Don't Look Now (1973)

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  October 25, 2011

  fb1664868775

  Roeg makes Venice's waterways and scenery truly freaky in this classic.

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  April 18, 2011

  cancercapricorn2002

  In England, John (Donald Sutherland) and Laura Baxter (Julie Christie) lose their beloved daughter. Christine (Sharon Williams) drowned in a lake at their home. They move to Venice and leave their son John (Nicholas Salter) in a boarding school. While working in the restoration o... read moref a church, John has lunch with Laura that is not fully recovered of her loss and she helps an old lady in the restaurant with a speck of dust in her left eye. Her blind sister that claims to be psychic advises Laura that she can see her daughter happy and close to them; and that John who is also psychic must leave Venice since he is in danger. Laura feels happy with the revelation but the skeptic John does not believe in the elderly sisters. Meanwhile a serial-killer is killing people in Venice. When Laura and John are called during the night by the director of the boarding school telling that John had had a minor accident, Laura travels in the morning to London to see their son. Meanwhile John has an accident in the scaffold in the church and while going back to the hotel, he sees Laura and the sisters on a funeral gondola. Further he glances somebody wearing the red clock with hood that Christine wore when she died. John decides to investigate whether the sisters have abducted his wife and to follow the person with the red cloak with tragic discoveries.
  
  "Don't Look Now" is one of the most beautiful and stylish films I have ever seen. In the 70's, the former cinematographer Nicolas Roeg was in the beginning and the also in the top of his career. This outstanding cult-movie is impressive, with a fragmented narrative and a stunning cinematography. Julie Christie is extremely beautiful and Donald Sutherland is perfect as usual in the role of a couple traumatized by the loss of their beloved daughter, great performances from both here. The screenplay discloses locations that show the decay of Venice, giving sadness to the story. I highly recommend this film but I do understand it might not be to everyones taste. Its a slower paced film by todays standards so if you have a short attention span this might not be for you.

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  February 10, 2011

  matertenebraum

  Don't Look Now comes in for undeserved criticism from people who think that horror movies should be gore-fests. Anyone who truly appreciates the art of horror will recognise this film for what it is: a classic. The atmosphere in this film is incredible for many reasons: Pino Dona... read moreggio's haunting score, the wintry Venice location work, the fragmented and thoughtful editting, and the perfect performances. Add to that the most unforgettable twist ending ever filmed (to date, anyway) and you're looking at a tremendous film.
  
  Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie play a couple who go to Venice to recover from the traumatic death of their daughter (she drowned in a pond at the bottom of their garden). They keep seeing a small red-coated figure wandering around the canals, and Sutherland convinces himself that it may be the spirit of his daughter trying to make contact from the other side. However, when he confronts the red-coated figure he is in for one hell of a shock....
  
  Nicholas Roeg's film is a masterpiece. It can be viewed over and over again and with each new viewing it throws up new surprises and possibilities. An enigmatic, haunting and multi-layered treat, Don't Look Now is not to be missed.

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  December 30, 2010

  ajv2688

  This is a very interesting horror thriller movie. The story is both spooky and sad. It's a really great movie, check it out.

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  August 28, 2010

  hobster1

  Psychological thriller about parents who retreat to Italy after the tragic death of their daughter in a drowning accident. Director Nicolas Roeg masterfully creates an almost dreamlike atmosphere using the canals of Venice as a backdrop. The surroundings are hauntingly eerie. ... read moreThe story develops in such a way that impels the viewer to keep watching. Indeed a genuine sense of dread permeates the action. At times, certain stylistic devices of the filmmaker like glass breaking, the recurrence of the color red and the use of slow motion, can feel a bit self consciously arty. And that infamous love scene which awkwardly intercuts footage of the couple getting dressed for dinner with unusually graphic sex, is hopelessly dated and unsexy. However these are minor criticisms in an intensely absorbing, spooky mood piece of a film. Based on a short story by Daphne du Maurier who also wrote the short story The Birds and the novel Rebecca.

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  June 10, 2010

  TheDudeLebowski65

  Don't look now is simply a classic of Horror. The acting is superb, the script is well written and the story is solid. Donald Sutherland gives a terrific performance in this terrific Horror film. The story happens in Venice, and surround a couple who recently lost their daughter ... read morein an accident. It's not long before the terror starts. The film is at times slow, but it works well to build tension, horror and suspense. This is a film that shouldn't be missed. It's well written and well crafted film. It kept on the edge until the end. Sutherland's wife becomes involved with clairvoyant sisters and gets visions of their daughter. If you like a well written horror yarn, Don't look Now is the type of film you should watch. A solid and effective Horror film.

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  January 6, 2010

  mumby1988

  It's very difficult to look at Don't Look Now without being aware either of its reputation or of its influence. Whether in the opening movement of Anticrhist, Peters' death in Event Horizon, or the girl in red in Schindler's List, it's hard to think of a horror film involving chi... read moreldren which does not owe at least something to the work of Nicolas Roeg. That does not mean, however, that the film is a masterpiece; indeed there are many things which prevent it from being even close to perfect. But much like its counterpart The Wicker Man -- which was released with it as a double feature -- the imperfections running through the film add to its impact, creating a viewing experience which is flawed but deeply affecting.
  
  Don't Look Now is a film about grief, about how love and loss can affect our perception of reality, to the extent that time seems to run out of order and the mere sight of a colour can send one's memory into overdrive. It's a film in which the most rational and sceptical character ends up being the most impulsive and erratic, in which the role and intentions of the spirit world are called into question, and in which much of what transpires remains partially or wholly unexplained. The film is a bizarre mix of horror and crime thriller in the giallo tradition, and is anchored by a central romance which ends up collapsing under their combined strength and weight.
  
  Roeg began his career as a cinematographer, and his roots seep through into the direction of Don't Look Now. This means on the one hand that we get stunning visuals, with beautiful colours and some really interesting compositions which present everyday encounters in a different light. However, this also means that Roeg gets bogged down in composition when he should be moving the plot forward. Often he seems more interested in creating interesting shots than in telling the story, as seen by his persistent use of mirror shots and unnecessary multiple camera angles which muddle the simpler scenes. We don't need the camera cutting up and down over Julie Christie when she's breaking down in the toilet; her emotion and the sisters' dialogue is already enough to disorientate us, if indeed that was their intention. This jumpy approach makes the first half in particular feel slower and more languid than it needs to be.
  
  Another problem is that the secondary characters around the central relationship are very underdeveloped. We get the two sisters just fine, but the bishop, the chief of police and the hotel manager pop up from time to time without any real deepening of their characters. This may have been deliberate on the part of Roeg, insofar as the lack of empathy we have for these characters keeps us focussed on the search for the girl. Certainly one of the film's central themes is that of paranoia, of seeing people for a fleeting moment and not being sure whether to trust them. In the later parts of the film, once Mrs. Baxter has left Venice, this works absolutely fine, but otherwise it's just more head-scratching which actually take our eyes off the main story.
  
  Eventually, after much head-scratching and hand-wringing, the film does finally shift into top gear and produce genuine nail-biting tension. You stop feeling as if you should be focussing on the people in the background and actually start doing it of your own accord; you get inside the mind of John Baxter and you keep looking warily for people wearing red in the crowds. As more bodies are dragged out of the Venice canals, and the murder aspect of the story becomes steadily more prominent, you do get the sense of genuine terror as all the different aspects and ideas combine. The last 15 minutes are fantastically tense, and the death of John Baxter is a real nerve-shredding, heart-in-mouth experience. But even as you sit there, heart-in-mouth, you can't help wishing that the rest of the film had been this tense.
  
  In all the years since the film's release, two sequences have caused greater controversy than any other. One is the love scene, in which Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland make intimate love in their hotel room, intercut with them getting dressed for dinner afterwards. The intercutting is a clever touch by Roeg. Initially it prevents the scene from being gratuitous; regardless of whether or not the actors actually had sex, there are clearly two people on screen who are doing this because they love each other, not for our pleasure.
  
  More than that though, it gives the audience a means to unlock the film's peculiar relationship with time. We are presented with a series of images which do not make sense when accepted in their existing order. We have to see what happens when and think about what we see, rather than just allow ourselves to be titillated. It's as if Roeg is offering us this scene as a trial run for the rest of the film; if we can handle time jumping around during something pleasant, we'll be able to make sense of it when things turn nasty.
  
  The other sequence is the death of John Baxter at the hands of the serial killer. After chasing a small figure in a red coat through the back streets of Venice, Sutherland winds up in a church and finds the figure crying in a corner. He asks her to turn around, only to find it is not his daughter but a dwarf, who promptly cuts his neck open with a knife. On paper, this revelation could come as an anticlimax, but once again its double meanings prevent it from seeming this way on screen.
  
  Once again, the scene is a reference to the confusion between past, present and future; only in the moment before he is killed does Sutherland recognise the figure from the photograph at the beginning of the film. The rapid montage of images which follows represents his life flashing before his eyes, with everything only making sense when it is too late. It is also a chilling warning about the power of grief and the extent to which it can destroy someone's life. Baxter projects his grief onto this figure so that whoever is in that coat becomes his daughter, and whatever 'his daughter' does to him is the judgement on whether he was right to do so. Christie's character survives becomes she works to make peace with her daughter, atoning for the loss so she may care for those still living. Sutherland fails to deal with his grief until it consumes him, abandoning the living and leaving him dead inside, even before we realise it is the killer.
  
  Don't Look Now is a deeply affecting film, at turns creepy, uncompromising, thought-provoking and strange. It is also deeply flawed, both in its initial pace and in aspects of its direction. It doesn't have the same narrative discipline as Roeg's later films like The Man Who Fell To Earth, and as a Du Maurier adaptation, it has to take second fiddle to both Rebecca and The Birds. There are times when Roeg's visuals overwhelm the story and threaten to overwhelm the themes. But there is more than enough of both to make watching it a memorable and ultimately rewarding experience. The Wicker Man remains the superior film, but this is still well worth a look.

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  December 26, 2009

  FilmFanatik

  I would go so far as to say that this film looks marvelous, but that's about all it really has going for it. I can see why it's particular look has had an influence, but the other 9/10's include a story that goes nowhere....slowly. It loses a star automatically for the gratuito... read moreus love-making scene, which I've constantly said over and over again, is never needed in a film that's trying to tell a real story. Problem is, this film HAS no real story, so it remains altogether convoluted, at least, to this viewers eyes. The original DVD transfer looks, for the most part, fantastic on my hi def output system, so I don't know what all those other reviewers are bitching about.

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  November 4, 2009

  flixsterman

  70's Gothic piece that's part crime drama and part supernatural horror. Thirty (+) years have done little to diminish this wonderfully creepy little film that's critically acclaimed but rarely discussed.

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  September 21, 2009

  SirPant

  I remember jumping out of my seat the first time I saw this film. It really haunted me actually for a good few days after, which I guess is the sign of a good horror film. Classic giallo from Nicolas Roeg. Oh, and it?s got a naughty sex scene in It too!

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• Julie Christie as Laura Baxter
• Donald Sutherland as John Baxter
• Hilary Mason as Heather
• Clelia Matania as Wendy
• Massimo Serato as Bishop Barbarigo
• Renato Scarpa as Inspector Longhi
• Adelina Poerio as Dwarf
• Ann Rye as Mandy Babbage
• Nicholas Salter as Johnny Baxter

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• What links British horror flick 'Don't Look Now' with children's fable 'Little Red Rising Hood'?   Answer »
• Name the movie with this quote: "Where did you get the pearls?" " There Mom's, Daddy found them in a drawer last week." "So your just gonna start wearing them now?!" "It's not like she's coming back to claim them! And besides, they look good on me!" "Trust me, they don't!"  Answer »
• In the 2002 comedy "Unconditional Love," what 1970s horror/thriller does Maudey use to justify her stance that "Nobody messes with a dwarf in a red raincoat"?   Answer »
• Which Italian city featured in 'Don't Look Now'? (  Answer »

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