DON'T LOOK NOW 1973lecinemadreams.blogspot.com/2011/06/dont-look-now-1973.html

There is nothing like a good scare at the movies. I don't mean those jarring, throw-your-popcorn-in-air, dig-your-nails-into-your-partner's-arm, moments (ah, sweet memories of Wait Until Dark). As fun as they can be, thosemoments are over too swiftly. What I refer to are those far more satisfying, lasting feelings of intensifying disquietudewhich overtake you the moment a movie starts to touch an anxiety or sense of dread that runs deeper than meresurprise in the face of the unexpected. When the passive role of observer — the moviegoer's emotional safety-valve—gives way to the more active role of projected participant. Suddenly, you're relating to the film on a viscerallevel, and all the while an electric current running through you is taking great delight in your being brought to such avulnerable state of apprehension by mere flickering images projected on a screen.

It happened once when I was a kid and saw Rosemary's Baby and it happened again as an adult with NicolasRoeg's Don't Look Now, an opaque, atmospheric thriller that proves when it comes to scary stories, it's all in thetelling.

Julie Christie as Laura Baxter

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Donald Sutherland as John Baxter

Hilary Mason as Heather, the blind woman with "second sight"

Clelia Matania as Wendy

An off-season assignment to restore a decaying church in Venice, Italy affords architect Donald Sutherland and wifeJulie Christie the opportunity to leave behind tragic memories associated with their English country home—the siteof the recent accidental drowning death of their young daughter. However, Venice in winter, a shuttered cityblanketed in gray skies, desolate streets, and half-empty cafes and hotels, is grim and foreboding. A feeling furtherintensified by the city being beset by a string of grisly, unsolved murders. With the “chance” meeting of a pair ofeccentric elderly sisters, one blind and claiming to have psychic connection with the deceased child, a chain ofevents is triggered...events as labyrinthine and dark as the streets of Venice themselves.

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The unforeseeable foreseen. A sense of something not being right. An accident. A premonition. A fate.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILMWhat one considers scary is as subjective a designation as what one considers to be funny, so I'm aware my claimof Don't Look Now being one of the scariest movies I've ever seen is not the same thing as saying it's a scary movie.Its setup and execution I'm sure is far too leisurely and bloodless for the Texas Chainsaw Massacre crowd, and thelabel of "arty" would not be baseless in describing both its structure and visual style. But for whatever reason orwhatever chord it struck, this darkly mysterious merge of the rational and paranormal just scared the bejesus out ofme when I first saw it. And continues to do so even today.

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Venice in PerilA sign calling attention to the endangered status of Venice architecture also

alludes ominously to the serial killer terrorizing the city.

PERFORMANCESI claim no objectivity when it comes to Julie Christie. To the head-scratching bewilderment of my partner, who thinksshe's fine enough but nothing to rave about, I find her to be an intelligently resourceful actress who brings an air ofemotive conviction to everything she does. And it certainly doesn't hurt that she is a stone knockout, to boot. Hermatter-of-fact naturalness proves an essential asset in a film such as this, lest her character be made to appearhysterical or unbalanced. Donald Sutherland underplays so well (usually, anyway) that the skill of his performancesare often overlooked. In Don't Look Now he is at his relaxed best, making his character a believable skeptic in theface of the fantastic. Watch the play of emotions over his face as his character tries to sort out the mystery that hislife has become. It's just the kind of in-the-moment urgency that is lacking in so many suspense films. Sutherlandseems to be right with us, the audience, not a step ahead nor a step behind. I think he's fantastic here.

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The much-discussed graphic sex scene between Christie and Sutherland is but one of many moments of genuine affection displayed betweenthe couple. Moments that invest the film with a real sense of the pain of loss.

THE STUFF OF FANTASYThere's a chilling sequence in which the couple venture out at night, seeking a restaurant. The dark streets andalleys prove an insurmountable maze and they become lost and eventually separated. In the midst of this anunearthly cry is heard and something terrifying is half seen. This scene just had my pulse racing. It is a brilliant bit of cinematic tension.

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Things only half seen and half heard.

THE STUFF OF DREAMSThe film's title is really splendid. No matter how you say it, literal or ironic, whatever you think it means, whateverpunctuation you add or where you place the emphasis; it remains 100% appropriate to the film's themes. It speaksof warning, apprehension, sight, and danger. All elements of the film evocatively rendered in the recurring motifs ofeyes, watching , seeing, and reflecting.

A woman without sight watches.

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The city is full of windows but no one sees the murderer.

A child drowns when no one is watching.

The whole of Don't Look Now is an awakening to the danger inherent in not heeding signs of warning, not beingwatchful, not seeing, not looking. As the poster for the movie states, "Pass the warning."

A good example of why a film like "Don't Look Now" warrants several viewings.A quick insert shot reveals of Donald Sutherland's nightstand (a man who refuses to acknowledge his second-sight) reveals: a photo of hischildren with the drowned daughter's face obscured; a glass of water with a symbolically significant red base; and a paperback copy of Der

Stellvertreter (subtitled, A Christian Tragedy) by Rolf Hochhuth - a play alleging the Catholic Church turned its back on (failed to see, if you will) the warning signs of The Holocaust. Playing further into the themes of not looking and paying little heed, in a later scene, a Catholic Bishop

wonders aloud if perhaps God has "other priorities" or whether "we have stopped listening."

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A thriller in all senses of the word, Don't Look Now is one of those rare suspense films that doesn't lose its punchonce you've unearthed its mystery. One of the chief reasons I find it so rewarding a movie to watch again and againis that every scene and sequence is full of so much information (apparent and hidden), each revisit feels like a newexperience. It doesn't matter if the things unearthed were intended by the director or not. Like all art, a film takes ona life of its own after its creation, and beauty...as well as terror...remains in the eye of the beholder.

BONUS MATERIALDon't Look Now theatrical trailer:Copyright © Ken Anderson

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