Don’t Look Now (Nicolas Roeg, 1973)

Losing your mind has never looked so amazing.

One of my very favorite films of all time, horror genre or no, Don’t Look Now is a cinematic masterpiece.

Adapted from and expanding the short story by Daphne du Maurier, Don’t Look Now stars 70’s Hollywood giants Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie as John and Laura Baxter, a married couple trying to pick up the pieces of their lives following the recent drowning of their young daughter, Christine.

John’s work as an art restorer has taken them to Venice which, as one of the most romantic cities in the world, should provide them with an opportunity to refocus and reconnect as a couple, but (one of the most notorious sex scenes ever committed to celluloid aside) their post-tragedy relationship mostly remains as cool as the grey winter landscape they find themselves surrounded by.

This is a morose portrayal of Venice where the heights of the tourist season are well and truly over, and the once bustling and jolly city is now a harsh and disorientating maze of alleyways, steps, and bridges, all sandwiched between and cut off by canals.

The frigid air is palpable on screen, and an ominous threat of impending doom glowers over the film, most notably in an apparent string of murders that provide additional texture and depth to the background of the film.

In short, rarely has the expression “the city is a character” been more apt.

John is indifferent to the murders. His focus is on his work and his wife. But Laura has nothing to distract her from the loss of Christine. A chance encounter with a slightly spooky couple of sisters (one of whom claims to be physic and is just convincing enough in her assertion that she saw Christine’s ghost standing next to Laura) is enough to make her lose the plot, at least as far as John sees it.

Christine is readily taken in by the sisters. John, to his credit and despite his misgivings, goes along with this newly struck friendship, hoping that it will help his wife heal.

But as he himself reckons with the potential gift of premonition, coupled with his repeated glimpse of a small child in a red raincoat — exactly what Christine was wearing at the time of her death — his own hold on reality begins to come unstuck and he becomes increasingly convinced that something sinister is afoot…

I hadn’t always been enamored with Roeg’s distinctive arthouse style in films such as Walkabout and The Man Who Fell to Earth (coincidentally the films he made immediately prior to and following Don’t Look Now), but here it absolutely works as the attention-seeking editing serves to articulate and emphasize John’s unraveling mind as he searches desperately to find his wife, all the while wrestling with a barrage of confusing and contradictory visions.

Everything about this film is on point: the cinematography that paints such a mournful vision of the floating city, the phenomenal performances by Sutherland and Christie, the editing, the sound, the score, everything…

And that shock ending with a twist reveal that’ll make you want to immediately rewatch the entire film all over again?

Oh yes, this is one of the great ones.

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