Don’t Look Now (1973)

Donald Sutherland plays John Baxter, an academic and artist/restorer, obsessing to the point of tedium over the exact size and shade of colored squares for bas relief sculptures on his latest facelift project, a centuries old church in a dreary, wintry Venice. The work is good, it keeps him distracted from thinking about the soul-crushing drowning death of his young daughter back home in England, the brokenness pooling inside his wife, Laura (Julie Christie), and the fact that he foresaw the girl’s death moments before it occurred.

When a small gesture – the closing of a restaurant window – brings Baxter and his wife into contact with two sisters (Clelia Matania and Hilary Mason), one of whom is blind and psychic, lives will unravel. For the blind woman can see the dead daughter, and the girl has a message for daddy: Flee Venice or die.

That is the premise of Nicolas Roeg’s justifiably famous psychological horror/thriller “Don’t Look Now.” There is a serial killer here, yes, but the suspect is off to the side, a secondary plot tangent, whereas the real onscreen horror is about a couple desperately trying to come to terms with unfathomable loss and guilt, and further losing their paths – mentally and physically – along the way to recovery. The latter part is literal, as the streets and alleys of Venice can be an endless puzzle box, where light often is absent and unreachable. Even during daylight.

I have been there, to Venice, and I have never seen its dark side – and it has a dark side, no lie – put to better use than here. This is a city where walking around a corner can bring you to the safety of a market square or a pitch black dead end. Dread follows this couple.

Roeg’s story, loosely based on a short story, and his editing and camera work, and the refusal to use subtitles for spoken Italian, constantly keep the viewer off balance. Some scenes play out mysteriously and suddenly, and it is not until the end credits roll that one realizes their significance. A second viewing is a must. Also our heroes are not so lovable: They abandon their surviving child to a boarding school back in England after he watched his sister drown. Who does that? One pauses at their parenting skills, and ponders the meaning of such a send-off.

Absolutely among the most terrifyingly real films I’ve ever seen, and winced through twice in a row. Sutherland I don’t think has ever been better, or Christie more lovely and hurt, and as the blind woman with a special sense all her own, Mason nearly steals the film in the final freakish minutes.

Not for all tastes that’s for sure, it contains one of the most notorious sex films ever put in a film. The drowning of the child, at the opening of the film, is also startling, leaving one cold and uneasy. Emotions throughout the film, including the climax, cling to you. Or they dd to me, even writing this blog piece days after viewing the film.

Incidentally, or not, “Now” has one of the most layered depictions of a Catholic priest I have ever seen. The bishop (Massimo Serato) overseeing the renovations dismisses the detailed work by Baxter. Having suffered his own tragedies, he shrugs off stucco choices and the shapes of gargoyles, and all the brick and mortar worry. Baxter foams and protests, “This is important!” It’s just a building, the priest says, looking with grave concern at his troubled and grieving employee and friend, “God has more important priorities.” A+