Don’t Look Now – 1973 | 110 mins | Drama, Thriller | Colour

Plot Synopsis

Don’t Look Now is director Nicolas Roeg’s gripping occult thriller based on Daphne du Maurier short story.

John and Laura Baxter (Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie) star as an art restorer and his wife struggling to recover from the trauma of their daughter’s accidental drowning – was her death misadventure? Shortly after their daughter’s death the young British couple travel to Venice, Italy, in winter on a working holiday to restore a church. Once there, they get involved with two weird sisters, Heather and Wendy (Hilary Mason and Clelia Matania), one of who is a blind medium who insists she can get them in touch with their late daughter and warns them of danger. John refuses to believe a word of it but his wife tries to convince her husband that their daughter is communicating from the afterlife. John begins to change his mind when he is haunted by dreamlike visions of his little girl trotting through Venice in the red coat she wore at her death. Once he catches up with the diminutive figure, it turns out to be a maniacal dwarf who stabs him to death.

Perhaps the best known scene in Don’t Look Now is the couple’s notorious lovemaking session that is intertwined with Sutherland and Christie dispassionately dressing for dinner. The scene was intended to suggest the ease and normality of a married couple’s routine, rumour spread that Sutherland and Christie had gotten carried away during the shooting of the scene and were in fact making love.