As of 2017, we remain on track for this sad and beautiful science fiction film to become true. Its story, adapted from David Compton’s 1974 novel The Unseeing Eye, of a man (Harvey Keitel) with the world’s first surgically installed video camera hidden in his eyeballs and the terminally ill woman (Romy Schneider) whom he sneakily records for a reality TV show is more cutting today than ever. What puts this over the top is that it’s an adult film in the truest sense of the word. Director Bertrand Tavernier is far more absorbed in these characters than in the scenario. He takes it slow. His two lead actors—as well as a strong supporting cast that includes Harry Dean Stanton and Max Von Sydow in parts that play to their strengths—work here at the peak of their powers and Tavernier gives them room for pauses, off-hand remarks and conversation. Harvey Keitel’s growing guilt is more important than any technology and Romy Schneider’s uneasy bitterness and warm relationship with her ex-husband are more absorbing than any social commentary.
And if none of that grabs you, maybe the sumptuous scenery might. Frenchman Bertrand Tavernier fell in love with Glasgow, Scotland at around this time and he deliberately set the film there. It’s a classic foreigner’s-eye-view of the city’s offerings. Through Tavernier and cinematographer Pierre-William Glenn’s camera, one feels the stone surfaces, smells the grass and tastes the overcast air.