Don't Look Now (1973)

Don't Look Now (Don't click the link if you don't want certain plot developments revealed.)

A ghost story set in a labyrinthine claustrophobic Venice, Nicholas Roeg's Don't Look Now is a real gem. Drawing from sources as varied as Hitchcock and safety films for children for it's visuals, Don't Look Now leads the viewer and the protagonists, portrayed by Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie, through an ever tightening maze of dank canals and danker grief. It is also based on a story by Daphne du Maurier whose writings also inspired classic Hitchcock films such as Rebecca and the Birds.



The acting is as good as one would hope from the cast. and the direction is assured, though perhaps placing more value on atmosphere and general mood than the unraveling of the lot. This is Roeg's second feature length film. His "pre-cognitive cutting" as it has sometimes been called is in full evidence here. The editing pops time out of joint on a number of occasions. Fitting for a film focused so intently on the similar state that the death of a loved one can place an individual in. It's telling that the title is Don't Look Now Since it's main characters spend much of their time looking either to the past or the future rather than focusing on the details of the present that might otherwise spare them tragedy.

It shares a similar feel as the Wicker Man which was produced in the same year and was, in fact, released as the "B" film to Don't Look Now's "A" when the two were released initially together as a double feature. Both follow their main characters through a winding twisting path until they reach an ending that , the audience comes to understand, may have been completely inevitable, predetermined.

The film also, somewhat infamously, features an explicit sex scene between Sutherland and Christie. It's frank , but, in my opinion, neither shallow titillation nor out of place, in fact it serves as an important part of the character development of the co-leads.

Overall Don't Look Now tells an excellent claustrophobic ghost story and explores grief with rare insight

Other Roeg films on Netflix instant watch include:

The Man Who Fell to Earth (starring David Bowie)

Bad Timing

Eureka

Don't worry I'll cover some non horror movies, too.