Reviews & Ratings for
Death Watch More at IMDbPro »La mort en direct (original title)

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18 out of 21 people found the following review useful:
cult movie shot in Glasgow- Scotland in 1979, 9 March 2001
Author: nellyd23

This film was shot in my home town, Glasgow, in 1979. Since then it has rarely been seen and indeed I only saw it myself for the first time this year. Our local arthouse cinema, the Glasgow Film Theatre, screened a one off presentation of what was alleged to be the last print in existence. Though the print itself was old and worn the film blew me away with its futuristic storyline, fantastic cast and phenomenal locations. It captures Glasgow as it was in the late 70's just before a period of great changes in the landscape of the city. Tavernier skillfully uses an environment that is full of eery imagery - graveyards, cranes and an industrial landscape that is grinding to a halt. The film also depicts a society fascinated with death. Harvey Keitel is excellent as the human camera that allows society the ultimate act of voyeurism - watching someone die on TV. Awesome. Someone, somewhere please commission

13 out of 13 people found the following review useful:
Prescient dark film - how long 'til we're watching "Deathwatch"?, 6 December 2003

Author: Fred from Boston, Mass.

This movie foretold the downside of the "reality TV" craze twenty years before it happened. Wonderful brooding cinematography around greater Glasgow at its most depressed. This is definitely a film which deserves to be in greater circulation and better known than it currently is. 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.

13 out of 13 people found the following review useful:
Great flick, Romy Schneider's last film and Harvey Keitel is wonderful., 22 October 1999
Author: rosie-56 from Oregon, USA

I saw this film in May 1980, loved it, and immediately became a Harvey Keitel and Romy Schneider fan. I was shocked and saddened to read the next week in the newspaper that Romy Schneider had died suddenly. 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. Harvey follows her, befriends her, and secretly films her on the run as she falls sicker and falls in love with Harvey. There are wonderful twists in the plot and technology ground breakers. Harvey has a camera lens implanted in his eye but the side effect is that he can never sleep. 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. Check this film out. You will not be disappointed!

10 out of 10 people found the following review useful:
Driftwood., 6 May 2002
Author: Warren Hawkes from Melbourne, Australia

Bertrand Tavernier's tale of a critically ill woman hounded by a television network for it's popular show 'Deathwatch' could be looked back in 1980 as almost a premonition in these times of reality TV and it's popularity in 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.'

7 out of 7 people found the following review useful:
International version different than N. American?, 21 May 2002
Author: (ammacinn@hotmail.com) from Alienated in Vancouver

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

I love this film, and have seen it several times on video and even once at a repertory cinema in Vancouver. I'm in Japan at the moment, and just picked up an old Japanese video release of it here from a second-hand store. Here's a shock -- the version of the film available here has some significant DIFFERENCES from the North American in print. There are some minor scenes that were cut from the North American release -- Keitel announcing a commercial break and shining his shoes, which he tells Stanton are made of ostrich, is a scene I sure don't recall in the N. 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. We think she really is sick all along, but in fact she is being tricked, with the plan of "rescuing her" later in the series. 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. When Stanton calls the Mortenhoe residence, and Mortenhoe tells Katherine that "they're on the way," von Sydow has lines about how "it's all a mistake, you're not really sick, it was all a stunt -- you just have to stop taking the medicine!" So when Stanton and the TV crew and such are racing to Mortenhoe's in the helicopters, they're coming, in part, to "rescue" Katherine; and her decision to take all the pills and commit suicide, to ruin them, plays VERY DIFFERENTLY in this context. 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. One easy way to test would be to check out the runtime on the video release back there -- the original one, from way back when, I think on Embassy. The runtime is NOT 128 minutes (the version I watched actually is).

All told, the international cut is slower, meanders more, but is ultimately the superior version, carrying Katherine's defiance out more fully. I recommend it, if you can actually find it. If you're curious, no, it isn't in print here anymore.

6 out of 6 people found the following review useful:
dark, 27 August 2001
Author: brian hart (brianhart64@yahoo.com) from madrid, spain

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. Romy Schneider a revelation and spreading compassion on all throughout. The cityscapes are glorious and the faceless people of Glasgow add to the alienation expressed by the script. Excellent shift of pace as Max von Sydow enters to fulfill Romy Schneiders dreams. Great cast, though Harry Dean Stanton under-used, and a sin that this is not more widely recognised.

7 out of 8 people found the following review useful:
A superb & somber futuristic thinking man's science fiction film, 1 February 2006

Author: Woodyanders (Woodyanders@aol.com) from The Last New Jersey Drive-In on the Left

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

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. But the fiercely proud and self-sufficient Katherine refuses to prostitute her impending death into a hideous spectacle for a jaded audience's sick enjoyment. 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. free will. A brilliant, moving, and most accomplished thinking man's science fiction gem.

7 out of 9 people found the following review useful:
An under-appreciated, influential gem of a movie..., 28 October 2003
Author: Alec A. Head (funeralprocession@hotmail.com) from Carmel, California

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). Also of note is an elegant cameo by the legendary Max von Sydow.

Why this movie has yet to get a rerelease is entirely beyond me. It doesn't help that it's nearly impossible to find in terms of both rental and sale. If you are able to track it down, then do not pass up the chance to see it.

4 out of 4 people found the following review useful:
sci-fi without the hardware, 13 November 2010

Author: Michael Neumann from United States

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.

4 out of 4 people found the following review useful:
Why have I never heard of this film before?, 17 July 2004
Author: susan-191

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

This was listed on a commercial station (55- in NYC- thank you!) and was

played with mercifully few breaks. Still! An amazing, timely, quite profound and haunting movie. As mentioned elsewhere it is a bit ponderous and does

meander, but the best moments are gorgeous. Spoiler?: (Harvey catching sight

of 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 you

other 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. Harry Dean is fabulous- why doesn't he work more? Please consider upping the rating of this.

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