Don't Look Now (1973)
'Oh God', he thought, 'what a silly way to die...'
Sad news about Donald Sutherland, who left this world last week at the grand old age of eighty-eight. For anybody growing up in the '70s, '80s and '90s, Sutherland was a consistent presence in countless rainy Sunday afternoon films, with a seemingly never-ending filmography: Interlude (1968), Fellini's Casanova (1976), The Eagle Has Landed (1976), The Disappearance (1977), a thriller I have yet to see, but very much on my ever-increasing wish list; Six Degrees of Separation (1993), a personal favourite which we will cover at some point, and of course, Nicolas Roeg's Don't Look Now (1973) — in which he plays the lead, a terrific performance, for which I hope he will be remembered.
I'm an admirer of the late director and cinematographer Nic Roeg. Walkabout (1971) is superb, a moving film in which Jenny Agutter, stranded in the Australian outback following her father's suicide, is rescued by a young Aborigine, with a magnificent soundtrack by Bond aficionado, John Barry — it's on my Top Five Best Film List. And both Walkabout and Don't Look Now are masterclasses in New Wave editing techniques, with flashbacks and 'recurring themes and motifs', as Wikipedia puts it. Roeg plays with time, which is fluid; the past, present, and future sort of merge into one.
Following the death of their child, Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie (John and Laura Baxter) visit a wintery Venice to restore the church of San Nicolo dei Mendicoli. A similar theme reappears in Ian McEwan's The Comfort of Strangers (1981), this idea of middle-class Brits on holiday in a Gothic Venice — later made into an amusing but iffy film with Rupert Everett and the lovely, late lamented Natasha Richardson. Without giving too much away (there are people out there who may not have seen this), the opening scene in Don't Look Now is, well, how can I put it? Disturbing? And, of course, this is very much a film about water. Incidentally, I've been to the infamous pond from the beginning of Don't Look Now — and peered into its murky depths. On an antiques valuation near Rickmansworth, of all places. It's the real deal, even if it looks slightly fake in the film, although that may have something to do with the rain machine. Walking the grounds of this ancient house with the owner (who has a small role in the film as the boarding school headmaster), we suddenly came across a duck pond, which looked familiar. “Is that pond…? Could it be? Is that… by any chance?”
I suppose you might call it 'horror'. Don't Look Now (1973) is based on a creepy short story by Daphne du Maurier — but this is horror taken to a high level of sophistication. Du Maurier sometimes gets pigeonholed as the writer of middle-brow, romantic bodice rippers, which is valid to some extent, (The King’s General, anyone?), but then her short stories and later novels are decidedly sinister. There's The Birds, later transferred by Hitchcock from rocky Cornwall to rocky Northern California; the druggy House on the Strand (1969) and her collection of short stories, Not After Midnight (1971), which includes Don't Look Now, and The Breakthrough, a sci-fi tale inspired by Kingsley Amis, in which scientists capture the life essence of a young man dying of leukaemia.
But the giallo influence on Don't Look Now passed me by on first viewing all those years ago. 'Giallo' is the name given to a crop of stylish '70s Italian slasher flicks, shot on a low budget and quite often featuring the music of Ennio Morricone and the latest fashions. There's sexploitation and obsession, especially with the colour red, the colour of blood (Dario Argento's Profondo Rosso 1975), Fiorucci on acid, if you like. An inspiration, too, for The Eyes of Laura Mars (1978) — a stylish film we will cover in a later post. Aldo Lado's Who Saw Her Die (1972), with George Lazenby and Anita Strindberg, concerns the drowning of a child and is also set in Venice. Likewise, the little-known Voices, starring David Hemmings and Gayle Hunnicutt, shares noticeable similarities with Don't Look Now, with a little girl playing on the dangerous Hambledon Weir in Buckinghamshire, and was released in the same year, 1973. The hideous ending of Don't Look Now is still genuinely disturbing even after multiple viewings (dodgy make-up aside), as is that bit when the weird sisters cackle themselves silly. There must have been something in the canal water.
My very first viewing of Don't Look Now (1973) was at an all-boys boarding school. A VHS recording on a rickety television set. This was 'The Film Club'. And then, when we came to the extraordinary sex scene — you know, the one, all spotty backs and heaving buttocks, rumoured to have been the real deal and filmed in a Venetian hotel room, the flustered master in charge (later to become the headmaster of a famous boy's prep school) fast-forwarded the tape — all glorious four minutes, fifty nine and a half seconds of it. Cromwellian, really. I mean, God knows we needed help and instruction in these matters — the girls of the Cheltenham Ladies College (the 'Green Virgins') remained on a pedestal, admired from afar.
And in true giallo style, Don’t Look Now features a rather brilliant, classically-inspired soundtrack by Venetian pop-artiste, Pino Donaggio (a composer, apparently with no previous film credentials), in the manner of Stelvio Cipriani’s work for the romantic Euro-flick, The Anonymous Venetian (1970). Including vocals from the Italian pop sensation, Iva Zanicchi, who also provides the soundtrack for Visconti’s Conversation Piece (1974).
For horror aside, one of the best things about Don’t Look Now is the atmosphere. If I could go back in a time machine, I would very much like to go back to Venice in a January or February during the early 1970s. To the world of Don't Look Now (without the murder, or with the murder): formica; fugged up, steamy stand-up bars; green marbled halls in four-star hotels (the Hotel Gabrielli Sandwirth), mists and brown tweed, to coffee at the hallowed salon at Florian's — inside, rather than outside — and to linger in lonely echoing backstreets, off the tourist trail; the canal water the colour of absinthe: opaque. A world of understatement. That would be good. For there's a quiet domesticity to 1970s British cinema; thinking about it, not unlike the Biedermeier, with beautifully written, intelligent scripts, and a rather slow pace by today’s standards: the antithesis of the thrills n' spills of the dumbed-down summer blockbuster with its surround-sound and the munch of rancid pop-corn. This is cinema for grown-ups, folks.
Don’t Look Now (1973) was released, originally, in a double bill with The Wicker Man, in one of the most desirable couplings in horror film history. That is, if you can describe Don’t Look Now as a horror film, which it probably isn’t. But it must have affected the way cinemagoers viewed The Wicker Man, especially the ending. And Don’t Look Now ranked only second at the box-office to Confessions of a Window Cleaner — a stat which says much about the British film industry in the 1970s. Today, Don’t Look Now is, quite rightly, considered a classic. In my opinion, it’s one of the best films of the 1970s. Up there with Walkabout (1971), Taxi Driver (1976), Saturday Night Fever (1977) and Woody Allen’s Manhattan (1979).
I watched Don’t Look Now on my own, much-loved and abused DVD. However, I’m eyeing up the tasty DVD/Blu-ray release in a brand new 4K remastered version. And it is, of course, also available to watch via Amazon Prime Digital Download.
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In the meantime, have a relaxing and cinematic Sunday…
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Great piece. It’s an astonishing film, managing to be mournful, sinister, stylish, sexy and in many ways profoundly European. Sutherland and Christie are magnificent, and pull off that rare feat of not really seeming like actors, as if Roeg is somehow eavesdropping on real people.
The 70s,the least 'elegant' of decades, but filled to the brim with vigour. The films of the era reflect that. I suppose the polished rounded version of the Everett film lacks exactly that. Vigour.
Brits abroad, understatement, intimation of horror, all that is of particular interest to me, as I am writing a novel told from the perspective of an English woman in Greece, where things...well,start to happen. It may not be in the 70s, have no newfound wonder for formica (that revolution all the way from the States), but it does discuss such issues as home, the Engishness of England one carries with them. And hopefully does it with similar Vigour!