Don't Look Now

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Horrorphile - October 2008

Don't Look Now

October 14th 2008 00:01

British cinematographer-turned-direct or Nicolas Roeg is most famous for three seminal, darkly brilliant movies made between the late-60s and the mid-70s: Performance (1970), Don’t Look Now (1973), and The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976). Each film tackles the themes of identity, relationships, survival, sex and death. Each film is directed with a non-linear approach to visual narrative, and each film is saturated in deep ambiguity and filled with symbolism.

Don’t Look Now is based on a story by Daphne Du Maurier and focuses around a married couple, John (Donald Sutherland) and Laura (Julie Christie) Baxter who are grieving over the loss of their daughter Christine (Sharon Williams) in a drowning accident. He is a restorer and after the harrowing tragedy on their country property (she dies after falling into a freezing-cold pond) takes a job working on church mosaics in Venice. His wife joins him, and they leave their young son Johnny (Nicolas Salter) in the care of a boarding school back in England.

Donald Sutherland as John Baxter

It is during this time in Venice; the colder months when the beautiful city is devoid of the tourists who flock during spring and summer, that they encounter supernatural references and associations linking to the death of their daughter. At a café Laura is befriended by two women, middle-aged Wendy (Clelia Matania) and her older blind sister Heather (Hilary Mason). Heather is a psychic and immediately reads Laura, identifying her dead daughter’s spirit. Later back at the table with John Laura faints.

Julie Christie as Laura Baxter

After being checked out at the hospital Laura claims she’s better than she’s ever been, but John is not convinced. The image of his daughter in her bright red Mac raincoat haunts him, and the presence of Venice’s waterways and the building’s surrounding glass only fuels his anxiety and a creeping paranoia. Back in their hotel room the couple find a moment of rare solace and the power of sexual healing before dressing for dinner.

Sharon Williams as Christine Baxter

The blind psychic warned Laura her husband is in danger. There is a serial killer on the loose, murdering young women, whose bodies are found dumped in the canals. John insists Laura return to England. So she does. Some time later John sees Laura and the two sisters, oblivious to him, pass by on a funeral barge. John is perplexed, bewildered. Events that seem like déjà vu now appear like a frightening premonition, and John now starts to see a small person in a scarlet red raincoat disappear round corners. Soon everything will collide.

John tries in vain to save his daughter

Don’t Look Now is brilliant filmmaking. Apart from Donald Sutherland’s ridiculous hairstyle (looks like a bloody wig ... perhaps it was), and director Roeg’s penchant for camera zooms, very little of the movie has dated. The provocative and unconventional approach to the editing (which Roeg had developed during Performance, co-directed with the late, great Donald Cammell) heightens the story’s obsessive, wholly immersive themes of fate and randomness.

Hilary Mason as Heather, the blind psychic

Don’t Look Now unfolds like a strange and mysterious puzzle. How does everything fit together? Should everything fit together? It manipulates certain story conventions and twists them in interesting directions. Time, space and reality are forever connected in disorderly ways. There’s a sense of mythology at work too, Orpheus and his journey into the underworld echoes through the ancient cold archways and dark stone lane ways.

A small figure in red on a photo slide troubles John

The Italian title translates roughly as To Venice … A Shocking Red December. And indeed the colour red is used in the most affecting and clever way. It is removed from most of the production design and art direction, so when it is used it becomes a powerful visual motif. Christine’s raincoat is the most significant, but Laura’s stylish red boots, John’s scarf, the stain-glass mosaics, and, of course, human blood. The image of red ink bleeding across one of John’s colour slides re-occurs several times and provides the film with a disturbing piece of symbolism.

John strolls through the Venice piazza

The sex scene between John and Laura is considered one of the most famous in cinema history, with whole essays written about it. It is by no means gratuitous or unnecessary to the movie’s plot, yet curiously Roeg put it into the shooting script at the last minute to compensate for the numerous scenes of the couple arguing or having a difference of opinion.

Don't Look Now Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland

A tender moment during that famous scene

The Baxters are searching. They are searching for their lost, damaged souls, as well as grappling for a sense of resignation to their tragedy. They probably haven’t made love in months and months. The way Nicolas Roeg, along with editor Graeme Clifford, crosscuts between the couple fucking on the bed and the couple casually dressing up to step out is a marvel of cinematic grammar. It also very cleverly emphasizes “mortality” to sex; the end of the act as opposed to the more conventional “climaxing”. It must be said that the sexual activity looks surprisingly convincing, although it was shorn of half a second to avoid a U.S. X-rating.

John and Laura watch one of the serial killer's victims being retrieved

It is this natural chemistry between the actors that makes the film’s denouement so upsetting, however another curious anecdote (further testament to the actors’ skill) is that the sex scene was the first sequence of the movie to be shot, and Sutherland and Christie had never met before. They improvised on a closed set. Christie was incredibly nervous. Watching the scene you’d never know!

Profondo rosso

The movie's final scene - including a subtle, yet inspired physical nuance suggested by Roeg – transcends the story's creeping evil and delivers a melancholic, but ultimately rewarding closure to the story. That’s not to say Don’t Look Now isn’t a thoroughly chilling experience that resonates long after the movie has finished. A fragmented nightmare framed like a mosaic; elegant beauty and arcane mystery, with a title as elusive, ponderous and enthralling as the film itself.

Here's the original trailer:

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Posted By: Bryn - Category: movie reviews

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Comments

7 Comments. [ Add A Comment ]

Comment by Damo

October 14th 2008 00:33

For the Sake of Argument
My Apologetics

I started watching this late one Friday night. I am sorry that I did not finish it.
I like the opening and use of red on the slide.

Comment by Cibbuano

October 14th 2008 01:54

20/20 Filmsight
Science News
Hunt Famous
Orble Post of the Day
Fat Cult
Techbreak

I've got to have it!

Comment by Bryn

October 14th 2008 04:13

Horrorphile

Damo, you should hunt this gem down at your local video store!

Cibby, yeah, acquire it now!

Comment by David O'Connell

October 14th 2008 04:43

Screen Fanatic

I absolutely love this film, and the music by Pino Donaggio is sensational as well (and his very first foray into scoring too).

The blind sister is very chilling - one of so many memorable, creepy aspects.

Great review, Bryn, of a true classic - the ultimate arthouse horror film, but shit, I can't believe that last photo you posted!! Kind of spoilt one of the great endings in a way for anyone who hasn't seen it.

Comment by Bryn

October 15th 2008 00:56

Horrorphile

David, yes, I knew I'd get into trouble with that ... I thought I could get away with it, but I should probably remove it. I can be terrible sometimes with spoilers ...

Comment by Bryn

October 15th 2008 06:20

Horrorphile

David, thanks for the reprimand ... I've changed that spoiler pic.

Comment by David O'Connell

October 16th 2008 03:37

Screen Fanatic

Nice one Bryn, that memorable but ghastly face is hard to shake off, and a real shocker the first time round!

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[ Next - THOU SHALT NOT PLUNDER ... (a post remake) ]

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