Don't Look Now

Don't Look Now(1973) has been badly negleted by many film viewers does to its enematic nature. The first five to fifteen minutes are splendidly edited. Don't Look Now(1973) is based on a novel by Daphne Du Maurier. Borrows somes themes from the Alfred Hitchcock film of another ghost story by the author called Rebecca(1940). The film score by Pino Donaggio beats anything he has done for Brian De Palma except for Carrie(1976). Don't Look Now(1973) may have been influenced by a similar themed pic called Who Saw Her Die?(1971).

Nicolas Roeg does an excellent job in filming scenes of creepy and eerie impact. Donald Sutherland gives a extraordinary performance as the clairvoyant but disbeliever, John Baxter. The film's most controversial sequence is the shocking sex scene with Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie. What's shocking about this one scene is the realistic feel of the act. There are some who believe to this day that the sex scene was not acted but real. The Sutherland-Christie sex scene is done with the same editing technique as The Man Who Fell to Earth(1976).

Don't Look Now(1973) was The Sixth Sense(1999) of its era. One film that sports the same idea about fate is David Croenberg's The Dead Zone(1983). Julie Christie is just brilliant as Laura Baxter. Shares the same gloomy landscape as the director's later film, The Man Who Fell to Earth(1976). The climax of Don't Look Now(1973) was a gloomy and shocking sequence to watch. Don't Look Now(1973) is in the tradition of films such as Last Year at Marienbad(1960).

VENICE, ITALY has never been more appealing. After watching this I want to get up and go there right now. The movie is about a couple who lost their child in England, and are now in Venice while the husband is restoring an ancient church. Filmed entirely on location during the winter, and NOT in the schmoozy tourist areas, there is a psychic to tells the wife she can see their daughter and she is happy, which starts leading the film in one direction. Then the father starts seeing out of the corner of his eye a little girl wearing a red rain slicker, just like the one his daughter was wearing when she drowned, which goes in another direction, all the while in the background there are whisperings of a serial killer on the loose. How do any of these things have anything to do with each other? I wont say, but it's a classy thriller with a "6'Th sense" level shocker of an ending i DID NOT SEE COMING! but again, more than anything, Venice is the stare here. Over cast and wet. You can see everyone's breath. it's just a couple degreees away from snow. the walls are cracked and crumpling and the fog is real, not from a studio machine. There is an aura of mystery and romance that is indescribable in every scene. No discovery chanell or travel chanell special can sell you on this city better than this film

Laura Baxter (Julie Christie) and John Baxter (Donald Sutherland) suffer a tragedy when their daughter drowns. Later, the couple is in Venice where John is restoring a church. They encounter elderly sisters, Heather and Wendy. Heather is a blind psychic and sees their dead daughter.

This is a slow burn. It's an artsy gothic horror. There are two great actors here. John is flailing around. I notice it from his near accident at the church. He's contorting himself out of shape to grab the rope. The movie feels like it's contorting itself out of shape. It's uncomfortably eerie. The movie, Venice itself, and the characters are all oddly unreal. There is an uncontrolled feel to their actions. It's a slow descend into a kind of madness.

Now here's a film that may just get you thinking, the extents that some go to with abstractive linking, as a daughter is drowned, this might just make you frown, as you witness two souls, whose reality's sinking. Wandering around Venice there's a large hint of menace, two sisters suggest afterlife has a premise, a wife who believes, husband who still grieves, though to him, hocus pocus, is far too remiss. Understanding their feelings is the key to the door, through eyes that have witnessed events that have scored, a scar through their souls, left bottomless holes, a knife that has slashed at least one, to the floor.

Don't Look Now is based on a Daphne Du Maurier story. She also wrote Rebecca. The movie version was directed by Alfred Hitchcock and won the Best Picture Oscar.

Don't Look Now is often held as an example of how a movie adaptation can be refreshingly different from the source material.

Director Nicolas Roeg was not a traditional director preferring to push the envelope. The movie is known making Venice look Gothic and menacing. As well as the tender lovemaking scene between Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland. It was regarded as rather graphic for the time.

Laura Baxter (Christie) and John Baxter (Donald Sutherland) are devastated when their daughter Christine accidentally drowns in a pond outside their home. She was wearing a shiny plastic red raincoat at the time.

John had some kind of second sight that she was in danger but was too late to save her.

Some time later, with their other son in Boarding school. Laura and John are in Venice. He is involved in a project to restore a church.

Laura has a chance encounter with two sisters, Heather and Wendy. Heather is blind but has psychic abilities. One of them is that Christine is communicating with her and that John might be in danger is they stay in Venice.

John dismisses the sisters but this is a Venice where a serial killer is on the loose. John is also having visions of someone in a red cape.

What begins as a film about family loss and grieving. It slowly but suddenly morphs into a psychic supernatural thriller that leans into horror.

You sense that John might be going mad as he has visions of Laura when he knows she has left Venice for England. He also dismisses his own supernatural abilities, his own sense that bad luck seems to follow him.

There is a subplot that Roeg introduces where John along with others could be the suspected killer. The ending is creepy and both horrific.

Apparently Du Maurier liked the adaptation of this story. Roeg introduces a lot of symbolism in the film. Hence why when the figure in the red cape turns around it is startling.

As a footnote when Joel Schumacher made Flatliners. The Kiefer Sutherland character had visions of a figure in red.