Don't Look Now – A 1973 Horror Classic in Review
Directed by Nicolas Roeg – Based on a Daphne du Maurier Short Story
The remarkable opening sequence in Don't Look Now, depicts a little girl in a shiny red rain coat rushing playfully toward a weedy, unkempt, and murky pond. Inside the country home that sits in the background, the little girl’s father studies slides of a decrepit church. One such slide contains the clear image of the bright red rain coat, sitting in a pew. Closely examining the image, the father inadvertently spills red ink on the slide. Meanwhile, outside, in the pouring rain, the little girl plunges into the pond, reaching for her red ball. The red ink quickly spreads over the church slide, while outside, the father futilely attempts to save his drowned daughter.
Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie: Death in Venice
The father, John Baxter (Donald Sutherland) brings his wife Laura (Julie Christie) along with him to Venice, where he is renovating the aforementioned church. In their mourning stupor, the couple interacts with one another and with others as if in a trance; Laura, medicated and numb; John, as an architect, mesmerized by the smallest of details.
The couple’s mutually vulnerable conditions lead to fateful distractions; Laura finds herself comforted by an elderly blind woman, who claims to be psychic; the old lady tells Laura that her little girl is happy and still present. Meanwhile, John can’t stop seeing sensual connections between his dead child and otherwise mundane things like rain, water, and the color red.
But, John is quick to clarify to Laura his skepticism regarding anything other than psychological trauma, in explaining their spooky experiences thus far in the very creepy city of dark alleyways and shadowy water canals.
Laura’s belief in the supernatural rises; and John’s irritation rises, at what he believes to be his wife’s inability to accept their daughter’s death; the rift threatens to break the two apart; but it never happens, because they come together, in an erotically-charged night in bed.
Donald Sutherland: Lost in Venice
Laura’s psychic friend warns her that John’s life is in danger; John scoffs. The tension is raised further when it appears there is a killer on the loose; which begins to chip away at John’s stoicism, especially when he sees one of the victims being lifted from the water, just as he had lifted his daughter from the pond.
And after Laura is forced to return to London to attend to their ailing son, John begins to see things. Most disturbingly, John sees the bright red jacket, dashing through the dark alleyways; ducking in and around the shadowy corners of the city.
From this point further, John will become carried away by a desperate search for answers; which will conclude in a shocking discovery that not only reverberates back through the whole of the film, but sends chills through the heart.
Nicolas Roeg's Daring Run of Films
Based on a short story by English writer Daphne du Maurier, Don’t Look Now was one of the few mystery stories that escaped the crafty eye of Alfred Hitchcock; as the legendary filmmaker would direct two of Dame du Maurier’s best pieces: Rebecca (1940) and The Birds (1963).
But, Hitchcock’s missed opportunity was fellow Brit filmmaker Nicolas Roeg’s gain; after serving as the great cinematographer on such masterpieces as Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Roeg was by 1973 forging a striking and daring reputation as a director determined to challenge the viewer’s expectations with such films as his odd treatise on fame and narcissism, Performance (1970); and the breath-taking power of his naturalistic family film, Walkabout (1971).
Nicolas Roeg followed Don’t Look Now by twisting another genre to his talented will, in the sci-fi mind-bender The Man Who Fell To Earth (1976); a movie that puts an exclamation mark on an incredible run of original and avant-garde films, that could be argued to be as influential as the myriad landmark films made in the 1970’s, the last golden age of cinema.
Don't Look Now
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