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Must-have movies: Don't Look Now (1973)

Don't Look Now is the only film ever to have simultaneously raised the bar for explicit sex and psychological horror, revelled in the narrative power of imaginative editing, and ensured that a generation of parents would never, ever buy their children a red plastic raincoat.

Adapted in 1973 by director Nic Roeg from a Daphne du Maurier novella, it centres on John and Laura Baxter (Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie), who, after the death of their daughter Christine, go to Venice, where he is restoring a church. There they encounter a pair of old sisters, one of them clairvoyant, who claims she can "see" Christine between them – laughing, but also warning John of danger.

As well as coaxing career-best performances from the leads, and beautifully capturing the sinister side of Venice, Roeg's masterstroke was his subtle but powerful interweaving of strange motifs and images. In the opening sequence, this allows him to convey absolute horror while giving us only fleeting glimpses of the drowning child. Instead, we get the before (Christine, in shiny red mac, playing by the deep pond in the Baxters' garden; a window pane breaking; John examining a photographic slide of a church interior); and the after (John tearing towards the pond, and then a repeated slow-motion shot of him, mouth agape, as he pulls his cold daughter from the water).

Christine's actual death is symbolised by the sudden reddening of the slide, when John accidentally spills some water on it. Like blood gushing from a wound, the stain appears to spread from a small, seated figure in the picture – also in a vermilion mac – before engulfing slide and screen.

Both the mysterious figure and the "red" motif return in the film's similarly distressing climax, but not before the bedroom scene, famously frank but also cut boldly between the passionate tumbles and the calm, subsequent dressing for dinner. The episode radiates warmth, aptly so in that it's the first time since Christine died that John and Laura have slept with each other. Death is lurking in the Venetian shadows, but, 31 years on, this scene remains perhaps cinema's sweetest illustration of love's ability to heal all wounds.

Rob Compton

This is a simply outstanding film, that does not seem to get the recognition today that it undoubtedly deserves.

rgds
Rob

zakabamzam

I agree it's an amazing film as are all made by Roeg. However, I was bought a bright red plastic mac when a small child. It is all now making sense...

Wolfgang

Production of Don't Look Now at Sheffield Theatres in February:

Sheffield Theatres - Don't Look Now

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Story Of The Scene: 'Don't Look Now' Nicolas Roeg (1973)
It regularly appears in those "top 10 sexy scenes of all time" lists, but according to the director Nicolas Roeg on his narration for the recent DVD edition of Don't Look Now the legend of it being improvised is not entirely accurate.
By Roger Clarke
Published: 01 December 2006

Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie are the married couple visiting a wintry Venice after the death of their child. Sutherland's character is a whiskery restoration expert working on the crumbling architecture of the city. After a walk along the side of the San Marco Canal, they walk into what is called Hotel Europa and go upstairs. They talk, she bathes. A naked Sutherland works on his art and architectural drawings. Finally, they have sex. Roeg's technique of intercutting their sex with a later scene of them getting dressed for the evening is justly celebrated - Steven Soderbergh included a homage to it in Out of Sight.

Roeg used two locations for the scene - the lobby and exteriors are the Hotel Gabrielli just east of the Piazza San Marco. The actual room where the scene takes place is in the slightly more upmarket Bauer Grunwald on the Campo San Moise. The scene was filmed early on in the production - indeed, the first time the couple had ever met - after torrential rain slowed down the outdoors shoot. Christie was by all accounts nervous, but Roeg followed the standard practice of a reduced film crew to make her more comfortable. The scene proved so convincing that rumour still persists that the sex was real.

The music is worth remarking on. While he was already filming in Venice, Roeg bumped into a producer friend named Ugo Mariotti riding on a vaporetto water-taxi. Mariotti was travelling with the little-known composer Pino Donaggio who had no experience of writing for film. Mariotti introduced them. Roeg was enthralled. Despite resistance from the producers, Roeg persisted in believing that their meeting was fated and he wrote the score for the film; as a result, Donaggio went on to become a very successful film composer - his music for Brian De Palma (in Carrie, for example) being the best known. The piercing, melancholic flute motif in the love-scene is played by Donaggio himself.

This one piece of warmth in the entire chilly film wasn't improvised as legend has it. Roeg had actually planned the love scene shortly before coming to Venice because he felt the script was too full of arguments between Christie and Sutherland and he wanted something to lighten the mood.

Perhaps the reason the scene is so powerful, thinks Roeg, is because of their silent desire to have another child and finally overcome a family tragedy that had left them crippled. Roeg notes: "Somewhere in there they'd reached that point - but they wouldn't have spoken it."

'Don't Look Now (Special Edition)' is out now on Optimum Releasing

Wolfgang

They have sex in Daphne Du Maurier's story too at exactly that point so I have never believed it is improvised last minute. Maybe he sprung it on Sutherland and Christie at last minute.

Carmel

Im sorry but i never seen the attraction in this film

ChristineCB

We watched this film again and I liked the way tension is constructed, and how creepy these small alleys and turns become. Sutherland's final run thru the moving fog made me think the smoke-machines were creating ankle-high characters all on their own.

darkplace

It's a unique film for me. Fills you with all manner of emotions and as has been said, is full of tension. Flawless performances and beautifully shot too.