Film: Don't Look Now
Year of production: 1973
UK Release date: 4th July 2011
Distributor: Optimum
Certificate: 15
Running time: 110 mins
Director: Nicolas Roeg
Starring: Julie Christie, Donald Sutherland, Hilary Mason, Clelia Matania, Massimo Serato
Genre: Drama/Horror/Mystery/Thriller
Format: Blu-ray
Country of Production: UK/Italy
Language: English/Italian
Review by: Mark Player
Nicolas Roeg's classic supernatural mystery Don't Look Now is getting the special edition Blu-ray treatment courtesy of Optimum Home Releasing, but is it worth the upgrade?
On a damp Sunday afternoon, a young girl sporting a red rain coat plays with her brother in the English countryside that surrounds her home. Her parents, John (Donald Sutherland) and Laura (Julie Christie) Baxter, are inside. Whilst observing some architectural slides for a restoration project, John senses that something is wrong and leaves the house. His instincts prove to be correct. His daughter, Christie, has fallen into a nearby pond and is drowning. John rushes into the water to haul her out, but he is too late. Christie has died.
Sometime later, John and Laura are staying in Venice, where John has been contracted by Bishop Barbarrigo (Massimo Serato) to perform restoration work on a dilapidated church in the city. Whilst dining in a restaurant, Laura encounters two strange and elderly sisters (Hilary Mason and Clelia Matania) in the bathroom. One of the sisters, Heather, is blind and claims to have psychic abilities. She goes on to give very specific details about John and Laura's deceased daughter. This overwhelms yet intrigues Laura who, after collapsing and being sent to hospital, is strangely energised and positive about the whole thing.
Laura seeks the sisters again to see if it’s possible to make contact with Christie from beyond, much to the alarm of John who fears that Christie is beginning to lose her mind. However, John's grief also seems to be getting the better of him as he begins to see glimpses of a small, childlike figure lurking amongst the cloisters and alleyways of the city, wearing a red raincoat...
Based on Daphine du Maurier's short story of the same name, and dubbed as a 'psychic thriller' at the time of its original theatrical release, Don't Look Now was very much ahead of its time in several ways. Annoyingly, the film has since become such a key work in British cinema that there's very little that can be said about it that's actually new. It's subtle depiction of the occult, unlike the overt Satan-worship of Rosemary's Baby (1968) or the special effects showboating of The Exorcist (1973); Graeme Clifford's fractured flash-back and flash-forward editing; the film's associative colours (particularly red) and its famous love scene between Sutherland and Christie have been dissected by many a scholar, critic and student of film.
However, it bears repeating in saying just how well the film has aged and how influential it has remained after nearly forty years. Few films capture the emotional gulf created by grief as well as director Nicolas Roeg does here, further defined by strong performances from both Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland. It’s one of the more credible on-screen marriages in cinema, perhaps best and most obviously personified by their infamous love scene, a scene added by Roeg to help displace the scenes where the couple are in disagreement. Although it was very explicit at the time – to the extent that rumours of Sutherland and Christie's performance being unsimulated continue to circulate – Roeg counterbalances the frankness of that moment by inter-cutting it with shots of post-coital dressing and preparation for a meal out; partly to appease the far more stringent censorship regulations of the time and partly to perpetuate the film's ongoing motif of portending events.
Past, present and future occupy the same time and space on a frequent basis. John is continually haunted by the imagery of his drowning daughter whilst wearing her iconic red coat. This imagery starts to transcend recollection and enters reality as John starts to see an elusive red coat-wearing figure during the night. Things start to get even more interesting when he also starts to unwittingly see future events, confusing them with the present.
The use of Venice as the film's setting is positively inspired. The labyrinthine alleyways of the floating city not only feel claustrophobic and nightmarish, but facilitate a visual representation for the characters’ mental states. John and Laura often lose their bearings and become separated. The multiple waterways of the city act as a continual reminder of the tragedy both characters are burdened with; one scene sees John fish a discarded child's doll out from the canal, echoing the moment when he tried to save his daughter at the film's start. Death is therefore irrevocably linked to water, made all the more prominent by a seemingly superficial serial killer subplot whose victims are routinely found dead in the canals.
Roeg's camera and editing style is not quite as groundbreaking as some make out to be, considering his earlier features, Performance (1970) and Walkabout (1971), employ similar techniques; with the former utilising a ‘cut-ups’ method of editing, inspired by the literary technique pioneered by William Burroughs. However, Don't Look Now was perhaps the first of Roeg's films to use these techniques as an intrinsic and inseparable narrative framework, as opposed to merely embellishing ideas, suggesting a concept of advanced cinematic grammar that has now become stock and trade. Whilst a little mechanical in places, the technical execution of the film also lends an uncertain menace to the proceedings, further augmented by the location's twisted geography.
With regards to the Blu-ray, Optimum have done a commendable job. The picture quality, if a little inconsistent, is very good overall for a film of this vintage. Some shots are marred by a grainy softness due to limitations of the original source, as opposed to fault with the disc itself. There seem to be no major issues with artifacting and other compression symptoms. Audio won't take full advantage of one's home cinema system, due to the age and nature of the production, but is suitably clear and crisp. Overall, while Don't Look Now isn't exactly an essential must-see title for Blu-ray, it still looks very good.
Don't Look Now is horror at its most subtle and thoughtful; standing as one of director Nicolas Roeg's best films. Although its cerebral style nurtures occasional stretches of what feels like not much going on, it still remains riveting and interesting viewing, regardless of its subsequent legions of flashier disciples. Don't Look Now comes recommended. MP
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