Last Updated on July 28, 2021
By ERIC RED
SEE
RED’S IMDb PROFILE HERE
DON’T
LOOK NOW (1973)
RATING:
5/5
Director: Nicolas Roeg
Script: Allan Scott, Chris Bryant. Based on
a story by Daphne Du Maurier.
Cast: Donald Sutherland, Julie Christie.
This is a truly chilling and
convincing tale of psychic phenomena, starring Donald Sutherland and Julie
Christie as an architect and his wife who lose their small daughter in a tragic
drowning accident. They go to Venice to mend while the husband works on
restoring a cathedral. Soon strange things begin to occur. The wife keeps
seeing a small fleeting figure in a red raincoat, just like the one their child
was wearing when she died. Two odd elderly sisters, one of who is blind and
says she’s psychic, befriend the wife and tell her their daughter is somehow
still with them. At the same time, several brutal murders occur and the local
police are fishing bodies out of the canals. The picture culminates in one of
the scariest endings in horror film history, definitely one of my top five most
frightening movie moments, and reason alone to see the flick.
The film
makes the audience believe in psychic phenomena, using creative editing,
realistic performances and photography to create a genuine suspension of
disbelief. It’s a textbook example of how the best horror movies treat their
subject matter seriously as if it were really happening. In the film, there’s a
constant sense of unease and dread, of something bad about to happen, that keeps
you unsettled and on edge throughout.
You really care about the two
main characters, and get involved in the problems of the husband and wife coping
with the loss of their child and the frighteningly inexplicable and inevitable
events that close in on them. Stars Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie give
wonderful naturalistic, intelligent and subtle performances–the film is filled
with offhand acting moments that ground the story. The beautiful Christie
etches a fragile, troubled woman whose almost childlike need to believe her dead
daughter is somehow okay may be causing her to lose grip on her sanity.
The
solid Sutherland is moving as a stern but loving husband worried about his
wife’s mental state. His own rational and pragmatic manner of dealing with his
grief is challenged as he is faced with disturbing things that aren’t
explainable. She wants to believe their daughter may be alive, he doesn’t, but
something’s going on and it ain’t good. They are two real people. Studios who
think the only characters you can put in a successful horror movie are a group
of hot idiot teenagers, or that you can’t make a terrific thriller with real
complex adults, need “DON’T LOOK NOW” as required viewing.
This
film also has one of the best sex scenes ever filmed. Major film stars had a
lot more guts in those days and the scene between the then actor couple was
reputably not simulated. It isn’t gratuitous and the believability of the
lovemaking adds to the intimate involvement we feel for the couple and their
predicament. Clever editing intercuts the couple making love with them getting
dressed after sex, a foreshadowing that becomes poignantly ironic at the end of
the film.
This was back in the days when
on screen lovers had sex in the nude, as opposed to now when they keep their
clothes on when they get it on. Think Maria Bello’s enthusiastic full spandex
humping in ”THE COOLER” or Ethan Hawke’s full business suit supposed penetration
of the artfully robed peek-a-boo Angelina Jolie in “TAKING LIVES,” just to name
two especially goofy recent examples of the Hollywood zipless fuck. Who are
they kidding? Plus how do they do it like that?
In “DON’T LOOK NOW,” memorable
moments of the film are plentiful: An brilliant harrowing slow motion overhead
shot of Sutherland lifting his drowned child from a pond, his face a primal roar
of anguish and loss; a startling and spectacular scaffolding collapse in Venice;
an eerie bathroom encounter between Julie Christie and the two scary sisters,
with filmic use of mirrors and reflections to create a tangible sense of psychic
phenomena; Sutherland’s scary climactic pursuit of the red rain coated figure
through the night Venice alleys to the dank grotto and—that ending.
The
70’s films made fantastic use of location photography for verisimilitude and
realism. This film was a classic example of effective location shooting.
Filmed in winter, this is not the pretty Venice of postcards and travelogues,
but a gritty, gloomy ominous Venice. The bleak atmosphere of the story unfolds
in mostly empty hotels and restaurants, decaying cathedrals and includes some
memorably eerie chases through the claustrophobic byways and alleys of the
canals.
I
digress, but the realism and authentic atmosphere that you get with good
location shooting is something current movies have largely lost because of the
constant push to shoot in Canada or Romania to save a buck. To me, there’s a
uniformity these days where every film you watch you go, oh look that’s
Vancouver, or oh yeah, there’s Montreal, or oh look there Vancouver again.
Imagine “THE EXORCIST” shot in Toronto instead of Georgetown, Washington D.C,
without those great steps. Or imagine if “AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON”
hadn’t been filmed in the London tube or Piccadilly Square.
One of the best
parts of “MYSTIC RIVER” was the authentic Boston neighborhood it was filmed in,
an ambience that could not have been captured elsewhere. In a genre like horror
where the success of the film depends on the audience believing what happening
is on screen, I hope the economics of the industry change so it becomes easier
to film on location outside of Canada, ‘cause it’s hurting the pictures, man.“DON’T
LOOK NOW” predates “THE RING” and “THE GRUDGE” in its scary child theme and fans
of those films should particularly appreciate this ‘70’s gem.
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