The Heartbreaking Ecstasy of Don’t Look Now

Midway through Don’t Look Now, Nicolas Roeg’s ecstatic meditation on grief, which turns 50 this month, a character offers a thought that, for me, sums up the terror that is the film’s beating, crimson heart. “I wish I didn’t have to believe in prophecy,” Bishop Barbarrigo (Massimo Serato) tells John Baxter (Donald Sutherland) after a near-death experience. “I do, but I wish I didn’t have to.”
On the surface, it’s a simple declaration of Barbarrigo’s duty as a man of faith, a thought that comes only after Baxter reveals that he was warned danger was coming for him. But look a little deeper, and it’s Roeg speaking to his audience, letting us know that the central heartbreak of this film is a prophecy that has no choice but to come true. Through dazzling cinematic techniques, brilliant central performances, and emotions that kick into operatic overdrive, Don’t Look Now achieves a kind of claustrophobic, inevitable terror that makes it one of the best thrillers not just of its era, but of all time. It creates a dreadfully beautiful environment in which everything is not just inevitable, but all-encompassing.
The plot, derived from a story by the great Daphne Du Maurier, is both straightforward and satisfyingly Gothic. John (Sutherland) and Laura Baxter (Julie Christie) have moved to Venice in the wake of their daughter’s drowning death in England, so John can work on restoring a church in the legendary Italian city. Laura is, understandably, not taking the loss of her daughter well, but that changes when she meets a pair of sisters, one of whom (Hilary Mason) is a blind psychic who can seemingly see Laura’s daughter trying to communicate with her parents. Laura’s spirits are immediately lifted by the idea of contacting her daughter in the next world, while John tries to shrug the supposed messages off…even as he begins to see a mysterious figure moving through Venice’s backstreets, dressed in a red coat that’s all too similar to the one his daughter used to wear.
That red coat is vital, because no matter how passive a viewer you are when it comes to Don’t Look Now, you will notice the recurring motif of the color red. It permeates the film, existing in nearly every frame, and certainly in every scene at some point or another. Red can, of course, represent many things in the spectrum of human emotions. It’s anger, it’s passion, it’s violence; for the Baxters it is also grief, a reminder of the vibrant life they lost to the waters outside their English country home. Roeg’s camera always makes sure to pick up that reminder of life, of a beating heart brought to a standstill, plucking red out of the drab stone streets and muted tones of hotel rooms and crumbling churches. It’s a heavy psychological reminder of why we’re here, what’s driving the story, but it’s also key to what I think is the most effective part of the film, which we’ll get to shortly.
Then there’s the water. It’s the first thing we see in the film, and very nearly the last, as Roeg uses its primal natural force to punctuate the thrumming dread at the core of the film. Du Maurier’s original story kills off the Baxters’ daughter through an illness, which Don’t Look Now switches to a drowning, so that when John and Laura head to Venice, they’re surrounded by a flowing, crashing reminder of what’s left them. The sound of water, trickling and rushing and pattering against windows, is heard all through the film, sometimes even when it shouldn’t be heard. No matter where the Baxters are or what they’re doing, the water seems to get in.