DON’T LOOK NOW (1973)
Article 2344 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 8-26-2007
Posting Date: 1-12-2008
Directed by Nicolas Roeg
Featuring Julie Christie, Donald Sutherland, Hilary Mason
An architect is in Venice to renovate an old church. While there, his wife meets a pair of elderly sisters, one of which is a psychic who claims that she can see their deceased daughter with them. She warns them that the architect is in danger while he stays in Venice. Meanwhile, the architect, who may have psychic abilities of his own, finds himself seeing visions of a figure in a red raincoat, which is what his daughter was wearing when she drowned.
There’s no way to really describe this odd but fascinating horror movie about premonitions. It’s fairly arty, but effectively so; the masterful editing makes us feel at moments that all time is happening at once, or that we can sense the rush of memories of one person or another. It was also a brilliant idea to set the film in Venice, which is definitely an ironic place to be for the couple, given that their daughter died by drowning. The music is also brilliant and beautiful. It’s done in a very detached style, but it’s appropriate for this movie, where we can sit back and wonder how much the architect is really seeing and how much are psychic visions of the future. It’s a little opaque at times, and the movie runs a little too long, but there’s really nothing else like it out there.