Don't Look Now (1973) Reviews

• Shocking Red December

  primodanielelori2007-10-13

  The Italian title of this Nicolas Roeg's classic is "A Venetian Shocking Red December" yep. I had seen this film dubbed into Italian, years ago. I was taken by the look and the atmosphere I remember being unnerved but I was appalled by the acting, specially Julie Christie's - one of my favorites of all time. Yesterday I saw the film again in its original English version. My goodness, what a difference! The film is even more frightening that I remembered. The atmosphere is asphyxiating. You can actually smell the rotting stench of the most beautiful city in the world. The ending leaves you breathless and the acting, well, listening to the actors real voices is another experience altogether. The pain and sudden burst of hope in Julie Christie is moving, very moving and very unsettling. Sutherland, as usual, is magnificent. The film, other than a solid cult status, remains virtually unknown by the public at large. "Don't Look Now" is a buried treasure that is bound to be re discovered and to all my countrymen, a piece of advise: avoid dubbed movies at all cost.

  More

• A Venice Of Horrors

  mrharrypaulson2017-05-04

  When a great artist, and a great artist is what Nicolas Roeg is, tells us a tale of horrors, the results are, usually, unique, overwhelming, unforgettable. "Don't Look Now" redefines the genre. I was paralyzed by fear and totally involved in the bizarre predicament of the protagonists. Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie are remarkable. A married couple enveloped in the unspeakable sadness provoked by the loss of their young daughter. Then, in Venice, among the rot, the beauty and the darkness, a ray of light. But this is not the kind of light that lets you see, no, this light is terrifying because it will persuade you to follow it. I've seen the film 9 hours ago and it's still with me...I can smell the stench of the most beautiful city in the world and I close my eyes, hoping that it's just a dream. "Don't Look Now" is a masterpiece.

  More

• Fear, as an art form.

  mocpacific2005-09-01

  I was afraid to swallow, to make any noise. The unspeakable was all around me and I lived it up to the fullest. Nicolas Roeg plays with our instincts, with our inner voices and challenge us to take notice. Just like Donald Sutherland's character. He knows, even if his brain tells him not to be stupid. To believe is to commit intellectual suicide. Better not to look, not to listen. Sutherland and Christie are one of the most convincing modern artistic yet normal married couples in their pain in their every daily detail. Sutherland goes along with Christie's "nonsense" because he sees what the nonsense does for her. They make love for the first time since their daughter's death in a way we've never seen before on the screen and, probably, never will again. Based on a Daphne Du Maurier's book, Nicolas Roeg has orchestrated a chilling work of art. For film lovers all over the world, if you haven't seen it, do, preferably in the dark with someone you know and love.

  More

• Chilling and mysterious

  BornJaded2005-01-04

  There are two types of horror films, really. There are popcorn horror films, good for a cheap in-the-moment thrill at best, and there are serious horror films, movies that linger in the mind and in the bones. I have just watched Nicolas Roeg's 'Don't Look Now' and my spine is frozen. It's 4am, I'm alone, and I have a heightened awareness of sounds and sights I usually don't notice. Here is a movie that's both resolved and unresolved, ultimately growing more ambiguous as it progresses and becomes more complex. After it is over and has become a complete(d) work to the eye of the viewer, the lasting impression is that of mystery. Too many films in this genre bark up the wrong tree, working to explain all of the events that unfold. By explaining nothing, by being almost abstract, questions and images will haunt the viewer indefinitely. It is what it is, and while this movie can be watched over and over, and the events that occur can be anticipated, they will forever remain an enigma. This is true cinema, purely visual and aural, without the helpful but ultimately self-defeating aid of a proxy observer; the viewer is the direct observer, and there's no filter through which the events and images develop any sort of tidy rationality. Donald Sutherland's performance here is sober, adult, the grief of his character palpable. And in the face of this grief is a force that runs through the movie like a dark current, evoking the eternal and spookily ethereal and subterranean; less an eternity of the heavens than the eternity of a crypt. Venice is not merely the ideal location for this story, but the necessary location; it could not take place anywhere else. The unquestionable, and indeed imposing, Gothic majesty of the churches, whose interior height dwarfs their human occupants with the spiritual dread of the ancient, overlooks the canals of Venice like the wicked-faced stone gargoyles Sutherland finds himself physically embracing, while the canals that run through the city are literally the ghost of this couple's personal tragedy. Living in Venice, in light of the details surrounding their loss, seems almost a perverse choice, perhaps a masochistic one; they could be punishing themselves for their daughter's drowning by living in a flooded city. It's not that Sutherland's character is a rational man in an irrational environment, but rather a rational man in an environment whose own secret code, which one may trust makes perfect sense to itself (like a tree in the forest that will only fall if no one is around to hear), is inaccessible and inexplicable to him, baring itself only in fragments in a way he chooses to ignore, just as you might ignore a spectral voice in the dead of night, dismissing it as a product of your imagination. The movie's notorious love scene is jarringly explicit, yet rather than erotic, it is profoundly sad, and takes on a deeper (even creepy) resonance after the film ends. That the scene is intercut with scenes of Sutherland and Julie Christie dressing prevents the two from ever being completely naked and united; this editing choice changes the dimensions of the love scene in a way that I've never seen attempted elsewhere. At other points, Roeg inserts moments and images that carry sinister implications, none of which are ever concretely substantiated and only leave the viewer with more questions. The film drifts along at a wandering pace. The final twenty minutes are among the most atmospheric and suspenseful twenty minutes in any film, culminating in a montage that is absolutely chilling. 'The Blair Witch Project,' made over two decades later and probably influenced by this, has similar aspirations, but finally has only a fraction of the emotional gravity.

  More

• The zenith of movie-making

  LukeS1998-12-17

  People want and expect different things from movies. What engages and captivates one person can just as easily displease and repulse another (see Titanic). Sometimes, a film simply doesn't register beyond the viewer's walk/drive home (this criminal offense is not exclusively a phenomenon of the 1990s in spite of the last decade's distinct dearth of memorable films). Don't Look Now, however, is a film which cannot fail to last long in the mind. It is easy to love the film for its rare depth of character, its beautiful yet disturbing plot, the stunning Venice setting, the tender and original love scene or just for Donald Sutherland's never-rivalled wig! I am sure, however, that people find it easy to fault the film because it doesn't neatly tie up loose ends, because it is dark and depressing (the film's extensive reach encompasses death, loss, murder, blindness, religion and dwarfism) and because film-making conventions are abandoned. The source material of Du Maurier's short story provides only a meagre framework onto which screenwriters Scott and Bryant have fleshed a stunning adaptation. Roeg's visual and emotional style of directing has never been so perfectly showcased as in Don't Look Now. How many more times can film-makers and advertisers steal (or "pay homage to") Roeg's ingenious work? Julie Christie is luminous and pulls the viewer with her through Laura's painful journey after the film's shocking opening. Sutherland's performance is stellar as well. His character, John, is like a Hitchcockian fall-guy with real personality and depth. You are swept along through the canals and narrow avenues with him as Pino Donaggio's stirring music both chills and lulls. Films made in the tone of Don't Look Now are so rare these days. I am not an old fuddy-duddy who complains that "they don't make 'em like they used to" but am simply a slightly disillusioned film fan who wishes there were just a few more film-makers willing to take chances and not follow the dull formulaic line. What was the last film that stayed with you long after you saw it? It always sounds like a cliche when some obsessed fan tells you a film haunted them for days but Don't Look Now has a curious effect on the viewer. Its intensity grows. Different parts of the film mull around in your mind. You don't think about individual 'scenes' from the film either, you think about the situations, the people, the feelings. All of which is testament to the roundly drawn characterisation and elegant (yet not contrived) structure of the film. If you haven't seen Don't Look Now before then you have a treat awaiting you. If you have seen it - see it again and marvel at a profound, eery, haunting, moving and beautiful film. If it disappoints you that films of such indelible and recurring substance like this are thin on the ground (Apocalypse Now, Taxi Driver and The Conversation had similar effects on me) then do not hesitate to picket the next showing of....(OUT OF RESPECT TO IMDB'S CONTENT GUIDELINES I WON'T NAME TITLE OF MORONIC HOLLYWOOD BLOCKBUSTERS AND THE LIKE)!

  More