After Nicolas Roeg’s recent passing, it was time to finally watch Don’t Look Now (1973), of which I knew the references to it in pop culture and even the ending for so long, but had never actually seen it. It’s an eerie, involving piece of work that for most of its running length functions as a marital drama with Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie (at their most attractive, stylish?) as the couple on a working holiday in Venice dealing with the death of their daughter months ago. The artistic flourishes of abstraction (the water spilling onto the photo slide, making the colours run), the mysterious atmosphere of the location and its canals at night, the presence of the psychic and the priest, etc. All of it slowly building to an ending, even though I knew what happened, was still such a wild trip (just to imagine audiences in ‘73 confronted with it, pre-David Lynch). In some ways, a different viewing experience to what I expected but still evidence of the singular artistry I associate with Roeg and his style of dream-like, symbol-loaded cinema. Score by Pino Donaggio. Recommended.
VHS Tracking 