sign in sign up
<<
Home , Cat Chaser, Massimo Serato, Nicolas Roeg, Pino Donaggio, Track 29, Two Deaths

October 15, 2019 (XXXIX:8) : DON’T LOOK NOW (1973, 110m) The version of this Goldenrod Handout sent out in our Monday mailing, and the one online, has hot links. Spelling and Style—use of italics, quotation marks or nothing at all for titles, e.g.—follows the form of the sources.

DIRECTOR Nicolas Roeg WRITING Allan Scott and Chris Bryant wrote the screenplay based on a story by . PRODUCER Peter Katz MUSIC CINEMATOGRAPHY Anthony B. Richmond EDITING Graeme Clifford

CAST ...Laura Baxter ...John Baxter Hilary Mason...Heather Clelia Matania...Wendy Massimo Serato...Bishop Barbarrigo Renato Scarpa...Inspector Longhi Giorgio Trestini...Workman ...Hotel Manager David Tree...Anthony Babbage Ann Rye...Mandy Babbage Nicholas Salter...Johnny Baxter Sharon Williams...Christine Baxter highly influential filmmaker, with such directors as Steven Bruno Cattaneo...Detective Sabbione Soderbergh, , and citing him Adelina Poerio...Dwarf as such. In 1999, the acknowledged Roeg's importance in the British film industry by respectively NICOLAS ROEG (b. August 15, 1928 in St John's Wood, naming Don't Look Now and Performance the 8th and 48th , England, UK—d. November 23, 2018 (age 90) in greatest British films of all time in its Top 100 British films UK) was an English director (30 credits) and poll. These are some other films he directed: Eureka (1983), (20 credits), best known for directing Roger Waters: 5:01AM (The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking, Performance* (1970), Walkabout* (1971), Don't Look Now Pt. 10) (Short) (1984), Castaway (1986), Aria (segment "Un (1973), The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976), ballo in maschera") (1987), (1988), Cold Heaven (1980), and The Witches (1990). His 1985 film Insignificance, (1991), (TV Movie) (1993), screened in competition at the 1985 Cannes Film Festival, (1995), Full Body Massage (TV Movie) (1995), and Puffball: selected to compete for the Palme d'Or, imagines a meeting The Devil's Eyeball (2007). As mentioned before, he had a between , , Monroe's second career as a cinematographer and did cinematography for his husband Joe DiMaggio, and Senator Joseph McCarthy. first two films. These are some films he did cinematography Making his directorial debut 23 years after establishing for before becoming primarily a director: Information himself in the film industry as a cinematographer, Roeg Received (1961), Band of Thieves (1962), The Masque of the quickly became known for an idiosyncratic visual and Red Death (1964), Code 7, Victim 5 (1964), The Girl-Getters narrative style, characterized by the use of disjointed and (1964), Seaside Swingers (1964), Fahrenheit 451 (1966), A disorienting editing. For this reason, he was considered a Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1966), Roeg—DON’T LOOK NOW—2

Breakthrough (Short) (1966), Far from the Madding Crowd a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days (2012), and Diary of a Wimpy Kid: (1967), Petulia (1968), and Glastonbury Fayre (1972). The Long Haul (2017). *Also cinematography

PINO DONAGGIO (b. November 24, 1941 in Burano, Veneto, ) is an Italian musician, singer, and composer of film and television scores (210 credits). A classically-trained violinist, Donaggio is known for his collaborations with director , and for his work in both European and American genre cinema. These are some of the films and television series he has composed for: La sporca guerra (Documentary) (1959), Don't Look Now (1973), Carrie (1976), Piranha (1978), Home Movies (1979), Dressed to Kill (1980), The Howling (1981), The Black Cat (1981), The Fan (1981), (1981), Over the Brooklyn Bridge (1984), JULIE CHRISTIE (b. April 14, 1940 in Chabua, Assam The World of Don Camillo (1984), (1984), Province, British India [now Assam, India]) is a British Nothing Left to Do but Cry (1984), The Lie (1985), The actress who has appeared in six films that were ranked in the Adventures of Hercules (1985), Nothing Underneath (1985), British Film Institute's 100 greatest British films of the 20th Savage Dawn (1985), The Barbarian Brothers (1987), century. Christie's breakthrough film role was in Billy Liar Catacombs (1988), Kansas (1988), Night Game (1989), All (1963). She came to international attention for her Ladies Do It (1992), (1992), Trauma (1993), performances in Darling (1965), for which she won the Never Talk to Strangers (1995), Arcane Sorcerer (1996), Academy Award for Best Actress, and Doctor Zhivago (1965). Marching in Darkness (1996), Call Girl (1996), Terra bruciata In the following years, she starred in Fahrenheit 451 (1966), (1999), Cheeky (2000), Up at the Villa (2000), On the Beach Far from the Madding Crowd (1967), Petulia (1968), The Go- Beyond the Pier (2000), Once Upon a Time in Sicily (2001), Between (1971), McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971), for which she The Order (2001), Seed of Chucky (2004), Un caso di coscienza received her second Oscar nomination, Don't Look Now (TV Series) (2003-2006), Passion (2012), The Neorealism: We (1973), Shampoo (1975), and Heaven Can Wait (1978). She Were Not Just Bicycles Thieves (Documentary) (2013), and has continued to receive significant critical recognition for Domino (2019). her work, including Oscar nominations for the independent films Afterglow (1997) and Away from Her (2007). These are ANTHONY B. RICHMOND (b. July 7, 1942 in London, some of the other films (54 credits) she has acted in: Crooks England, UK) is an English cinematographer (93 credits) Anonymous (1962), Young Cassidy (1965), Nashville (1975), known for his work with director Nicolas Roeg on the films Demon Seed (1977), Heat and Dust (1983), Separate Tables Don't Look Now (1973), The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976) (1983 TV Movie), Power (1986), DragonHeart (1996), and Bad Timing (1980). These are some other films he has Hamlet (1996), The Miracle Maker (2000), Troy (2004), worked on: A Cathedral in Our Time (Documentary short) Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004), Finding (1967), Sympathy for the Devil (Documentary) (1968), Let It Neverland (2004), New York, I Love You (2008), Red Riding Be (Documentary) (1969), Glastonbury Fayre (Documentary) Hood (2011), The Company You Keep (2012), and The (1972), Old Dracula (1974), Stardust (1974), The Eagle Has Bookshop (2017). Landed (1976), Silver Bears (1977), The Greek Tycoon (1978), The Kids Are Alright (Documentary) (1979), The American DONALD SUTHERLAND (b. July 17, 1935 in Saint Success Company (1980), Head On (1980), Nightkill (1980), John, New Brunswick, Canada) is a Canadian actor (192 Improper Channels (1981), Sunset (1988), The Loner (TV credits) whose film career spans more than five decades. Movie) (1988), Cat Chaser (1989), Scissors (1991), Midnight's Sutherland rose to fame after starring in films including The Child (TV Movie) (1992), Candyman (1992), Heart of Dirty Dozen (1967), M*A*S*H (1970), Kelly's Heroes (1970), Darkness (TV Movie) (1993), Tales from the Hood (1995), Klute (1971), Don't Look Now (1973), Fellini's Casanova The Immortals (1995), Ravenous (1999), Agnes Browne (1976), 1900 (1976), Animal House (1978), Invasion of the (1999), Cherry Falls (2000), Men of Honor (2000), Someone Body Snatchers (1978), Ordinary People (1980), and Eye of the Like You... (2001), Legally Blonde (2001), Dumb and Needle (1981). He later went on to star in many other films Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd (2003), Dirty Dancing: where he appeared either in leading or supporting roles such Havana Nights (2004), Just Friends (2005), The Rocker as A Dry White Season (1989), JFK (1991), A Time to Kill (2008), Autopsy (2008), Audio Tour (Short) (2011), Diary of (1996), Italian Job (2003), Cold Mountain (2003), Pride & Roeg—DON’T LOOK NOW—3

Prejudice (2005), and The Hunger Games franchise (2012– 2015). In 2018, he was given an Honorary Award at the Academy Awards. These are some of the other films he has acted in: Studio 4 (TV Series) (1962), Suspense (TV Series) (1963), The Castle of the Living Dead (1964), The Sullavan Brothers (TV Series) (1965), The Bedford Incident (1965), Promise Her Anything (1966), A Farewell to Arms (TV Mini- Series) (1966), The Avengers (TV Series) (1967), The Shuttered Room (1967), Billion Dollar Brain (1967), Interlude s(1968), Oedipus the King (1968), Joanna (1968), Start the Revolution Without Me (1970), Alex in Wonderland (1970), Little Murders (1971), Johnny Got His Gun (1971), Steelyard Blues (1973), Lady Ice (1973), S*P*Y*S (1974), The Day of the Locust (1975), The Eagle Has Landed (1976), The Kentucky Fried Movie (1977), The Disappearance (1977), Blood Relatives (1978), The Great Train Robbery (1978), David Thompson: “Don’t Look Now”: Seeing the Red” Murder by Decree (1979), Ordeal by Innocence (1984), (Criterion) Crackers (1984), Revolution (1985), Bethune: The Making of a When Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now was released Hero (1990), Eminent Domain (1990), Buffy the Vampire in Britain in 1973, it was the main feature on a double bill Slayer (1992), Six Degrees of Separation (1993), Disclosure with Robin Hardy’s . I can still recall (1994), Virus (1999), Space Cowboys (2000), Salem's Lot (TV emerging from the experience elated and also in something Mini-Series) (2004), Frankenstein (TV Mini-Series) (2004), like a state of shock. While Hardy’s Hammer Films–ish take American Gun (2005), Lord of War (2005), An American on paganism on a Scottish island has achieved cult status, Haunting (2005), The Mechanic (2011), Moby Dick (TV Roeg’s extraordinary and enduring thriller is now frequently Mini-Series) (2011), Assassin's Bullet (2012), The Calling cited as one of the greatest of British films. In the early (2014), Forsaken (2015), Ad Astra (2019), and The Burnt seventies, when even mainstream films could be fearless and Orange Heresy (2019). experimental, smashing taboos and taunting the censors, cinema-going was a uniquely intense experience. But Don’t CLELIA MATANIA (b. March 28, 1913 in London, Look Now retains its power and mystery today thanks to England, UK—d. October 13, 1981 (age 68) in , Roeg’s mastery of what Alfred Hitchcock famously called Lazio, Italy) was an Italian film actress (98 credits). These are “pure cinema,” manifest in his visual sleight of hand and some of the films and television series she acted in: Melody of above all in his refusal to be bound by the conventions of My Heart (1936), Night Ride (1937), Departure (1938), dialogue-driven narrative and simple chronology. All this has Naples That Never Dies (1939), First Love (1941), La fuggitiva shaped a style that has justifiably come to be described as (1941), Perdition (1942), Farewell, My Beautiful Naples “Roegian.” (1947), Strange Witness (1950), Quo Vadis (1951), Never The film takes its title—disliked by distributors at Take No for an Answer (1951), Indiscretion of an American the time, for fear that antagonistic critics would use it as a Wife (1953), Riviera (1954), Neapolitan Carousel (1954), The curt dismissal—from its source, a 1972 short story by Hussars (1955), War and Peace (1956), Defend My Love Daphne du Maurier, who had also provided Hitchcock with (1956), Wives and Obscurities (1956), Roland the Mighty material for two of his masterpieces, Rebecca and The (1956), The Montecarlo Story (1956), Seven Hills of Rome Birds. Her tale begins intriguingly enough: “‘Don’t look (1957), A Farewell to Arms (1957), Fast and Sexy (1958), Il now,’ John said to his wife, ‘but there are a couple of old girls Medico Dei Pazzi (1959), The Wastrel (1961), Five Golden two tables away who are trying to hypnotize me.’” The Hours (1961), Nefertite, regina del Nilo (1961), The Magical married couple in question, the Baxters, have recently lost World of Disney (TV Series) (1962), Conquered City (1962), their five-year-old daughter, Christine, to meningitis. They The Battle of the Villa Fiorita (1965), Chimera (1968), The are holidaying in , where they encounter two eccentric Tough and the Mighty (1969), The Secret of Santa Vittoria sisters, one of whom is blind and psychic and claims to see (1969), The Nelson Affair (1973), Don't Look Now (1973), their daughter. In the screenplay by Chris Bryant and Allan Bambina (1974), A Virgin Named Mary (1975), Scar Tissue Scott (the latter of whom went on to write (1975), and Return of the Saint (TV Series) (1978). 1986’s Castaway, 1990’s The Witches, and1991’sCold Heaven for Roeg), the girl’s tragic death is the result of an accidental drowning, and the reason for the trip to the water- Roeg—DON’T LOOK NOW—4 bound Italian city is John’s work restoring old churches—in already boldly begun to go his individual and eccentric way particular, mosaics (like a mosaic, Don’t Look Now is a with fractured narratives, explosive juxtapositions, and a collection of fragments that make sense only when arranged startling playfulness with time. He continued that exploration by a master craftsman). The liquid that is so essential to life is in Don’t Look Now, but this film really clicked with audiences also, in Roeg’s film, a harbinger of death, from the persistent and became a commercial success because the director had rain on the pond in the very first shot to the murky canals in found the perfect genre vehicle for his own preoccupations. which murder victims are found. In the dazzling opening Roeg opens and closes Don’t Look Now with two distinctive sequence, set at the couple’s home in England, John is exercises in montage. The first deals with the death of looking at a photographic slide in which a mysterious hooded Christine, the second with the murder of John, when, as with figure in red sits in a church the proverbial drowning man, pew. When he accidentally his life flashes past in his mind knocks a glass of water over it, in a seemingly random the red bleeds across the slide, collection of images from and an image of the red- throughout the film. Roeg coated Christine becoming also employs music to submerged in the pond reinforce the connection outside enters his mind. Later, between these two sequences. in Venice, the same color will Pino Donaggio (then a prompt another dreadful successful Italian pop singer, association for John when he later Brian De Palma’s glimpses a scampering short composer of choice) came up figure in red—perhaps a child, perhaps Christine, for certain with a simple theme that, in the opening scene, is played his nemesis. haltingly, as if by a child learning the piano, and then in Before he shifted into direction in 1968, Roeg was John’s death montage is heard in a more fluent, not to say one of Britain’s leading lighting cameramen, working for fluid, version. on The Masque of the Red Death (1964), for That same music plays throughout the film’s famous François Truffaut on Fahrenheit 451 (1966), and for John love scene. Roeg filmed Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie Schlesinger on Far from the Madding Crowd (1967). In all as a couple having sex who are still very much in love with three films, the color red is a significant motif, appearing, each other, without recourse to unusual gymnastics on their respectively, in the hooded, faceless figure of Death, brightly part or prettily stylized camera angles on his. Furthermore, he painted fire engines, and the uniform of the dashing Sergeant intercuts their nude rolling around with shots of them getting Troy. (As Scott has pointed out, there was no reference in dressed later, granting their intimacy a verisimilitude and either the original story or the screenplay of Don’t Look normalcy that are rarely seen in cinema. The presence of Now to Christine’s or the mysterious figure in Venice’s Donaggio’s gentle theme hints that this is a gesture by them wearing red, so this was entirely Roeg’s idea.) Curiously, toward conceiving another child. Roeg has even encouraged Roeg even has a writing credit on a modest British thriller, the interpretation that, when Laura smiles proudly in the 1962’s A Prize of Arms, which also begins with a fatal final images of the funeral in Venice, it is not just because she premonition involving water. While it would be hard to see feels that Christine and John are united in another world but any particular plan behind these concurrences, Roeg has a also because she knows she is pregnant. frequently stated belief that there is no such thing as Roeg’s cinema makes us aware that if we only use our coincidence, that somehow—as his father used to tell him— eyes, we will realize—as he slyly has John state early on—that “everything is connected,” and that there is a strange destiny “nothing is as it seems.” Right at the start of the film, during at work in our lives. It’s not difficult to appreciate how much the opening credits, the shot of the pond under rain dissolves du Maurier’s tale, which neither confirms nor denies the to a strange image of light glistening through a slatted power of ESP or precognition, would have appealed to him. window. The sounds of a man (later revealed to be John) In story and film, though John is the skeptic and his wife, humming and church bells tolling are clues that this is in fact Laura, susceptible to the idea of a world beyond presented by the interior of the Baxters’ hotel room in Venice. Which time the sisters, it is he who actually foresees the future but fails to are we truly experiencing—past, present, or future? All of heed the warnings of danger. “Seeing is believing,” he says at them at once, perhaps? one point to comfort Laura. But does he believe all he sees? Throughout Don’t Look Now, unexpected and In his first two films, 1970’s Performance (codirected astounding connections are made by the simple act of a cut. with ) and 1971’s Walkabout, Roeg had Laura’s nervous gesture of putting her hands over her mouth Roeg—DON’T LOOK NOW—5 rhymes with one made by Christine at the pond. The shot of The casting also fell perfectly into place for Roeg. a female corpse being raised out of the canal waters is married Christie and Sutherland were his first choices for Laura and to the image of Christine drowning, but this time it is (just John, and though they were both initially unavailable, their perceptibly) in reverse motion. prior commitments fell through at just the right moment. This masterly use of editing (Roeg working here in Both actors give career-best performances, playing off each collaboration with future director Graeme Clifford) is other instinctually like a genuine couple. The humor and especially evident in the scene in which John almost falls to tenderness of their on-screen relationship balances the his death from a raised platform in the church he is restoring. morbid aspects of Don’t Look Now, a necessary ploy in a story After a series of evenly timed that confronts an shots showing different angles of audience (the parents him at work, we finally perceive in it, at least) with their (with the help of a slight creak on worst fear. For the the soundtrack), at the top of the scene where Laura frame, a length of wood falling makes a sudden toward him in slow motion. decision to enter a Then, in a shot looking down church, Roeg used the from over his head, real time is divergent spontaneous extended so that the anticipated reactions of the two crash of the glass just above him is actors to the building delayed, creating an even greater to replace scripted shock. John ends up swinging dialogue, with Christie from a rope, the constant enthusiastically lighting switching of angles building up candles as Sutherland the appalling sense of vertigo (all distractedly plays with of which was prefigured in an earlier shot of Laura falling in an electric lamp. slow motion, in a fit of dizziness). Sutherland has recalled The two sisters are also ideally cast, for both their how he agreed to perform this dangerous stunt himself after banality and their eccentricity, and Roeg is not above his double refused to do it, only later discovering that the throwing in a shot of them laughing over a set of family wire that was supposed to make it safe could have easily photographs to suggest they may not be as sincere as Laura— snapped at any moment. Nothing is as it seems. and perhaps the audience—believes them to be. When John Had not Thomas Mann and Luchino Visconti spies through a keyhole on their séance, he is taken by the already been there, Roeg’s film might just as easily have been neighbors to be a Peeping Tom, the absurdity of the situation called Death in Venice. But while Visconti depicts the city in compounded by the blind woman’s orgasmic vocalizations. the fetid heat of summer, Roeg shows us a Venice shrouded There is a comic dimension too in John’s visit to the police (literally, in the case of the hotel furniture) in winter inspector, who sits behind a desk and at first cannot be seen dampness and death. There is little sense in the film of the for a large lampshade. Roeg reinforced the cultural barrier iconic city as an overcrowded tourist destination, and famous between the anxious John and the dubious policeman by his views are carefully avoided (St. Mark’s Square can be just choice of an Italian actor whose English was very poor, and glimpsed in the deep background). Roeg and his director of who had learned his lines without fully understanding them. photography, Anthony Richmond, using handheld cameras While maintaining its strong narrative line with and zooms in a daringly free way, exploit the labyrinthine several heart-stopping sequences, Don’t Look Now is replete quality of the narrow backstreets, in which turning corners with such original moments, true to Roeg’s ethos of takes you from dark solitude to public frivolity and back remaining open to the happy accidents that occur in filming, again in an instant. so that the meeting of life and celluloid becomes a dialogue, Roeg’s discovery of a church (the Church of St. not a prescription. The result is an outstandingly rich film Nicholas, no less, who we are told is the patron saint of that—for a genre that is usually all about explaining a scholars and children) that was already being restored was a mystery away—can chill and surprise on repeated viewings. happy “accident,” especially as it was already sporting a Roeg boldly demonstrates that psychic phenomena need not “Venice in Peril” sign, as well as a poster for the 1959 short be the stuff of fantasy but can be rooted in the life film compilation The Chaplin Revue, the title pertinently experiences we all share—birth, sex, and death. Everything is rendered here as Uno contro tutti—“One Against All.” connected. Roeg—DON’T LOOK NOW—6

to Venice and watched it in the room [Bart’s new book reiterates his claims that he witnessed Sutherland and Christie having sex for real]. I don’t remember him coming to Venice and I certainly don’t remember him in the room. There were five of us: Donald, Julie, Nic, me and the focus puller. We had some mics in the room and a sound mixer in the hallway, we shot it in an hour and we left. Donald went completely mad about it.” “I’ve got to tell you, today it would be so easy to desaturate the colours in the digital intermediate stage but we didn’t have any of that so we had to do it all with set decoration and costume design. We took all the red out of it. The only red on the set was the little girl’s jacket, the dwarf’s scarf, the dwarf’s jacket and the red in Donald’s scarf. It was very simple but everything sticks out. I think the blood came Tony Richmond on shooting the film (Empire Magazine) from England, although the make-up was Italian. It was “Nic [Roeg] and I met on a movie in Israel redder than normal blood. That was what we wanted.” called Judith with Peter Finch, Sophia Loren and Jack “It’s incredibly hard to shoot in Venice. There are no Hawkins in 1965. He was second unit director and I was a cars or trucks, so you’re working off barges and if the tide clapper boy on the first unit. He and his crew seemed like a comes in you’re stuck there until the next day. We shot the good bunch of chaps, so I hung out with them a lot, and I opening sequence at the cottage in Hertfordshire for four went on to work as his assistant when he was a days before Christmas and then it was six weeks in Venice. cinematographer. He took me out to Australia We shot in places that people don’t go: there’s [only] one for Walkabout in 1970 and I directed second unit on that. shot of the Grand Canal. Our’s is the people’s Venice. But as Then he mentioned that he had something else and would I beautiful as it is, Venice is a scary place in winter. Nic and I like to work on it? He keeps things close to his chest—I don’t went to dinner one night at Julie’s place on Giudecca, one of blame him, things happen on movies—but it turned out to the other islands, and on the way back we got off at the be Don’t Look Now. It happened that quickly.” wrong stop and got sort of lost. It was really creepy. I think “Nic is great on set. He’s not a screamer and shouter the film’s a little bit odd and off-key and it’s a by-product of like a lot of people; he’s got a great sense of humour and that strange environment.” when something goes wrong, as it inevitably does, he sees the “You can get bogged down in terrible rain when funny side. He has the ability to bring out the best in people. you’re filming but the weather worked in our favour. The Thinking back, one of the things that helped on Don’t Look great thing about Venice is that the light goes very quickly Now was having an Italian crew. We told them what we because it doesn’t get into those little alleys, so it can always wanted them to do and they did it—we didn’t know enough be dark no matter what the weather’s like. When John is Italian to discuss it (laughs). It was a small crew. Just Nic and outside the church or watching the body being hauled out of I, and a focus puller, and the rest were Italian.” the canal, the weather was fantastic. In Hertfordshire we had “To do a sequence like [the sex scene] that takes it so this low, weak, wintery sun which just looked fantastic.” close to the edge that people insist they actually see Laura “The biggest drama of the shot was Donald with the (Christie) and John (Sutherland) making love—which they death sequence. It was scheduled to be done on the last day don’t because they didn’t—is all to do with trust. This was and that panicked him. He didn’t want to do it on the last the fourth time Nic and I had worked with Julie Christie. day and he got a bit nervous about it. We rehearsed it using a We’d worked with her on Doctor Zhivago, Fahrenheit prosthetic piece but—and I don’t know if I should upset 451 and Far From The Madding Crowdtoo, so there was a lot vegetarians—we got a baby pig from a butcher and put of friendship and a lot of trust. We shot it one Saturday Donald’s wig and scarf around it because pig’s skin is like afternoon at the Bauer Grunwald hotel. The brilliance of that human skin obviously. Then we sent it to Harry’s Bar and scene was in the cutting room. I didn’t know that Steven they cooked it for us” (laughs). Soderbergh had homaged it in —that’s great.” “I had an interesting relationship with Nic. When I “The interest in the scene is great for the movie, started working for him he was sort of a father-figure to me, although the idea that they did it for real is crazy. Donald then it became an older brother/young brother relationship (Sutherland) emailed me about it the other day. Peter Bart, and now we’re friends. When you go off on location like we who was an executive at Paramount at the time, says he came did on Don’t Look Now—and Nic is a pretty intense guy— Roeg—DON’T LOOK NOW—7 you live together, you hang out together and there’s nothing when it comes to movies, and Don’t Look Now is one of the to do but talk about the movie. When you’re working in the great “movies-about-movie-watching” ever made. Primarily, city you live in, you go home to your wife and kids—instead it is about the act of perception itself. of dailies, they give you a DVD these days and you go and A sustained work of anxiety, melancholy, and watch them on a shitty computer—but on Don’t Look Now dread, Don’t Look Now is also an intellectual’s dream of a we’d go and watch dailies after work and have a few beers.” horror movie: a combination of a four-dimensional “It was six weeks of our lives dedicated to the movie kaleidoscope with the most ruthlessly beautiful and intricate and it really paid off. Don’t Look Now stands the test of time. mousetrap ever made. (It was voted best British movie of all It’s a really good movie. I think it’s Nic’s best. Does he? I time by a Time Out poll.) While much of the film’s power don’t know, but he probably does.” derives from the Daphne du Maurier story, the story serves as a mere frame upon which the English director Nicolas Roeg and the scriptwriters, Allan Scott and Chris Bryant, weave their dark tapestry. Du Maurier’s short story has neither the depth nor the ingenuity of the movie, but it does suggest it, as latent potential, and the central idea which makes Don’t Look Now such a rich and rewarding puzzle is to be found not only in the body of the story, but in the title itself. “Don’t look,” first of all, lets us know that appearances are deceiving. It implies that the only way to reach the truth is not by looking but by seeing. (A “seer” is another word for a prophet, one who sees outside the flat circle of time.) The “Now” of the title refers to the present moment, and the fact that the protagonist—Baxter, played by Donald Sutherland—commits a fatal error by interpreting a vision of a future event as something happening in the present. Jasun Horsely: “Fixed Images of Eternity: Time, By seeing an event that has not yet happened as something Perception & Grif in ‘Don’t Look Now’ (Cinephilia & that is already happening (what-will-be as what-is), he fatally Beyond) confuses the signs and makes the future the past, i.e., The speaker is Death: There was a merchant in Bagdad who sent irrevocable, inescapable. Like a movie stamped on celluloid, his servant to market to buy provisions and in a little while the or the glimpse of the satanic dwarf on the slide Baxter is servant came back, white and trembling, and said, ‘Master, just handling in the opening scene, he fixes something in time, now when I was in the marketplace I was jostled by a woman in and thereby turns life into death. the crowd and when I turned I saw it was Death that jostled me. She looked at me and made a threatening gesture. Now, lend me “The skill of police artists,” says Inspector Longhi to Baxter, your horse, and I will ride away from this city and avoid my “is to make the living appear dead.” Remove the word fate. I will go to Samarra and there Death will not find me.’ “police” and the statement refers to Don’t Look Now itself— The merchant lent him his horse, and the servant mounted it, and by extension to all movies, all art. In this same scene, and he dug his spurs in its flanks and as fast as the horse could Baxter is sitting below a portrait of a man, also depicted gallop he went. Then the merchant went down to the sitting, in roughly the same posture as Baxter. To draw or marketplace and he saw me standing in the crowd and he came paint a living subject—or capture them on film—is to turn to me and said, ‘Why did you make a threatening gesture to my the living into the dead. Conversely, the image created, if it servant when you saw him this morning?’ ‘That was not a outlasts the life of the subject as movies do, is a way of threatening gesture,’ I said, ‘it was only a start of surprise. I was making the dead appear living. astonished to see him in Bagdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.’ —The Appointment in Samarra, “First, kill all your darlings.” retold by W. Somerset Maugham —Nicolas Roeg, quoting W.B. Yeats The plot of Don’t Look Now, while quite simple, is “Nothing is what it seems,” says John Baxter, the ingenious. John and Laura Baxter (Julie Christie) are seen, at protagonist of Don’t Look Now, at the start of the film. The the movie’s start, lounging about their country home. The rest of the movie depicts the tragedy of Baxter’s incapacity to film cuts back and forth between the Baxters and their two apply this fundamental wisdom in his own life. “Nothing is children, playing outside by the pond. Baxter is looking over what it seems” may be an untested platitude, but it’s a truism some slides of churches (he’s a restorer) when he notices in Roeg—DON’T LOOK NOW—8 one of them a strange, red-hooded figure sitting in one of the few brief images, Roeg conveys the black despair of the pews. He accidentally knocks over a glass of water and moment. As for so many of us, unbearable grief is the watches with curiosity as a red stain, emerging from the small Baxters’ first brush with eternity. figure, spreads out like blood across the slide. He is struck by Meanwhile, Laura, while helping the sighted sister a sudden intuition. We see the little girl (wearing a red Wendy to remove the dust from her eye, has discovered that raincoat) sink lifelessly into the pond. Baxter gets up and the other sister, Heather, while blind, possesses “second heads for the door. Laura asks him what’s wrong. “Nothing,” sight.” Unprompted, Heather claims to have seen Laura’s he replies, and rushes out. dead daughter, Christine, The film cuts to sitting between the Baxters “the present”—Venice, in the restaurant, laughing where Baxter is at work happily in her red raincoat. restoring a church. He Laura is at once sold on this meets Laura in a optimistic vision and returns restaurant; she’s writing a to Baxter with newfound letter to their son, Johnny. joy. Baxter is immediately Baxter gets up to close a mistrustful of the sisters; this window and jokes that it’s is his attitude throughout the so cold that even the film, and plays a central part waiters won’t serve them. in his death. His act causes another We discover, through the window to blow open, and a gust of wind to pass through the sisters (when Laura mentions Baxter’s intuitive awareness of restaurant. Two middle-aged women sitting at a nearby table Christine’s accident), that Baxter “has the gift but is resisting (who have been watching Laura surreptitiously) are caught in it,” and that, “It’s a curse as well as a gift.” This line, along the blast, and one of them gets a piece of dust in her eye. The with the title, is the key to the movie. Baxter is in denial, and two women make their way clumsily to the toilet, but try to his inability to accept this hidden side of himself forces him enter the men’s room by mistake (one of them we discover is to suppress, however irrationally, everything that reminds blind, while the other, her sister, has been temporarily him of it. Perhaps his suppressing of his gift prevented him blinded by the wind). Laura gets up to help them, and the from saving Christine’s life. At the very least, his sorrow is all chain of events that will lead to Baxter’s death and Laura’s tangled up with guilt, making it impossible for him to fully widowhood is set in motion. process his grief. It would also intensify the emotional need to suppress and deny this side of himself. All of this is how Like Hitchcock’s Psycho, but with even more clarity and his gift becomes a curse. precision (and power), we see how the tiniest of acts—Baxter closing the window—can lead to the most catastrophic of The sisters repeatedly warn Laura that Baxter’s life is in results, and all for a grain of dust. This is not to say that, if danger, and though she passes this warning on to him, he Baxter had never closed the window, none of the later events ignores it. Since Laura is obviously happier and stronger than would have happened (the sisters would certainly have before, Baxter is temporarily reconciled to her belief. The imposed themselves on the Baxters somehow). But the couple makes love, perhaps for the first time since Christine’s important thing is that Baxter’s death is traced back from the death. Roeg intercuts between their foreplay and sexual very beginning to his own conscious actions. He is never a congress and their languidly dressing for dinner afterwards. simple victim; he is an accomplice in his own murder. Even Sutherland and Christie show a rare kind of intimacy the act of closing the window against the cold is consistent together throughout the film—they feel like a married with the film’s thematic meaning: Baxter is trying to keep couple—and working with Roeg, they transform this central something out of awareness that causes him discomfort. scene into something deeply affecting. Seeing them at their While Laura is off with the sisters, Baxter falls into most naked and vulnerable, we come to know them, and to contemplation, and we cut gracefully back to a shot of the love them. Without this intimacy, this closeness, the final Baxters leaving their home in England, after the death of catastrophe would be just one more grisly murder in a long their daughter. The house is all closed up, and it is raining. series of grisly murders that constitute—for the most part— We see Laura gazing bleakly out the car window as Baxter the history of the . As it is, when Baxter’s blood climbs in and closes the door. As the BFI-published script has begins to flow, we feel the life force ebbing from him, and we it, “She glances for a moment at the house as the car moves are bleeding with him. Donald Sutherland felt it too, as he off. Then she looks away into her private infinity.” With a said in the interview (Don’t Look Now, Mark Sanderson’s Roeg—DON’T LOOK NOW—9 study of the film for BFI modern classics): “We shot the apologizes profusely for all the trouble he’s caused them, and climax last, and I knew I was going to die in it and I became takes them back to their hotel. While he is there, Heather literally convinced that I would die, and dying began to feel falls into an epileptic trance, and Wendy insists that Baxter almost like a sexual rite.” leave. Baxter is obviously glad to get away. Heather, in a state Don’t Look Now is a film about grief and loss, which of wild despair, cries “Don’t let him leave—fetch him back!” is the true horror. It is one of the very few horror movies that Wendy finally relents and chases after Baxter, but runs into makes death palpably, agonizingly real. Laura instead, who has just been brought to the hotel from the police station. Wendy tells her “I believe film has a life of its Baxter has just left, but takes Laura own but releasing yourself to it is up to the room, where Heather by no means easy. Movies, like tells her to find her husband at life, are full of compromise and once, repeating hopelessly—“She the fight is to have as little told you, leave Venice!” (referring to compromise as possible… the Christine, from whom the point is not to interfere with the warnings supposedly came). movement of all kinds of forces.” Baxter, meanwhile, is —Nicolas Roeg wandering around the darkened Following their loving alleys of Venice again. He hears a reunion, the Baxters receive a scream and sees a small, red figure call in the middle of the running away. It appears to be night—their son Johnny has fleeing from a man, and Baxter been in an accident. It’s not pursues it into an abandoned serious but Laura is sufficiently upset (and also vindicated— building, closing an iron gate behind him to keep the man she thinks it fulfills Heather’s prophecy) to return to the out. This is the last act that serves to ensure his death, by U.K., having secured Baxter’s promise to follow her as soon preventing both the man and Laura from following him. He as he can. Baxter says goodbye to her on the pier and watches has kept his appointment in Samarra. as the barge moves away. We stay with Laura, and watch Until now, the film has made full, glorious use of the Baxter’s figure shrink to obscurity. This is the last time she’ll natural settings to create a sense of mystery and menace. see him alive. Baxter returns to work, and later that same day Stylistically—and not counting the various montages of (following a brush with death that forces him to re-evaluate parallel imagery—Don’t Look Now is unlike any of Roeg’s his judgment of the sisters), he sees Laura, dressed in black, other films and more closely resembles Friedkin’s The French on a barge with the two sisters. He calls out but she does not Connection in its textural richness and 1970s realism, as well respond. Puzzled and bewildered, he returns to the hotel as the unfussiness of the performances. For the climactic (which is closing up for winter) to see if Laura has returned sequence, however, Roeg moves into grand-guignol, complete there. He then goes to the police and tells his story to the with swirling mists, ghostly winds, and spiral staircases. Since inspector (an eerily placid performance by Renato Scarper), everything in the film seems conscientiously worked out, and who is puzzled by it (and by Baxter) but agrees to look into since the filmmakers are clearly aiming for something more the matter. He has Baxter followed, having asked him to try than mere horror, it seems unlikely Roeg was simply falling and find the sisters’ hotel; this Baxter does, only to find the back on movie conventions here, as a means of ramping up sisters gone. They have changed hotels that morning, due to a the suspense. So what is the film communicating? “prowler” (the prowler was Baxter, snooping around the previous night, once again ensuring the circumstances of his It’s also notable that, where Baxter was previously wholly fate). skeptical, even scornful, of Laura’s belief about the spirit of their dead daughter, he now swings to the very other extreme, The sisters are picked up later by the police, but by this time chasing after a figure in red as it is his magically resurrected Baxter has received a call from Laura in England, saying that daughter—something neither Laura nor the sisters are likely everything is all right, and that their son’s injury was minor. to have been foolish enough to have believed. His stubborn Baxter is speechless, and when he splutters out incoherently denial has flipped over into blind belief. It is as if he has that he saw Laura in Venice, she simply tells him not to become possessed by his latent, repressed psychism, and can worry, and that she’ll be back soon (she seems to have no longer tell the difference between dream and reality. forgotten her desire to get him out of Venice). That night, Apparently, this is the point at which Baxter enters into a Baxter goes to the police station to pick up the sisters, psychic dreamspace in which “nothing is what it seems,” and Roeg—DON’T LOOK NOW—10 where images of the dead and the living are all mixed up. If seemingly endless pattern of relations and synchronicities so, it makes sense that Venice begins, at this point, to both within the movie and outside it: “The film creates such resemble Hell itself. If Baxter is compulsively reenacting the an atmosphere of the paranormal and the paranoid that there death of his daughter—literally haunted by her image—now seems no room for harmless coincidence.” In his shot-by-shot he is entering Hell to rescue her. What greets him there, breakdown of the opening sequence, Sanderson writes: however, is something closer to his own private demons. The red forms a foetal shape on the slide. A terrible As Laura and the evil is born… An man reach the gate but are eye has developed unable to pass through it, in the foetus as it the man shouts out after continues to grow. Baxter a warning in Italian It forms exactly the about “il diablo.” Baxter is same shape as the beyond saving by this point drowned Christine however. He approaches (and Wendy’s the small figure, offering mermaid soothing words of comfort; broach)… Water the figure turns—we see its kills (Christine) face, the moment of truth, as it draws a knife. Baxter says and gives birth to the evil embryo on the slide… The “Wait,” once, then again. It is as if he hopes to stop the tidal inversion shows that the woman in red is the opposite of the wave of events started by that single gust of wind, a wave that child whose name means a follower of Christ: a withered now engulfs him, reducing him to nothing. As his blood limb of Satan. flows, Laura reaches helplessly out to him through the bars of Such a reading clearly implies that Baxter’s “second the gate, and calls out, “Darlings.” The many, myriad, sight” was warning him from the very beginning, not only fractured events of his life pass through Baxter’s awareness, about his daughter’s death but his own. And yet, like all the now with new meaning, as clear and final as death. The facets characters in the film, the two are inextricably bound up, one of the kaleidoscope of time come together, for one brief a shadow of the other, implying that it is Baxter’s guilt over moment, before being scattered into a million fragments. not being able to save his daughter—and his inability to The film cuts to Laura on the barge, dressed in black, process his grief—that unconsciously compels him to his own between the two sisters. It is the same shot from earlier, only death, as the only way for him to be reunited with her. now there is no Baxter to witness it. It was by looking at his vision, with his ordinary eyes, rather than seeing it with his Because Baxter denies his gift of seeing, it swallows him up— soul, that he mistakenly perceived it as here and now and so not as punishment but as the inevitable consequence of consolidated his fate. If he had understood the true meaning disowning or denying the unconscious life of his soul. Don’t of the vision, he would have fled Venice at once, and so have Look Nowweaves together the supernatural, psychism, the avoided it. The reason nothing is ever what it seems is that we psychology of grief and regret, spiritual longing, and the have imposed a linearity to time that it does not have. The mysteries of perception, into a unified—if many-faceted— lake of the world only appears flat. Really the end and the whole. It portrays the interconnectivity of all events, all lives, beginning meet and overlap. As when we watch a movie, it is into a single tapestry of existence: the life of the soul that is all a trick of our own perception that turns the fixed images the life of all souls. Don’t Look Now is a nightmare of of eternity into the all-immersive illusion of linear time, that metaphysics from start to finish, and its entire premise rests makes the dead appear living. In the same way, a glimpse of on recognizing an essential complicity between ourselves and eternity makes the living appear dead. the forces of the occult. The supernatural, both the demonic and the angelic, is seen not as acting on us, but through us. “If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth The horror only enters into it as a consequence of our willed will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what ignorance of this truth. you do not bring forth will destroy you.” By this interpretation, it is not until the very last —Gospel of Thomas moment, when the tiny hooded figure turns around and faces In his essay on Don’t Look Now, Mark Sanderson its pursuer (its “maker”?), that Baxter’s mysterious, comments that “the network of sulci—the serpentine grooves amorphous tulpa (psychic projection) takes on solid form as a on the surface of the brain” resemble the labyrinthine “withered limb of Satan.” Until that moment, it may be structure of the film: “in one sense the whole film takes place wholly dependent upon Baxter’s consciousness itself whether inside Baxter’s head.” His analysis of the film draws a he is confronted with his resurrected daughter, a helpless Roeg—DON’T LOOK NOW—11 child, or a “malicious munchkin” wielding a butcher’s knife. is Pino Donaggio’s music as Nic intercuts their making love Tellingly, it is only at this point, also, that Don’t Look Now with them getting dressed to go out to dinner. Magical. You starts to behave like a (somewhat) conventional horror movie. don’t see that scene as a voyeur. You watch it and it reminds It may seem cruel, even hokey, on the part of the filmmakers you of yourself, of you being loving and you being loved. We to end it thus, almost literally with smoke and mirrors. But if decided it would be wisest not to shoot John’s death scene so, we may pause to consider our own unconscious until we’d done everything else, in case the unreliable prop complicity, along with Baxter’s, our shared denial of the life knife failed and my throat would be cut, spilling red. of the soul, that has forced the filmmakers’ hands, making Fragmented, abstract images colour and tell his stories. Look the bleak tawdriness of this outcome inevitable. at Omar Sharif on a camel, coming from the other end of the When the devilish dwarf shakes its head pitilessly at desert towards the camera. That’s Nic. Look at the Sahara’s Baxter, it seems to be reprimanding him for his obtuseness empty foreground, and suddenly the smokestacks of a and folly, while announcing the fatality of its actions, all of steamer crossing from left to right along the unseen Suez which add up to one thing: an ignominious death. When canal. That’s Nic. He was the was the first to use Panavision’s Laura calls out “darlings,” to both her husband and her R-200°, which meant he had 15 degrees more shutter daughter, she is not necessarily mistaken: that for Don’t Look Now than the 185°s that were the best before. murderous “diablo” may as well be their dead daughter, He was everything I ever wanted from a filmmaker. He seeing as how it has emerged from the very same “realm” of changed my life for ever. Francine and I asked him if we their (our) shared unconscious. It represents the same id that could name our firstborn after him. He said yes. Our glorious was warning Baxter, now making good on its warning and son is named Roeg. fulfilling its own prophecy. By this time, it is all up for Baxter, in any case, and the only message an emissary from the beyond can have for him is: “Time’s up.” And maybe also: “You shouldn’t have looked.”

The mysterious and ineffable smile that lingers on Laura’s lips at her husband’s funeral seems to acknowledge this, in the most quixotic way. The smile may seem vaguely sinister to us because it seems so unaccountable; and yet, at the same time, it is a relief, after all we have been through, to witness such apparent acceptance. Roeg himself (who has often been accused of detachment) comments on the smile: Laura is in a state of grace, that’s why she smiles. It is beyond their knowledge. I think it is secret and chilling, but From David Jenkins, “Interview with Nicolas Roeg,” beautiful. Emotionally the terrible events have given her a originally in Time Out London (Cinephilia & Beyond) dreadful strength. Laura is smiling at some secret memory. . . The infamous sex scene in the film: some people see it as Laura and Baxter have had the best: it may be over now but it this moment of pure bliss, others read it as an outburst of can never be taken away from them. Laura knows this. She is anguish. locked deep in some other place where superficial things like Sex, whether you like it or not, we all know that it’s tears cannot reach her… As she smiles I chill. Grief takes the prime force of life. There is no other reason to be here. many forms… The beginning is birth, the ending is death It’s quite curious in many films you only see the meeting, the and all the rest is just anecdote. Life does not have a happy flowering of sex. You hear all the intrigue about how, ‘oh, she ending—everyone ends up dead—but movies can end loved the other guy at the party’. It’s not about a happy happily. Laura has survived, triumphant—death shall have no marriage. The first stage of recovery—here, from the loss of a dominion over her—their happiness may be in the past but it child, who was made by you-know-what—would only be a was real and will always remain so. That is what you have to reminder, and that’s why it’s wonderful when Donald smiles remember in your grief. at the end of it. It was an affirmation of their love. For me, sex is very rarely rude. It’s a fresh thing. I think that people Donald Sutherland on working with Roeg (Cinephilia & secretly connected to Don’t Look Now for that reason. The Beyond) censors saw things that didn’t happen in the sex scene. Did He was a genius, Nic. A visionary. He made a love this happen? Did that happen? It’s not unusual. The wonder scene between a grieving wife and her husband with no cries of film is that because we relate to moments and emotions so of passion, no sounds of orgasm, no words. All you hear deeply, we often see things that aren’t there. That there was Roeg—DON’T LOOK NOW—12 no passionate stripping off beforehand—he just wanders in The excellent Cinephilia & Beyond entry on Don’t Look from the bathroom. It was a step towards getting back to Now includes the full Jenkins interview, as well as the full normal and getting rid of a terrible sadness that can strike second draft of the script, a video of Roeg’s 1983 again. Maybe that’s a reason why, after all this time when it’s Guardian Lecture, a video on editing the film with looked at, people see that more clearly. When it came out, Graeme Clifford, a video of Donald Sutherland talking audiences were probably less used to it. Back then I imagine about specific scenes, and a short making-of documentary, that scene would’ve been like someone bursting out of a and more. https://cinephiliabeyond.org/dont-look- cupboard and shouting ‘boo!’ now/?fbclid=IwAR3_y7A4yPz3DlM-ofK4nFJDJVwAz- FZmbhhcclG5PGbDj6dDUl_4fFpxWU

COMING UP IN THE FALL 2019 BUFFALO FILM SEMINARS (SERIES 39) Oct 22 Blazing Saddles 1974 Oct 29 Larisa Shepitko The Ascent 1977 Nov 5 Louis Malle Au revoir les enfants 1987 Nov 12 Charles Burnett To Sleep With Anger 1990 Nov 19 Steve James, Frederick Marks & Peter Gilbert Hoop Dreams 1994 Nov 26 Alfonso Cuarón Roma 2018 Dec 3 Baz Luhrmann Moulin Rouge 2001

CONTACTS: email Diane Christian: [email protected]…email Bruce Jackson [email protected]... for the series schedule, annotations, links and updates: http: //buffalofilmseminars.com... to subscribe to the weekly email informational notes, send an email to [email protected].... for cast and crew info on any film: http://imdb.com/

The Buffalo Film Seminars are presented by the State University of New York at Buffalo and the Dipson Amherst Theatre, with support from the Robert and Patricia Colby Foundation and the Buffalo News.