuades her to stay by the beach knowing that she will be recognized if she goes with him. In town, Roddy sees "Death Watch" playing in a pub and begins to cry. He returns to the beach as night is falling and has an emotional breakdown, losing his flashlight. Katherine comes to him and he asks her to help him. She finds the flashlight and shines it in his eyes, but he has already gone blind. Roddy admits who he is, and what he is doing, to her.
As the feed has ended to NTV due to Roddy's blindness, they send a helicopter to Land's End with a film crew to finally reveal to Katherine that she is not dying. However, Roddy and Katherine leave undetected as the helicopter arrives. Katherine takes Roddy to her husband's (Von Sydow) home in the country nearby. She has not seen her husband Gerald in 6 years. After the two stay overnight, Katherine and Gerald talk about their relationship as Roddy sleeps in a chair outside. NTV calls Gerald's home and after he speaks with them, he tells Katherine they are coming and that she is not dying and needs to stop taking the medicine she was given. Instead, Katherine takes all of it. Gerald is angry at first but finally accepts her decision. Roddy awakens and Gerald informs him that Katherine has died. NTV arrives by helicopter with producer Vincent and Roddy's wife in tow. Roddy and Gerald threaten to kill Vincent and he and the rest of the NTV crew leave with Roddy's wife staying behind. Roddy reconciles with his wife and introduces her to Gerald.

Tags: tragedy

Review:
Bertrand Tavernier's tale of a critically ill woman hounded by a television network for its popular show 'Deathwatch' could be looked back in 1980 as almost a premonition in these times of reality TV and their popularity with today's viewing public.A strong cast portrays a simple, if at times ponderous story dealing the acceptance of death and those out to prosper from it, with Harvey Keitel putting in a passionate driving performance as the TV company's 'virtual camera', a point in the film which adds a certain element of fantasy to the whole proceedings, along with vague decrepit industrial towns and eerie bays as the backdrop for the main characters to drift through.
However, despite strong performances all round, the journey the film takes never seems to reach a definitive destination, rather slows, bogs down and then finally stops, and despite keeping the viewer intrigued throughout never seems to deliver anything more than the inevitable.There is no doubt 'Deathwatch' is an original, eerie and at times beautiful film but one that does not necessarily make sense, just like Max von Sydow's eloquent line in the film that 'Events that have no significance like the flight of a bird, do not have to mean something.'.
Great flick, Romy Schneider's last film and Harvey Keitel is wonderful..
I saw this film in May 1980, loved it, and immediately became a Harvey Keitel and Romy Schneider fan.
This was haunting -- especially since in this film she plays a woman who is dying and just wants to be left alone.
Harvey Keitel plays a reporter working for a TV station who wants to up their ratings by filming raw drama.
When I saw the Truman Show, it reminded me of this film from so long ago whose treatment of the subject matter (filming someone's life  who is unaware of the fact) was such a new and exciting concept.
Our local arthouse cinema, the Glasgow Film Theatre, screened a one off presentation of what was alleged to be the last print in existence.
Harvey Keitel is excellent as the human camera that allows society the ultimate act of voyeurism - watching someone die on TV.
Prescient dark film - how long 'til we're watching "Deathwatch"?.
Romy Schneider's last film, ironically enough, and an excellent very real performance in a fairly artsy 70s vein.
I should note I saw this in Glasgow some years ago, and it was the European cut, not what sounds to be a bowdlerized American version which misses some of the point..
In what is said to be a tragically prophetic role, Romy Schneider gives a superb performance as a dying woman at the mercy of a voyeuristic society presided over by a greedy television executive (coldly played by the brilliant Harry Dean Stanton).
Science fiction films in recent years have been noticeably lacking both credible science and original fiction, but this multi-national production is a startling exception, presenting a complex tale of emotional manipulation that engages the imagination without the crutch of special effects.
The intriguing plot, set in a recognizable near future where medical advances have completely eliminated the threat of natural death, follows a young volunteer (Harvey Keitel) who after having experimental micro-cameras implanted into his eyes agrees to follow a woman known to have a rare, incurable disease, in order to record on video her final days for the entertainment of a desensitized and nostalgic TV audience.
Despite the morbid premise (anticipating by two decades the current glut of tacky, ersatz 'reality TV' programming) it's a surprisingly life-affirming movie, maintaining a mood of cautious optimism even while prophesying dark days just around the corner..
I don't know if it is on video, but I wish I could watch this film again, after 20 years the idea still feels fresh and alive.
Today, I have told a writer who is working on a cyberfilm script, to go watch this film  first.
One of Romy Schneider's greatest films..
From that moment on, Death Watch (La Mort en Direct) has been one of my favourite films.
Although there are some weaker moments (a dull voice-over from a supporting actress, a climax that does not really hit the spot, French opening titles) the acting, the dialogues, haunting soundtrack and the charisma of Schneider and Keitel make watching this film a very good experience.
Credit also to the director of photography and his camera crew, whose wonderful style may remind you of Dean Cundey's work on Halloween (1978)..
A great film, and quite scary, specially for Tavernier's view over the media (television here, but just replace that word, and nothing will be different), in a not so far future.
Sad, because was Romy Schneider's last film.
She, and Harvey Keitel, are in the leading roles, under Tavernier's direction the two in top form.
In a way, this was ahead of other future "prophecy films", sure one of the best..
I just finished watching this movie in a pitch black room and boy was it dark.Several sequences bordered on the invisible as Harvey Keitel descends into a cameraman´s room 101.
Excellent shift of pace as Max von Sydow enters to fulfill Romy Schneiders dreams.
The world is so infatuating, troubled and desperate that the only way we can care about it is to run away from our troubles by seeing others in distress, dying or getting killed by the thousands each day on the news or in fictionalized accounts as we get ourselves fed in what is called "entertainment".
In the world of "Deathwatch", the latest advance in satisfying bored beings (won't call them human since most of them here are mere walking robots) is to follow a reality TV show whose main star is a terminal patient who is about to die at any moment.
A show like this would be considered an outrageous act, a new low yet all sides of the issue whether being regular viewers or righteous souls opposed to it, they all watch it.
Well, we have Roddy (Harvey Keitel), a volunteer on a new experience where he has a camera implanted on his brain which records everything he sees, his eyes are the intrepid lenses who follow the poor Katherine (Romy Schnieder) recently diagnosed with an incurable disease.
They want to be there, they wanna be present in those moments thinking they won't let her die alone.
George Orwell's "1984", Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World" and Ray Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451" all worked in giving us frightening visions of a future that already was somewhat happening in the time these authors were living.
It throws that mass consumerism and media are evil forces but it never gives them a proper face: the audience who watches the reality show all look simple people, compelled by the woman's tragedy; the master behind the curtains (Harry Dean Stanton) seems too good despite his ways of getting what he wants, always hiding himself from anything until he realizes there's no other way than show up and face the problem.
All I know is that as long as it kept feeding me with ideas, new paths of thinking the unthinkable or the less shown on other films it kept me captivated, fully immersed in its story.
Luckily, the movie didn't mirrored its characters in the sense of us watching something dying slowly in front of our eyes.
The final result is an interesting piece about mortality and how powerless humans are in face of many obstacles (and this is all sides of the issue, when it comes to Roddy's own problems while filming this project).
Bertrand Tavernier makes an artistic, different and beautiful film over a delicate and rarely touched upon theme with efficiency which is death and everything surround it.Here's a quite innovative sci-fi film, more human, down to earth and less imaginative and technical as those films tend to be, "Deathwatch" is a thoughtful experience with pleasant and powerful performances by Schneider, Keitel and Max von Sydow playing Katherine's first husband.
I had been wanting to watch Deathwatch for years mainly to see Keitel and Stanton on screen together in something other than The Last Temptation Of Christ.
Intelligent script, beautiful direction and photography, and faultless acting from Romy Schneider and Harvey Keitel in particular.
PLEASE try and see this haunting and increasingly more pertinent film, it will resonate with you for a long time..
Romy, Keitel, great script-- but movie doesn't live up to its potential.
This is not her best film and she was a bit past her prime at this point, but anything with Romy is worth seeing.
The film itself is highly flawed, which is a shame because it had all the right elements-- great director, brilliant cast, fascinating script.
but more likely they'd give it to a Hollywood director who would cast Meg Ryan in the Romy Schneider part.
So, they use their newest invention to follow her surreptitiously...a camera embedded into a reporter's skull (Harvey Keitel).
So, what he sees, the world sees as well.In some ways, the film is very prescient.
After all, in this future, reality television is king...just like it is today.
I think this film is worth watching.
In "Death Watch", Roddy (Harvey Keitel) takes journalism to a whole new level.
The person of interest is a woman named Katherine(Romy Schneider, 1938-82) who has a terminal illness.
In a future that looks like 1979 Scotland, a TV show wants to chronicle a dying woman's final days because death is now rare among all but the elderly thanks to modern medicine (we used to have faith in that).
Besides the eye cameras in Harvey Kietel's eyes and a computer the heroine uses to co-write trashy novels, not much of the future is seen on screen.
This European science fiction story reminded me in many ways of Fassbinder's "World on a Wire," the starkness, the deliberate pacing, and the art house pretensions all within a clever sci-fi premise.
The story here has TV producer Harry Dead Stanton sending reporter Harvey Keitel (who has camera implants in his eyes with special x-ray properties) to interview a dying writer, Romy Schneider.
Unfortunately, the film moves as a leadened pace and is populated with uninvolving characters, despite three strong actors in the leads, along with Max Von Sydow in a supporting role.
I love this film, and have seen it several times on video and even once at a repertory cinema in Vancouver.
Here's a shock -- the version of the film available here has some significant DIFFERENCES from the North American in print.
American version, or Romy Schneider telling Max von Sydow how she loves to see the moon come out during the day.
But there's also a significant plot point that differs, too -- conveyed by a few brief scenes and lines that are NOT in the American version (WARNING: spoilers follow).
(I mean, it HAS been years since the last time I saw it, so maybe I've just forgotten the film, but I really don't think so).
KATHERINE IS NOT ACTUALLY DYING, in the movie; she has been deceived by the doctors and the TV crew.
The doctors reveal this shortly after Keitel blinds himself -- they have a conversation that goes like, "Do you think he should have been told that she's not really dying?" It's the medicine she's been prescribed; IT is making her sick.
Maybe it was felt North American audiences couldn't handle it?If any of you can confirm that I'm not nuts here, and that the film I've just described is quite DIFFERENT from the US version, PLEASE e-mail me.
A superb & somber futuristic thinking man's science fiction film.
In a bland, sterile, heavily automated future where dying from terminal illness has become virtually obsolete, the fact that best-selling writer Katherine Mortenhoe (a fabulously fiery, feisty turn by Romy Schneider) has a rare mortal sickness that will bring about her untimely demise makes her a prime subject for a tasteless mondo-style live atrocity TV show.
So amoral, opportunistic director Vincent (a sleazily appealing Harry Dean Stanton), the man responsible for the lurid, top-rated "Death Watch" series, has cameras implanted behind the eyes of eager beaver reporter Roddy (the one and only Harvey Keitel, who's excellent as usual).
Roddy befriends the unsuspecting Katherine and secretly records her final days in all their ghastly intimacy.Directed in a crisp, low-key, thoughtful manner by Bertrand Taverneir, with a lucid, intelligent, provocative script by Taverneir and David Rayfiel, sumptuous, prowling, appropriately voyeuristic cinematography by Pierre William Glenn, a beautifully melancholy tone, a frantic screaming violins classical music score by Antoine Duhamel, a deliberately gradual pace, and a lovely cameo by Max Von Sydow as Katherine's wise, reclusive schoolteacher father, this eerily prophetic and gravely philosophical film ruminates on a compelling variety of very timely and topical post-modern issues: technological advancements making it easier to invade a person's privacy and causing creativity to stagnate (Katherine's novels are actually written by a computer that she strictly programs ideas into), technology overwhelming mankind so greatly that it causes people to become unfeeling, dispassionate automatons, the morbidly irresistible allure of real life tragedy, man's denial of his own mortality, journalistic ethics, dying with your dignity intact, even fate vs.
Spoiler?: (Harvey catching sightof the intimate moments he's filmed in a grocery store and realizing the betrayal of trust he has engineered.) The brief soliloquoy by Max Von Sydow on the lack of 'meaning' in life- which somehow is comforting!
The version that another commentor mentions wherein Romy (and without youother cineastes I wouldn't know that this was Romy's last film- what a waste!) is not dying- is just being set up- that would make perfect sense.
(In these ways, it reminds me of the recent "Children of Men" by Alfonso Cuaron.)The idea of video cameras being implanted in someone's eyes is brilliant and full of narrative possibilities.
The portrayal of the reality TV show producer as being callous and only interested in ratings - with his firm belief that everyone/viewers have a "right to know" pushes the story into the opposites: "If everything is of interest, nothing is important", says the dying woman in a society where there is no natural death.Sight as knowing and the eyes as technology opens up many theoretical discussions, especially because of the Oedipal-like scene where Roddy blinds himself for "knowing" too much....
(Yet as Hitchcock showed us again and again, sight is unreliable.) Reading in another user's comment that the original film's story had Katherine's death a falsity set up by the producers in order to set their show in motion made me gasp, for that makes all of the film's meanings even more powerful and painful.
If Harvey Keitel with camera eyes doesn't creep you out, then the concept of "deathwatching", a reality show premise if there ever was one, certainly will.
You could argue that Katherine signed off on it, as all of today's reality-show contestants do, but we're not seeing the most watchable scenes as we do on a reality show, instead this film shows long, boring stretches of time, self-reflection, bickering, and routine mundane details such as sleeping in a hostel or riding on a bus, intended to convey a sense of impending doom I suppose.
Max von Sydow is wonderful, as he is in everything he does, and here he makes the most of a small but important role as he tries to give Katherine some dignity.
***SPOILERS*** Futuristic movie about this TV reality show that has a person die live on TV from some unknown and incurable disease who's ratings have been going through the roof.
It's up to the shows producer Vincent Ferreiman, Harry Dean Stanton,to get new contestants who are about to die on the show for a fee of $500,000.00 to $600,000.00 and let them do the dying for him live on TV!
The latest contestant Kathy Graves, Romy Schneider, has been told by her quack doctor who works for the reality show a Dr.Mason, William Russell,that she's got not more then two months to live.
Kathy soon gets a bit fed up in becoming a TV star by dying live on the air and goes into hiding in the slummy section of Glasgow Scotland at a church run flop house for the homeless.
It's later that reporter Roddy,Harvey Keitel, is hired by the TV studio NTV to track Kathy down with a TV video camera implanted in his head.
It's then that Roddy like Gregory Peck in the 1969 film "The Chairman" can record Kathy's every movement up until the moment she dies of her fatal disease which will be broadcast live on NTV!As Roddy gets to know Kathy his opinions about her suddenly change in that she's not only some hot dish, in the cold dreary and drizzling Gasgow surroundings, but he suspects that she's nowhere as sick or dying of an incurable disease as he's been told by his boss TV producer Ferriman.
In fact later Roddy's build in his skull video camera malfunctions that also provided him, who lost his sight by being a POW in some unmanned past war, with the ability to see.***SPOILER ALERT*** Joining sides with Kathy, who's now his both eyes and ears, that blind and clueless Ruddy gets to her, with Kathy's directions, first husband Gerald Mortenhoe's, Max Von Sydon, house on the Scottish coast who for the last six years has been writing classical music and getting drunk on 12 to 25 year old bottles of scotch whiskey.
It's then that the truth comes out about Kathy's so-called fatal illness which is not only not fatal but had been made up by Ferriman and quack doctor Mason just to have her as a contestant on his top rated TV show "Death Watch"!
The best part about all that was that Ferriman had no way of getting Kathy's last moments on earth broadcast on his show since his cameraman Roddy, with his head installed TV video camera out of commission, had no way of recording it.