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… More
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 children 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.
