Don’t Look Now (1973) – 3/5

This one can be looked at, but does not have to

„Don’t Look Now“ is a co-production between the United Kingdom and Italy from 1973 and I guess the Italian component here mostly stems from where the film is set. The British aspect has to do with the cast and crew, who made this film and who is starring in it as well. The language is almost exclusively English, so no worries if you are not fluent in Italian. The director is Nicolas Roeg for whom this was among his earliest efforts as the man in charge. He was already over 40 when he made this, so not young at all and before that he was mostly working in the camera and cinematography departments. You do not see it too often that people translate from cinematography to direction, even if there are obvious connections between the two fields. Wally Pfister comes to mind, but he is an exception too, so let’s not drift too far away now. This movie here has its 50th anniversary this year, but this is not why I watched it. It was on the big screen again on the occasion of a British film retrospective. Back then, the film was nominated for several BAFTAs, also in key categories, but only ended up winning one, namely cinematography. Beautiful Italy/Venice surely helped there. No Oscar nominations. Roeg by the way died slightly under five years ago or maybe over, depending on when you read this review of mine, but it was in late 2018 and he reached a fairly solid age. This film here brought him his third and final BAFTA nomination. The two before that came for British cinematography, so you could say that this is the most prestigious one. Still with us at this point are the two lead actors Donald Sutherland, closer to 90 than to 80 now already, and Julie Christie, who is also comfortably over the age of 80. I still find it strange to see that Sutherland has never been nominated for an Oscar. His biggest career triumph is an Emmy win. Christie was already an Oscar winner when she starred in here and her second nomination just happened too. For the next two, she had to wait a long time.

As for the rest of the cast here, I cannot say too much, not to say „nothing“. I am not familiar with these actors I must admit, maybe my loss. They were all solid. Child actress Sharon Williams, whose character was at the very center of the story here, even if she did not have a whole lot of screen time, acted only in one other film afterwards and that happened almost 20 years later according to imdb, but with her very common name, I am not totally sure if this was the same Sharon Williams. But let’s trust them, shall we. It is unclear what happened to her in the many decades since this movie, but her character’s red jacket was kinda memorable and in the end, it was even a symbol for devastation and further tragedy. Adelina Poerio played this murderous dwarf character towards the end then. Does this mean that she also committed all the other killings? Not a lot known about her either, except that she played in one other film during her career where she also worked with a big-name director. I am not entirely sure about this character though. Of course, we have a film here that can be described as a psychological thriller with drama, mystery and horror elements, so there is a big collection of genres to be found here and you can probably watch it half a dozen times, maybe even a dozen times and a lot will still be unclear. Clearly, the dad mistook the small woman for his daughter and this perhaps had a bit to do also with the experience his wife made with these two ladies and one of them having visions of the daughter or an astral form of the daughter or whatever still being somewhat present and around, even if the man did not believe it as strongly as his wife did, but oh well. This is also why I had a bit of a hard time then accepting that he really thought in the end that it was his daughter.

But not only the protagonist was confused by certain aspects, like the inclusion the woman they get out of the lake and I thought it was the female protagonist, but maybe she just resembled her and Sutherland’s character did not think the same apparently. He, however, thought he saw his woman when she was in fact returning briefly to Britain because there had been an accident with the couple’s son. So the talking about having other kids in the future from these two women was not exactly the reflection of reality. It was more crucial to make sure they do not lose another child, even if there is on several occasions talk about the son’s injury not being serious at all and Christie’s character also calls Sutherland’s when she is in Britain, so yeah the mystery vanishes there or becomes even bigger because the male protagonist is oh so sure that he saw his wife there. Christie is by the way quite stunning in this film here, so I can see why she was one of the biggest female stars from her era. Pacino is probably not wrong with what he said about her. She also was not scared of naked scenes as we see here as there is at least topless nudity here, maybe full frontal even. I am not entirely sure, but then again there is the same for Sutherland, well except his genitalia under the waist, so maybe those also not for Christie. The scene when the house maid or what it was enters the room and Sutherland is sitting there naked was one of really not too many funny moments from this film. With the situational comedy here basically. I am not sure if it was really intended as funny by the writers. Oh and by the way, this maid was also fairly attractive, even if she only had two very brief inclusions if I remember correctly.

I just mentioned the writers. Let’s dig a bit deeper there: The base material is from Daphne Du Maurier, a very popular English (you would not have guessed from the name) writer who was in her 60s when this film got made and her most known work is „Rebecca“ that gut turned into a highly successful film several decades earlier. I wonder what she thought about the adaptation and final outcome of the film „Don’t Look Now“. By the way, I still wonder why the film is called like this. If the reason is more obvious in the book, they did not get it across for the movie. Anyway, the screenplay is by Allan Scott and Chris Bryant and for both this film here is probably the most known career release, if not in the top spot. Bryant died already 15 years ago, but Scott is still active and working now in his 80s and had an utterly amazing career. There was a break of almost 20 years at the start of the new millennium, even if he was a script consultant for the Oscar-nominated „Kon-Tiki“ in the middle of this period, but then he returned to writing before 2020 and became an Emmy winner for the highly successful chess-themed series „The Queen’s Gambit“. There is definitely also some mystery component to said show, so maybe this is his area of expertise. But now, before I get to the end of my review, let me say a few more words about „Don’t Look Now“. The scene when the couple meet those two women for the first time at the restaurant was among the most memorable scenes from the film. There I had a bit of a feeling that, for whatever reason, Sutherland’s character might have staged all this to somehow drive his significant other to insanity, in a way like the romance plot from the slightly older „Rosemary’s Baby“. But it was not like this and if we look at his suffering at the very start, especially when he runs towards and carries his lifeless daughter, you knew that chances are small for him to be an antagonist in this film. He was actually more of a victim if we look at the end of the film and also the scene in which his character almost falls down from an elevated spot. There is just so often a dark mystery to his presence and he has played so many villains over the years and decades that it crossed my mind. Maybe also because I saw his very long film starring Depardieu and De Niro where he portrayed ultimate evil.

The German title is by the way completely different compared to the original title and beings in the place where this film is set, namely the beautiful city of Venice and the literal translation of the German title would be „Where the gondolas are in mourning“, so this title from my country is a bit of an accurate description of the final scene then before the closing credits roll in. I must say I was still baffled how at that point Christie’s character was hanging out so much with the two mysterious women as I never felt they really became friends or anything, completely aside form the age gap. But as I just mentioned the credits, I also wanna say that I really liked the tune coming with them. This was maybe the music highlight for me, tied for the lead with a melody from Verdi it was I think on an earlier occasion eight before the nudity happened. So I give a big thumbs-up here too to Pino Donaggio who was in charge of the score for the movie and surely this area was one of the bets the film had to offer. Same can be said about the two lead performances where I would maybe say Sutherland was the better, but he also had the better material and baitier scenes. I am kinda surprised that he did not score any awards attention at all for his portrayal here if we ignore the BAFTAs for a moment and even there, he was also nominated for this film and another film. One I have not seen. He deserved better. Speaking of awards attention, this film here also managed to be nominated at an awards show in Turkey. Now this is a bit surprising. I never read something like this elsewhere. In general, I would say this film went a bit under the radar and would have deserved more attention, even if I also think that a rating of clearly over 7/10 is way too high. But I am glad it was shown again and will be a few more times over the coming two weeks and I am also glad I went to see it. „Don’t Look Now“ gets a positive recommendation from me and that was never in doubt at all. I say that whenever this is on the next time where you live: Do look! Do watch!