SPOILERS!
I was shown this film in a course called "Modernism & Modernity" in the Cinema Dep't at Binghamton University back in 1986 and have never forgotten it (thank you Prof. Walsh). I have gone on to use it in my own Media Studies high school class, for it is perhaps even a more relevant critique of a celebrity and "reality" obsessed screen culture today than it was when it was released in 1980. It also serves as a fine example of how the genre of science fiction need not rely on "futuristic" expensive locations and effects, for it is incredibly location-driven and the bleakness of the Scotland it was filmed in reflects its interior contemplations on the "progress" of humanity via technology. (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. And unavoidable for us it seems. 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.... for his shame in that knowing, as if sight gives you knowledge. (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. Wow.
This film may very well be the most memorable film I have ever seen and, yes, I agree with all the other comment-writers that it should indeed be brought into the light of day (WITHOUT "remaking" it!!!!!)
I was shown this film in a course called "Modernism & Modernity" in the Cinema Dep't at Binghamton University back in 1986 and have never forgotten it (thank you Prof. Walsh). I have gone on to use it in my own Media Studies high school class, for it is perhaps even a more relevant critique of a celebrity and "reality" obsessed screen culture today than it was when it was released in 1980. It also serves as a fine example of how the genre of science fiction need not rely on "futuristic" expensive locations and effects, for it is incredibly location-driven and the bleakness of the Scotland it was filmed in reflects its interior contemplations on the "progress" of humanity via technology. (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. And unavoidable for us it seems. 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.... for his shame in that knowing, as if sight gives you knowledge. (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. Wow.
This film may very well be the most memorable film I have ever seen and, yes, I agree with all the other comment-writers that it should indeed be brought into the light of day (WITHOUT "remaking" it!!!!!)