DON’T
LOOK NOW
10/10
UK/ITY
1973
dir. Nicolas Roeg
110m
The
plot, based on a Daphne Du Maurier short story, is simple enough. A young
girl accidentally drowns; her parents (Christie, Sutherland) escape to
Venice. While he loses himself in his work restoring an old church, she
falls in with a pair of elderly sisters (Matania, Mason), one of whom
claims to be psychic and able to ‘see’ the dead child. Meanwhile, a psychotic
killer is on the loose loose among the shadowy canals…
 Fairly
basic thriller material, but in Roeg’s hands Don’t Look Now becomes
a dazzling puzzle of a movie in which the viewer, like the characters,
is constantly being forced to re-examine what we’ve seen, or, more accurately,
what we think we’ve seen. The movie is as much composed as directed,
building up a technically astonishing network of intricate visual rhymes
and musical themes. But the film isn’t just an intellectual exercise in
story-telling, it’s also a tremendously powerful emotional experience.
The
legendary love scene (and it’s a love scene, not a sex scene)
between Christie and Sutherland is still among the most beautiful
and sensuous sequences in cinema, but it’s surpassed by the devastating
closing montage in which all the movie’s shattered fragments finally fall
into place. Roeg’s done some fine work over the years, but he’s never
matched this stunning masterpiece. Come to think of it – who has?
12th
March 2001
For
films rated 9 and 10 check out the Hall of Fame
by Neil
Young
by Neil
Young
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