“Don’t Look Now”
British Lion Films, 1973
Starring: Donald Sutherland, Julie Christie, Hilary Mason, Clelia Matania
Directed by: Nicolas Roeg
The plot: After the accidental drowning of their young daughter at their English country home, John Baxter (Sutherland) and his grief-stricken wife Laura (Christie) go to Venice after John accepts a job restoring an ancient church. Laura encounters two elderly sisters, Heather (Mason) and Wendy (Matania), at a restaurant. Heather is a blind psychic; she tells Laura she is able to “see” her deceased daughter. They attempt a séance to contact the child’s spirit. Meanwhile, John consistently glimpses a little girl resembling his daughter, clad in the red raincoat she was wearing when she drowned. A serial killer is at large in the city, cutting the throats of women.
Why it’s good: “Don’t Look Now” is disturbing, disquieting, and malevolent. Intense and frightening, the film is part ghost story, part psychological thriller, and part murder mystery. Toss in occult overtones, and it makes for a very unique independent production. Atmosphere is all in this movie: the recurring motifs of water, rain, the color red, and flashbacks to the horrific moment when John discovers his daughter’s sodden, lifeless body create a relentless mood of foreboding and fear. Even the beautiful Venice locations seem relentlessly gloomy and threatening. Christie and Sutherland are brooding and fragile as the grief- and guilt-stricken couple (the child died in their home’s back garden pond while unsupervised). Like Evan Hunter with Hitchcock’s “The Birds” before them, screenwriters Allan Scott and Chris Bryant crafted a powerful, fleshed-out script from Daphne Du Maurier’s slighter novella. The film is so multi-layered it demands a second viewing. Director Roeg handles his material as a master of the macabre: the final scene where John comes face-to-face with the truth that solves two mysteries is a rare flower in that it’s truly terrifying. You will not readily shake the horrific image from your mind.
The legacy: After a distinguished career as a cinematographer, Roeg quickly established himself as a highly individualized stylist with films like “Performance” and “Walkabout.” He employed a fractured, fragmented editing style in his films, along with an obsession about communication and miscommunication. This film was beset by real dangers while shooting: the opening sequence of the little girl drowning became an on-set nightmare, and a scene where Sutherland’s character almost falls to his death while restoring a mosaic came close to reality. There was a controversy over a nude love scene between the man and wife (Sutherland and Christie were off-screen lovers during the shoot), which was unusually explicit for the time, and false rumors persist to this day that the sex was not simulated. The film did well at the box office and got extremely positive reviews from influential critics. Roeg maintained his high standard with material and style in his follow-ups, “The Man Who Fell to Earth,” and “Bad Timing: a Sensual Obsession.” Criterion did their usual superior job with the DVD, which includes great interviews and a documentary on Roeg.