Of Grief & Ghosts: The Plot of Don’t Look Now (1973)
“The story evolves like a mosaic with the important pieces missing, just like one of those that John is restoring. Not unlike how the dissolution of the sealing material destroys the structures in the church, the reality of Baxters' life is falling apart, too. These cracks either should be mended, or they allow the forces from beyond and under to creep through them. The latter is especially true for John with his gift of clairvoyance, although resisted, or maybe especially because he resists it.” "” from Film Obsessive article by Magda Mariamidze
“If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.""” Gospel of Thomas
John (Donald Sutherland) and Laura Baxter (Julie Christie) bear the mark of a curse, a chilling revelation hinted at at the film's outset. Don't Look Now is a film about grief and loss. This is the most potent horror there is. Aside from the killings in Venice, it is these principles that are the true nature of this horror film. Roeg's masterpiece, the specter of death, and its companion grief are palpable and agonizingly real. The titles in quotations are baptized by the torrential British rain that licks the screen.
A Tragic Prelude: or In the Wake of Loss: The Opening of Don’t Look Now:
John Baxter: What are you reading?
Laura Baxter: I was just trying to find the answer to a question Christine was asking me: if the world’s round, why is a frozen lake flat?
John Baxter: Huh. That’s a good question.
Laura Baxter: [flipping through a book] Ah-ha. “Lake Ontario curves more than 3 degrees from its easternmost shore to its westernmost shore.” So, frozen water really isn’t flat!
John Baxter: Nothing is what it seems.
The juxtaposition of these images is Roeg’s way of highlighting the profuse symbolism consciously scattered throughout key scenes of Don’t Look Now. Here, I found a visible but not readily apparent cue signaling the dichotomy between the forces at work. Laura and the Red Devil, with their backs, turned to us.
Though it's a sunny day, we get a sense that it is a typically damp English morning mist in the yard of a country estate. The film cuts back and forth between the Baxters and their two children, playing outside by the pond. Christine and Johnny's parents are lost in a world of idle contentment within the house. The air hangs heavy with a bourgeois harmony. Both are tuned into their work, though, with an unhurried cadence.
Laura is reading Beyond The Fragile Geometry of Space, a book that can be seen on the sofa, so that she can answer Christine's question about the earth’s shape. John comments, " Nothing is as it seems."
Alongside du Maurier's narrative, the film begins with Laura investigating the answer to Christine's insightful curiosity: ” If the earth is round, why is a frozen pond flat?” This question highlights a paradox, as both statements can be seen as valid yet fundamentally contradictory.
The remnants of a lazy Sunday lunch linger: dishes abandoned, forks and knives scattered, while a thin ribbon of smoke rises from a forgotten cigarette in an ashtray, painting a picture of contented indulgence.
Their two young children, Johnny and Christine, continue to play around the pond on their bucolic property. Christine (Sharon Williams), an angelic little blonde girl in a shiny red Mac with the bright look of fresh blood"”red like a bleeding heart"”wanders around the pond pushing a wheelbarrow and chasing a bouncing ball. The sunny blue day surrounds the murky surface of the pond choked with reeds. The pond doesn't reflect the sky, but the water is like a mirror to Christine's red raincoat as she skirts her playful path. Meanwhile, her brother weaves through the trees on his bike, a silent fluttering moth against the verdant backdrop.
Christine’s playful moments with her ball create an unsettling visual dance. The little sphere, adorned with a crimson geometric design against the hazy day, seems to pulse and warp as it tumbles across the ground into the pond. This optical illusion subtly disturbs our perception, adding to the film’s undercurrent of unease without drawing attention to itself. She is holding her brother's toy soldier, Action Man, who, when you pull the string, possesses the recorded voice of a woman calling out strategic military commands.
As soon as Christine tugs the string on her doll, it utters, “Enemy 1000 feet…fall in.” In that instant, Johnny topples over his bike, is felled by a rock, and is cut by a shard of broken glass after he has ridden his bike over a pane of glass, shattering it beneath the with of his tires.
In this stunning opening sequence, architect John Baxter is prepping for a restoration of a church in Venice. He scrutinizes his projector loaded with slides"”of an Italian church. Laura Baxter reads her books, and John is studying his slides of the medieval church he will be reviving. He focuses on one slide, in particular, of a stained glass window; the façade of piety is splendid, with the figure of Christ adorned in red robes. However, he has no solid faith or spirituality of his own to cling to.
It is the shadowy corner of the slide that catches John's eye"”a small, enigmatic red form huddled in a pew, cloaked in a red coat and hood. The sight triggers a sudden, curious feeling. This intruding presence, small, perhaps childlike in appearance, becomes the catalyst for John's sudden, horrifying vision"”an intuitive warning to him that Christine is in danger.
John accidentally knocks over a glass of water and watches with curiosity as a red stain emerges from the small figure, like blood, creeping across the slide. A seemingly unremarkable mishap ignites an unsettling vision that John's mind conjures. The red figure melts into a disambiguated crimson swirl that coils around the church's stained-glass window. By the time it settles, it is almost fetal in shape; the veiled red figure, once a mere curiosity, now takes on a sinister aspect. A vision of Christine wearing the same evocative color, red, becoming submerged in the murky depths of the nearby pond.
He leaps to his feet and heads for the door. Laura asks him what is happening. "Nothing," he tells her.
Laura tosses a slide onto the book on metaphysics as the image continues to bleed.
John runs out of the house, hurls himself at the pond, past his son, his hand cut from the piece of broken glass; he screams, "Dad!"
When John reaches the water, it feels like it takes forever for him to reach Christine; frozen by his anguish, he then plunges in and pulls his red angel from the watery nothingness, her lifeless body wrenched up into his arms as he agonizes over her limp body with drenched blonde wisps. Roeg intercuts this moment of visual artistry with the harrowing sight of John trying to trudge through the water until he breaks through. Christine’s lifeless body is cradled in his arms as time and reality blur – in an unreadable mixture that will become past and present.
As the camera lingers on his slow-motion ascent, his fresh agony shows on his face, features askew from his world turned upside down. Drenched and desperate, stretched across the screen, holding his little Christine, John flails against the pace of his measured suffering.
Sutherland, in even the smallest moment of acting brilliance, manages to let out the most profound, resonant expression of agony, embodying deep sorrow and existential struggle. This vocalization emerges as a guttural sound, not from the throat but someplace deep, rich in texture, and laden with weight. It transcends mere physical and emotional pain. It is astounding and monstrous, his low groaning wail"”unfathomable pain.
This incredible scene, which delivers John's grief to us, begins Don't Look Now's legacy of a significant psychological/supernatural horror film that is pure, exquisite art.
Young Johnny stands transfixed, holding his bloodied thumb as he watches his father in a heartwrenching frenzy, his wet body coated in pond muck.
The red spill across the slide of the church has now become a distorted, grotesque fetal shape as John cradles his little girl's cold and lifeless body. Laura, casually stepping outside to light a cigarette, is met with this horrific scene. The entire sequence lasts a mere seven minutes, but the weight of it hangs heavy. John was unable to save his daughter. The guilt will haunt him.
In this moment, the boundaries between the physical and the metaphysical blur, the water becoming a conduit for John’s torment, the spill, a twisted reflection of the life so cruelly extinguished. The innocence of the young boy, not quite understanding the weight of what has happened, is a stark contrast to the devastation surrounding him.
Peering Through the Veil: MEETING THE SISTERS in the Café of Fate:
“Don't look now, John said to his wife, "˜but there are a couple of old girls two tables away who are trying to hypnotize me.” From du Maurier's short story (p.7)
Laura Baxter says of the psychic, Heather: ” This one who’s blind. She’s the one that can see.”
Roeg quickly cuts to the present in Italy and reunites us with the couple in Venice. Leaving their son Johnny (Nicholas Salter) behind in boarding school in England in the aftermath of Christine’s tragic drowning.
John is at the church working on the restoration, speaking to the workers in what little Italian he knows. The scene abruptly opens with the aural assault of a drill pushing its way into the rotting wet cement on the outside wall of the church.
He meets Laura, who is having lunch at a café. She sits lost in a reverie of wistful, rain-drenched melancholy, writing a letter to their son Johnny.
After John meets Laura, they notice an odd couple of elderly women at a nearby table, one whose fixed gaze grabs their attention. She is an odd older woman with milky-aquamarine and voyeuristic eyes. The two women are attempting to be discreet, yet it is unmistakably clear that they are keeping a watchful eye on the couple. Their furtive glances betray their curiosity. The blind one makes a hand gesture to her face as if she is describing someone she sees.
John rises to shut a window; irked, he complains that it's so cold the waiters won't serve them; just then, as he closes one window, another window flies open (how symbolic is this metaphor?), and a brisk gust of air sweeps through the restaurant. The two vintage observers are directly in the path of the icy whirl, which causes a piece of dust to find its way into one of the women's eyes, setting off a chain of events that will put things in motion and lead John on the path of inevitability.
Laura overhears one of the women, Wendy (Clelia Matania – Just Before Nightfall 1971), lamenting as she bums into Laura about the spec of dust temporarily blinding her. One of the only slight brushes with comedy in the film happens in the next few moments as Wendy first accidentally stumbles into Laura as she gets up to go to the washroom to flush out the dust, and then when the two women attempt to enter the men's lavatory. Laura kindly offers to escort Wendy and her companion to the washroom. Laura decides to lend a hand.
After Laura helps them navigate their way, Laura realizes that the other sister, Heather, is actually blind. {This would be prolific British actress Hilary Mason, who plays the whimsical witch married to warlock Guy Rolfe in the superbly cheeky 1986 horror film Dolls.} Wendy says to Laura, "I hope you don't think it's rude." Remarking on the two of them staring at her and John.
While Laura is in the washroom with the sisters, John sits at the table and recalls the day he and Laura left England. This flashback also includes Heather's clear blue, sightless eyes superimposed over this fleeting yet powerful moment, captured through a series of brief, evocative images, conveying the crushing weight of Laura’s despair. Roeg’s masterful direction distills the essence of unutterable hopelessness into these few well-chosen frames. The camera lingers on Laura’s face, her gaze momentarily fixed on their house, a symbol of the life she once knew. As the car pulls away, her eyes drift into the distance.
The BFI-published script beautifully captures the moment, “She glances for a moment at the house as the car moves off. Then she looks away into her private infinity.”
While John is lost in his reverie, Wendy refers to her traveling companion as her "˜sister,' though even when I was young experiencing its theatrical release, I picked up on a sapphic undercurrent. There is a strong suggestion that Heather and Wendy are a lesbian couple. Given that Daphne du Maurier is the author of this story, we can assume that it reflects some of her own conflicts as a married mother who often was involved in love affairs with women.
Getting awfully close, especially for a stranger, Laura helps wash the grain of dust from Wendy's eye; she thanks Laura for her help with a quiet cheer, "Well done," and then tells Laura that Heather has second sight, "My sister is psychic, you know.”
Laura's vulnerability makes her susceptible to any avenue that can connect her to Christine, and so when she finally meets the two eccentric "˜sisters' in the café, this encounter profoundly impacts Laura’s sullen mood.
With an uplifting spirit, Heather, seeing with her second sight, tells Laura, "You're so sad… You're so sad, and you don't need to be." Heather continues, "She wants you to know…Â I've seen her. And she wants you to know she's happy "¦ she's happy. She's wearing a shiny little Mac"¦ Oh, and she's laughing." Laura has her first fainting spell in the bathroom after that.
In this moment of unfiltered candor, Heather's claim to be clairvoyant sends a sharp pain through Laura, who goes into a faint. But this is soon to be transformed into a beautiful shiver of excitement after Heather reveals that she has seen Christine sitting between her and John, laughing and radiating happiness in her familiar red raincoat "”a vision that resonates deeply within Laura. Could this really be Christine reaching out, a comforting presence, her spirit lingering near to watch over them? These two strange, elderly ladies compel Laura to believe her daughter is communicating with them from beyond the grave.
Heather's ethereal presence, infused with a gentle, lingering essence of something not quite of this world, tenderly coaxes Laura to step out of her dark despair and gives Laura a chance to have faith in the spiritual endurance of the soul after death. Though it is a fragile peace, at once, she is lifted up by Heather’s vision, and Laura returns to the table with a newfound sense of hope.
We witness how the smallest actions"”like John simply closing the window"”can help trigger the most disastrous consequences, all from the smallest detail of a single speck of dust.
This isn't to suggest that if John hadn't closed the window, the events might not have unfolded, and somehow, these women would have found a way to intrude on the Baxters.
The striking implication is that John's impending death – might be connected all the way back to the very beginning and rooted in his own conscious decisions. He is not merely a passive victim; he is, in fact, a co-conspirator in his own bloody downfall.
Even the simple act of closing the window against the cold aligns with the film’s deeper themes: John Baxter is attempting to keep something out, the awareness that brings him unease, particularly his psychic intuition to see beyond any limitations of time.
When Laura returns to the table to tell John about Heather’s vision, she suddenly collapses onto the table, toppling it over. Everything crashes down on top of her, including broken bottles with oil spilling all over the floor. Richmond’s lens embraces the shards of the chaos, golden pools of spilled oils, and fragments of shattered glass ghosts on the floor. Christine lies unconscious amidst the mess.
John immediately mistrusts the "˜sisters,' a skepticism that will ultimately play a central role in his death. Later, the sisters will repeatedly warn Laura that John's life is in danger, and though she tries to convince him to take this with import, he ignores it.
Laura is taken away on an ambulance boat, with onlookers looking down from the bridge. After resting at the hospital, Laura's recovery is remarkably swift, and there seems to be a reawakening of spirit in her unseen since Christine’s tragic death. She tells John not to worry that the blind woman is clairvoyant and has conveyed a message from her. " John, Christine is still with us."
Laura: I haven't felt this good in months. I feel really fine. I don't need pills. I'm not going crazy. I feel really – great. John: When did the doctor say you could leave? Laura: Any time. I only fainted. John I wish you'd believe me. I really feel fine. I really feel good at last. (He laughs. Happy to hear that) John: I believe you, I believe you.
John’s Rationalism vs Laura’s Spiritualism:
Director Roeg has stated, "Grief can separate people… Even the closest, healthiest relationship can come undone through grief."
There exists a conflict between the two. John is the cynic, and Laura is susceptible to the sister's claims of a world beyond, with her willingness to embrace Heather's message that Christine's benevolent presence surrounds them. John holds onto his stubborn rationalism and the fear that Laura might be falling back into her morbid preoccupation with Christine's death.
Laura tries to sway John with such sincerity: “They could see Christine sitting between us. This is two people who we don’t even know.”
Yet, It is John who unwittingly glimpses the future, only to ignore the warnings laid out before him or coming from within. "Seeing is believing" words he uses to comfort Laura. However, these words ring hollow as he struggles to reconcile his own visions amidst his rational worldview. Does he really believe all he sees? Or does his denial of his gift of clairvoyance weigh on him because, on some level, he knows that it might have saved Christine's life? He grows increasingly more vulnerable to the sightings of the tiny red-hooded figure. He sees the ghost-like movements through the dank alleyways. The thought began to take root in his mind"”could it be possible that this elusive figure was, in fact, his daughter?
They've left the hospital in one of Venice's small boats; John and Laura are slowed down by a gathering of police swarming around the canal. We can assume they have recovered a new victim of the murders. Although they are late to meet with the Bishop, Laura sees a church and wants to stop in and say a prayer for Christine.
Laura lights a white candle while John pulls on the chord, switching a hanging lamp on and off a few times. Here, the contrast is a visual one. Laura bends toward the naturalness of spiritual thought, and John remains tethered to the physical world"”a world of science and electricity"”something he can see the benefit of. While inside, a tour passes John. He sees Wendy as part of the group and moves behind an iron grate to spy on her. Suddenly, Heather comes into view. She appears to be in some religious rapture as she passes through the many white candles lit. The candles she cannot see on this plane.
As Laura and John run out of the church, they are even more late to meet Bishop Barbarrigo. A solitary candle – the one that Laura had tenderly lit remains behind"”amidst all the other flames that dance, but it has whispered its secret prayer to the heavens only briefly; it now flickers its last breath, extinguishing into a wisp of smoke and leaving only the lingering scent of a mother’s devotion in the hushed sanctuary.
Inspector Longhi also has a second sense about the Baxter’s fate. He stares curiously at them as if he knows their presence in Venice carries some kind of significance.
Finally reaching the Bishop, Laura apologizes for being late and does the oddest thing. She kisses his ring. She takes the blame for the segue – and he turns to John and says, " A woman to share your sins with."
John is anxious for Bishop Barbarrigo to look at his mosaics, but he doesn't appear interested in talking about John's work or the acidity in the air eroding Venice's grand structures. The Bishop asks Laura if she’s a Christian, which not only catches her off guard but makes her feel a bit as if he is giving his appraisal of her.
Barbarrigo – The churches belong to God, but he doesn't seem to care about them. (He says this as he looks up at a stone statue without a head). Does he have other priorities? We have stopped listening… Are you Christian Laura? (She tilts her head, that gives way to her mane of blonde hair that falls with carefree abandon, revealing her subtle blush as she looks at Barbarrigo and smiles), I don't know. I'm kind to animals and children. (He tells her), Saint Nicholas of this church is the Patron Saint of scholars and children. An interesting combination, don't you think? While Barbarrigo's head is turned, John shakes his head at Laura. He found it odd that she should kiss the Bishop's ring. She is not Catholic.
As John and Laura continue on their way back to their hotel, John tells her what he thinks of Bishop Barbarrigo, "He doesn't give an ecclesiastic fuck about the church."
She tells him," You know"¦ your Bishop makes me feel quite uneasy. " John replies, " He probably makes God feel slightly less than immaculate."
The Unforgettable Intimacy: Unraveling the Notorious Love Scene in Don’t Look Now:
” Sutherland and Christie show a rare kind of intimacy together throughout the film"”they feel like a married couple"”and working with Roeg, they transform this central scene into something deeply affecting. Seeing them at their most naked and vulnerable, we come to know them and to love them. Without this intimacy, this closeness, the final catastrophe would be just one more grisly murder in a long series of grisly murders that constitute"”for the most part"”the history of the horror film.” "”(article – by Jasun Horsley for Cinephilia and Beyond: Fixed Images of Eternity: Time, Perception, & Grief in "˜Don't Look Now.'
Julie Christie noted the challenge of filming this particular scene, saying, " There were no available examples, no role models.” (Sanderson) This scene was one of the first scenes she shot with Donald Sutherland, and the intensity and authenticity were so convincing that it sparked (though mistakenly) rumors that they were actually having sex on screen. While the short story mentions the Baxters’ love-making, it does not elaborate on it.
The iconic sex scene captures the deep closeness shared by a married couple who have experienced the exhilarating highs of passionate love and then descend into the profound depths of sorrow that accompany the bleak suffering of loss. Their body language makes a strong connection, reflecting a profound understanding of one another shaped by both joy and grief.
It is in the city of Venice that John and Laura share a poignant and tender moment of intimacy, marking their first sexual encounter since the tragic loss of their daughter. This iconic scene is often considered one of the most realistic and emotionally charged in cinematic history and one of the most celebrated scenes in Don't Look Now. Roeg and screenwriters Allan Scott and Chris Bryant did make changes to du Maurier's original short story.
Roeg subverts moralistic expectations by highlighting and setting the innocence of human sexuality against the pretense of superficiality and the mask of conformity. As John and Laura reflect on their bodies and appearance, the film underscores the natural beauty of their physical and emotional connection.
John sits at his drafting table, working up sketches with quiet concentration. Laura decides to take a bath. He takes a shower, then sits again at his drafting table in the nude. The entire sequence has this languid grace and the serenity of two people who have forgotten they're grieving. It is a lovely scene. Their actions are unhurried and natural. Their nudity is unselfconscious. A testament to their comfort and togetherness. Though their sex scene is surging with incredible eroticism, it also carries a striking sense of gentility and tenderness.
In this easy moment, there is no need for grand gestures or dramatic declarations. Their love is evident in the way they move around each other, in the comfortable shared silence. Pino Dinaggio's music understands this, too.
In a shift in tone, this breakthrough of Laura's (being given hope that Christine is near) leads to the couple reaching for each other in this love-making scene that shatters the demure of intimacy and the veil of classical Hollywood restraint and ventures into a realm of unspoken sensuality and eroticism. Set to Pino Donaggio's evocative score, that beckons to the profundity of loss and the longing for release. Within this poetically carnal moment, the guilt and past shadows recede, replaced by a fierce urgency to reclaim a long-dormant closeness.
Nicolas Roeg films Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie as a married couple making love who are very much in love with each other. This is shown by juxtaposing the raw physicality of their nude bodies entwined with the tender, mundane task of getting dressed with what John Kenneth Muir cleverly calls a "˜lyrical period of post-coital' bliss.
The director grants their union a sense of normalcy and verisimilitude rarely seen in cinema. The intercutting creates a timeless quality as if the couple’s lovemaking exists outside the constraints of linear time. Roeg’s approach to the scene avoids the pitfalls of highly stylized, gratuitous camera angles or acrobatic sexual positions.
Instead, he cuts their fluid naked bodies, twisting and turning around each other, focusing on the emotional truth of the moment. The result is a poignant, bittersweet depiction of a couple seeking solace and harmony in the wake of unimaginable loss, their intimacy tinged with a melancholy awareness of life’s fragility. The director’s stylistic choices elevate the scene beyond mere titillation, transforming it into a powerful meditation on love, grief, and the resilience of the human spirit.
Laura’s renewed optimism and strength seem to have a healing effect on the reticent John, temporarily bridging the gap between their diverging perceptions of spirituality and the fact that Laura embraces possibility, and John distances himself from it. Roeg’s thoughtful editing and meticulous planning ensure seamless repetition in the scene's temporal displacement. John perceives the future as occurring simultaneously (Roeg's side-by-side process) with the present.
In the film’s iconic scene with John and Laura’s interlude, the moments of lovemaking and dressing are merged, creating the illusion that they happen at the same time. This method draws the audience deeper into the film’s universe, revealing that time operates in a non-linear, fluid manner within the film's evolving narrative. Roeg’s exquisite control, marked by a wry, understated intimacy, draws the audience into the private world of John and Laura as they navigate the mundane rituals of daily life. His keen eye for detail and unobtrusive camerawork capture the couple's tender moments from their casual interactions – the unhurried process of showering, dressing, and undressing.
Even when the narrative is confined to the walls of their hotel room, with the exception of the brief intrusion of the flustered maid who stumbles onto John nude sitting at his drafting table, Roeg maintains a sense of voyeuristic yet respectful proximity, inviting the viewer to witness John and Laura's crucial emotional and physical rediscovery of one another. Through this carefully crafted cinematic language, the film explores the multifaceted nature of the couple’s rekindled connection, delving into both the sensual and the subconscious realms of their relationship.
Roeg cuts between orgasmic physical contact and the glow of spent and satiated lovemaking. He blends the sensual and the elegiac, the primal and the languid moments of realistic sex before the couple returns to getting ready for dinner, capturing the Baxters’ desperate yet hopeful attempt to reclaim a sense of normalcy amidst the haunting mysteries that surround them.
In this pivotal sequence, John and Laura are simultaneously trapped and liberated within their world where their physicality (exalted even through Donaggio's music) holds such immense power. Roeg's intercutting elevates the couple's disparity into a beautiful thing and creates a powerful contrast between their outward efforts to restore their social appearance and the immense emotional dissonance that lies beneath the surface.
The soft humidity of the evening, so pleasant to walk about in earlier, has turned to rain. The strolling tourists have melted away. One or two people hurry by under umbrellas. This is what the inhabitants who live here see, he thought. This is the true life. Empty streets by night, the dank stillness of a stagnant canal beneath the shuttered houses. The rest is a bright fa̤ade, put on for show, glittering by sunlight. (p.25) Р(from du Maurier's short story)
Once they are dressed, they go to dinner. They leave the hotel, and walk out into the Venice night. John and Laura are for an instance separated in a silent, dimly lit alley. A fleeting glimpse of a little figure running by him in a red coat haunts John with memories of his lost daughter, Christine. Could this really be her?
As they continue to walk, they become lost in the suffocating darkness. John leads Laura down a narrow street and says, " We've been over this bridge already." She says, " Oh, to be lost in Venice." He walks into a tight, dark alley. " This is it." Laura says, " No, it's not." " Yes, it is." " No"¦ Come on." He finally agrees, but a strange tone comes over him. He begins to absorb the energy from the cold stone wall with the back of his hand. John remains there as if he was picking up vibrations. He's concerned – all of a sudden, He agrees, " No, it isn't." As water leaks from the walls, he touches it and stares ahead. A little white rat tickles where the stone meets the water. John is still preoccupied.
" I know this place." The little white rat continues to swim below his feet, indifferent to John's confusion. Laura wanders a bit ahead, separating from him once again; she stands on a small bridge across from him. Then she tells him, " This is it!"
They both hear an unearthly scream followed by an unsettling, eerie groan resonating from somewhere not far away. Piercing the night air. It's as if someone has taken their last gasp before death. There are a few instances throughout the film where such sounds can be heard. Mysterious noises and desperate cries of agony reverberated throughout the city.
This terrifying wail leads to one of the locals throwing open their shutters and shouting from their window. Watching from up high, they quickly slam it shut, frightened, perhaps annoyed by the unwelcome noise from the street below.
Amidst the shadows, John and Laura catch fleeting glimpses of the small hooded figure in red scurrying swiftly in the darkness through the narrow alleyways away from the direction of the chilling gasps and groans. Laura asks, " What's that, John?" He answers, " It's okay. I found the real world. Come on!"
John and Laura make their way out of the detour and discover themselves back on a busy street just around the corner. Fate has momentarily misled them, granting them a fleeting glimpse into the future"”a dark, obscure, and winding path.
The following day, John is working up on a ladder outside the church, unwrapping a gargoyle that seems to mock him. He seems to confront the concrete grotesque, wrestling to get it placed on the façade of the building. Roeg reinforces his use of omens, framing John’s encounter with something monstrous in the same way he will by the end of the film when he finally comes face to face with the red devil.
Glancing down, he sees the sisters strolling along the street; his eyes become fixed on them. He experiences both apprehension and hostility. Once more, they materialize for an ephemeral moment, as if they existed in every corner of the world at once. The film is fablesque at times, as in this scene, when the sisters seem to glide past John like two witches who have cast a spell on Laura. Their presence as they pass is meant to challenge to John into recognize his part in the fateful fairytale.
While Laura visits John at work, she encounters the sisters. They begin to walk; Laura shares the details of Christine’s tragic death, recounting how John had jumped up, sensing something was wrong.
Laura tells them, “Do you want to hear something strange? John suddenly got up and rushed out to the pond, almost as if he knew something was going to happen. " Yes, of course. He has the gift; that’s why the child was trying to talk to him. He has the gift even if he doesn't know it. Even if he’s resisting it, it’s a curse as well as a gift.”
" You can't ever contact people, can you?" Wendy tells her, " We're often asked. She's quite famous around Elgin." Heather quite somberly says, " They all want a lot of mumbo-jumbo, like ectoplasm and holding hands. Second sight is a gift from the good Lord, who sees all things. I consider it an impertinence to call his good creatures back from rest for our entertainment." Laura seems dejected from this commentary, " It wouldn't be for my entertainment." Wendy changes her critical tone, " Would you care to come back for tea?"
They graciously invite her and John for tea, where Heather reveals her intention of conducting a séance to reach out to Christine if she’d like. This scene cuts back and forth between the women talking and John working with the sardonic gargoyle that he is preparing for the church's façade. The film remains rich in layers as Laura agrees to the séance with the sisters but makes certain Heather is all right with it. Heather tells Laura that she makes no promises.
Laura begs John to join her. "It's ridiculous." She tries to coax him, "They only want to meet you." He says, "I'm not going to get involved with two neurotic old women. And join in a session of mumbo jumbo. No way." She tells him,"Listen I've been trying very hard to hold onto myself. And to forget about what happened. To get rid of this emptiness. It's been with me like some pain. Finally, finally, through these two women, I discovered how. I mean, they disapprove of mumbo jumbo, too. They used that very word." He answer fully of skepticism, "¨"Of course they do. " " They just want to help. That's all." "Laura, do you not see what they're"¦" Laura pushes, "She’s going to try and reach her. "
It cuts to a scene where the two sisters are laughing at the photographs they take everywhere with them. A collection of people with names to go with the faces. Are they loved ones? Dead people, the sisters talk to? It's a cryptic moment, and we are not privy to the joke.
It cuts back to John and Laura walking; he grows stern with her, "Okay, Laura, that's enough. Listen to me." She becomes a bit more assertive, "I've listened to you. You were the one who said, let the children play where they want to. You let her go near that pond." Finally, a revelation of yet another layer of her pain: she holds John responsible for Christine’s death. " Thanks for the memories, Laura." "You said you'd give your life in exchange for hers. Well, you can't do that"¦" "Jesus H. Christ."Â "John, she's trying to get in touch with us. Maybe to forgive." "Okay, go on. Go on to your crazy women." He finally relents, lets out a cynical snicker, and walks away.
Spirit Gathering: THE SEANCE, She’s Dead! and Laura's brief return to England:
Laura arrives at the sister's pension. Wendy offers her a whisky. She tells her she doesn't need it, but Wendy tells her, "You may child, you may. I'll be back in a jiffy." Heather sits and offers Laura an article of clothing in red, "Here you are. Where are you? " Laura turns around, "Me? Oh, I'm here." Heather seems to know that she's been looking at the photographs set out. "Oh, the children. Who are you looking at?" "There's a boy here with rolled-up shirt sleeves. Difficult to tell how old he is." "Yes, Yes, that's Antony. And then there's Charles next to him in his uniform. And then the three girls. And then there's Angus." "What? This little bust?" "Yes." "Oh, that's lovely." "Yes, He was a gentle child."
Wendy comes back into the room. "Was that Angus?" Laura tells her, "I was just looking at pictures of your family. They're wonderful." "It jars you losing one like that. But I had two more. So can you… I dare say." She looks at Laura queerly. But Heather says, " Nothing can take the place of the one that's gone."
Heather begins to hold Laura's hand. "It's alright," she whispers soothingly.
After getting drunk in a neighboring bar and walking through the dark streets, as the church bells ring out, John enters the sister's pensione looking for Laura. The church bells reach out across the night, and Laura hears it too as the camera sees her in close-up.
Heather asks her, "Are your legs crossed?” The church bell continues to ring out. Then Heather tells Wendy to "Switch the light out."
John shakes the bell for someone to come and show him which room belongs to the sisters. No one appears, so he becomes agitated and shakes the bell with more effort. He then comes around the front desk and looks up their room number in the book, still ringing the bell furiously.
While entering her trance, Heather begins to work her hands over her breasts in a frenzied motion as if beating her chest in self-flagellatory delirium. The unconventionality of this scenario is further heightened by Heather’s bizarre, ecstatic, almost orgasmic cries, which add a layer of uncomfortable twinges to the already creeping dread.
John hears Heather's voice crying out in the throws of her trance. As he peeks through the keyhole, witnessing their séance unfold, he is caught lurking about by one of the residents who mistakes him for a voyeuristic Peeping Tom. In this very tense moment, the man yells at John in Italian, asking what he is doing there, and begins to chase him out of the hallway. He is forced to run off.
This unexpectedly awkward interlude underscores the film’s ability to balance the eerie and the absurd. Laura, horrified by Heather's fit, as the blind woman cries out, "John! John! Yes!"Â Edits swing between John's clash in the hallway, heightened by Donaggio's mordant strings and the cries of a baby, and Heather in the grips of an excruciatingly dark ecstasy. In Heather's distress, she calls out for Laura, who is begging Heather to share her visions, "What does she say? what does she say? what does she say?! Well, what does she say?!!! Softly, she asks again, "What did she say?" She gives way to the floor, hugging Heather’s waist, clutching her, and burying her head into Heather’s body like a child pleading for her mother’s attention; she keeps asking quietly, "What did she say?"
John has gone back to the bar, and Laura eventually meets him outside on the street as she walks through the blackness that surrounds her. John sees her and says, "I got scared for you." She tells him, "I told you it was all right. " Back at the hotel, Laura paces. “Alright, John, now listen. Heather, the blind one, she is really psychic.” She leans into him, her hands open – gesturing with such sincerity, pleading with him to believe. "She has second sight. I mean, you'd understand completely if you'd"¦ today when I was there – she went into the most incredible trance"¦ really."
John gets up and walks across the room, then sits down again. He is sick from drinking too much. "Now, John." "Yes," he says antagonistically, "She said that your life is in danger while you're in Venice. She went on and on and on about this."
He goes to get sick in the bathroom. "John, I really think we have to leave Venice. It was a warning. It was Christine. She was trying to warn us. How can I"¦ We must leave John." She shouts in his face, "John, do you hear what I say? It was Christine"¦ Our daughter!"
John loses it, "My daughter is dead, Laura. She does not come peeping with messages back from behind the fucking GRAVE!!! Christine is dead! She is dead! Dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, DEAD!”
Laura moves around and finally leans against the wall, practically cowering from him, and in a quiet voice, she seems to give up, "You must think I'm ill then." Scornful, he answers simply, "Yeah."She tells him, "Well, if I'm ill, I must see Dr. Jameson.” “Yup," she answers, "Maybe I am. Maybe I left England too soon or something. Maybe those women were influencing me. Maybe I shouldn't see them again. That's what you want, isn't it? " “Yup." "Maybe I should start taking my pills again." All the while, she is humoring him, distancing herself from his quiet, raging hostility. Or perhaps her confidence is waning? This conclusion is open to interpretation. But one hint might be that Laura has palmed the tranquilizers and faked taking them.
John takes advantage of this and encourages her to self-medicate her "˜neurotic behavior.' He hurriedly points to the bottle of pills on the desk, then jumps up and grabs some water. The sooner, the better for her to swallow them. He pushes the glass of water into her hands.
The ambiguous relationship between the two women – "˜sisters' might also explain a bit of John's strong reaction to his wife being drawn to these two – in a fit of challenged masculine panic.
John’s dismissal and hostility toward the sisters’ psychic abilities stem not only from a place of skepticism but also from a sense of threatened masculinity that recoils at the notion of two women asserting a powerful bond with Laura outside the confines of his paternalism. It seems to go deeper than just anger at their meddling. His panic also seems rooted in a fear of the unknown, an inability to rationalize or control a dynamic that falls outside the rigid parameters of his own worldview. As the sisters’ influence over Laura grows, so too does John’s desperation to reassert his dominance, setting the stage for an inevitable clash of values and perspectives.
This "˜influence' sparks a nuanced discord within the couple. John performs the manly construct of logic and reason, finding himself increasingly perplexed by Laura’s newfound embrace of the sisters' spiritualism, in stark contrast to his own grounded rationalism.
Even with all of John's resistance, he himself has begun to see the flickering of the tiny red coat scurrying like one of Venice's sewer rats, scampering by the dark water's edge.
Later, Laura and John receive a phone call in the middle of the night"”their son Johnny has had a small accident at the boarding school in England. Though it is not serious, she is shaken by the sisters' unsettling premonitions; " This is what they meant."
A distraught Laura departs for home while John remains in Venice. She asks him to promise to follow as soon as possible to at least take three weeks off and join her back in London.
He says goodbye to her from the pier as she moves farther away on the barge; he grows smaller until he fades into the distance. She is unaware that this will be the last time they will physically be together or lay eyes upon him up close. As he waits for Laura to return to him, through the bleak, crumbling maze of the city that swallows him whole, he is now completely alone. John’s every footfall echoes with the finality of his last breath, propelling him ever nearer to his unavoidable fate.
HANGING BY A THREAD AND VISIONS OF LAURA:
He returns to work, and later that same day, he confronts a more palpable danger. Roeg, Clifford, and Richmond masterfully craft a tense sequence of gripping physical suspense where John narrowly avoids plummeting from a raised platform in the church he is restoring. With taut precision that fuses both peril and rescue through a series of measured shots of John at work, the scene culminates in the slow-moving descent of a falling beam that imperils him. From a stark overhead vantage, Richmond's lens captures John’s suspended form in real-time, priming us for the pane of glass's (remember the pane of glass Johnny’s bicycle cracks into pieces?) delayed shattering, which unleashes a visceral jolt when it comes.
John dangles and swings precariously, clinging to a rope from a collapsed hoist. The dizzying camerawork amplifies the sheer vertigo of the moment. This perilous stunt, which Sutherland himself insisted on performing after his double refused, underscores the film’s central theme – that nothing is as it appears on the surface. "” It was later discovered that the wire that was supposed to secure the rigging was on the verge of breaking at any moment.
Bishop Barbarrigo looks up at him with a sense of unease; he, too, has a very bad feeling about John's safety. Barbarrigo’s father was also killed in a fall.
John is only rescued by a worker's quick thinking. This brush with death appears to reinforce Heather’s psychic premonitions that warn John he is in danger. Paradoxically, this initial safety John is feeling is an illusion. The line between fate and chance blurs ominously.
After his ordeal, John goes to get some air. He walks with the Bishop and tells him about his wife's prophecy: “It was"”it was like a"”it was a kind of prophecy.” Bishop Barbarrigo: “I wish I didn’t have to believe in prophecy. I do, but I wish I didn’t have to.”
It is at this time that the cops pull another body from the canal. There's been another murder. As John watches the woman being pulled up from the water, there are flashes of Christine floating on the pond.
It is not long after Laura has left for England, and following his near-fatal accident, that John believes he's seen Laura dressed in black on a funeral boat with the two queer old gals, Heather and Wendy. He calls out to her, but it's as if she doesn't see or hear him.
Baffled and disoriented, hoping to find Laura there, John hurries back to their hotel, which is now being shut down for the coming winter. When she is nowhere to be seen, he begins to walk and comes across a discarded doll thrown away on the steps leading into the canal. He picks it up and holds it for a moment.
The discovery of the doll seems to be a deliberate symbol planted there by Roeg, conjuring an image of a child estranged from the world, detached from reality – a metaphor for innocence isolated and disconnected from the world's complexities.
John heads to the police station where he recounts his strange sighting of Laura who is supposed to be in London, to Inspector Longhi, portrayed with an unsettlingly composed, weird sort of calm by Renato Scarpa. The inspector is going over two artist's sketches of the two sisters.
The droll Inspector Longhi comments: “Age makes women grow to look more like each other. Don’t you find that? Old men decay, and each becomes quite distinct. Women seem to converge, eh?”
‘The skill of police artists,’ says Inspector Longhi to Baxter, ‘Is to make the living appear dead.” -Â Remove the word "police," and the statement refers to Don't Look Now itself"”and by extension to all movies, all art. In this same scene, Baxter is sitting. To draw or paint a living subject"”or capture them on film"”is to turn the living into the dead. Conversely, the image created, if it outlasts the life of the subject as movies do, is a way of making the dead appear living.”– from Jasun Horsley Cinephilia and Beyond.
The omnipresent witches appear below Inspector Longhi’s window. He quietly takes notice.
John tells Inspector Longhi about their experience with the sisters, that one claims she is psychic, how his wife collapsed, and that she is not well emotionally. Longhi asks if he and Laura fought before she left for London. He tells him about being angry that Laura wanted to go to their séance, but she went to see the old sisters anyway against his wishes.
As the Inspector interrogates John, he gazes out the window and once again, the two women are walking in front of the police station on the street below his window.
Like Shakespeare’s play Macbeth, which features the Weird Sisters (or witches), they serve as prophetic figures who appear at critical moments, influencing the fate of the characters. Their eerie presence and cryptic prophecies create a sense of inevitability and foreboding, making them seem omnipresent throughout the narrative. They symbolize fate and the supernatural, often appearing when least expected, which aligns with the idea of being everywhere all at once.
Longhi is equally bewildered by John's account of the disappearance of his wife and by the man himself, yet agrees to investigate the matter further. He might even suspect John of being Venice's brutal serial killer.
Longhi asks John slowly in his quiet, measured tone, “What is it, Mr. Baxter? I don’t understand. If she’s in Venice, Surely she’ll get in touch with you.” John answers, “If she can.”
Longhi puts this question to John, "What is it you fear?" He tells the Inspector he fears the sisters might have abducted her, "The killer on the loose. The murderer, my wife's not a well woman." Longhi pushes, "There must be more?" He tells him his wife got something from those two women, that even he couldn't give her.
As Longhi diligently scribbles on the two artist’s sketches of the sisters, he darkens Wendy’s eyebrows with heavy strokes, imbuing them with an air of sinister intensity. His intention is clear: he needs John's cooperation. Despite John’s reluctance, Longhi insists he should at least make the effort. Once John departs from the office, he promptly calls one of his men to follow him.
The authorities’ response is muted, mirroring the film’s refusal to provide definitive answers or explanations. Everyone’s motivations are ambiguous.
Inspector Longhi asks John to help them locate the sisters' pensione, where the women are living.
Inspector Longhi’s man is on John’s trail.
Inspector Longhi’s man shadows John closely.
John walks the damp, grey streets again, shadowed closely by one of Longhi's men. As he gazes into the murky canal, there is a fleeting reflection of Christine in her red Mac, which appears in the water. Suddenly, the familiar sight of the little impish figure in a red coat flits around the corner and slips into an empty courtyard. The sound of dripping water echoes in the air, a constant reminder of the ever-present symbolism of water. As John walks, he sends a flurry of pigeons scattering while the distant notes of piano scales drift through the air, lending a discordant backdrop to his solitary journey.
The streets of Venice are just as disorienting and tormenting to wander as his memories"”a jigsaw puzzle with the pieces missing. As John tries to find the pensione where Heather and Wendy are staying, he finds himself going in circles. All the while, rats skitter around freely, without a care in the world.
John finally retraces his steps to the bar where he had drinks on the night of the séance. His scarf has wide, bold red stripes, which wrap around his neck like a ribbon of blood. An augury.
Longhi's man catches up with him and promptly calls his boss to report. Arriving at the pensione, John rings the bell and inquires about the sisters. He learns that the two English women have moved out that morning after the neighbors reported a "˜prowler.' (Of course, the prowler was John sneaking around the previous night. His hand is still in fate's pocket.) Finally, the cop on John’s tail enters the pensione, introducing himself as Sabione from the Murder Squad. "They're not here," John informs him. But he does find out where they now live.
Final Warnings and Fate's Kiss:
At some point, Inspector Longhi has picked up the two sisters. At the same time, John goes to see Bishop Barbarrigo.
Inspector Longhi’s man is keeping an eye on John, who comes to see Bishop Barbarrigo.
John uses the telephone to call the boarding school in London to inquire about Laura. He speaks with the headmistress, Mrs. Babbage. She puts Laura on the phone, who is, in fact, right there. Laura assures John that everything is fine and that Johnny's injuries aren't serious. John is shocked that she is actually still in London. Laura tells him she's catching the 9 O'clock flight and continues to talk over him while he rambles.
Struggling to find the right words, John frantically tries to tell Laura that he saw her in Venice with the sisters, but she casually dismisses his concerns, assuring him she has been in England and will be back shortly. Her earlier urgency to leave the city is now forgotten. She is now the calm, level-headed one, and the story has flipped, and John has become edgy and paranoid.
Later that evening, John returns to the police station. He finds Heather locked up in a cramped cell. She's frightened and wants to know where Wendy is. "I don't know what's happening." John apologizes that they were arrested and expresses deep regret to Heather for the trouble he has caused them.
He then escorts Heather back to her new hotel room. He walks Heather over a small bridge, and the sounds ebb and flow. On the way home, she tells him –
Heather: One of the things I love about Venice is that it’s so safe for me to walk.
John Baxter guiding her along the path: Steps.
Heather: Thank you… The sound changes, you see, as you come to a canal. And the echoes from the walls are so clear… My sister hates it.
John Baxter: That’s too bad.
Heather: She says it’s like a city in aspic, wrapped over from a dinner party, where all the guests are dead or gone. It frightens her. Too many shadows
After Laura arrives back in Venice, she takes a boat to their hotel. But she notices the driver is going the wrong way. He tells her he was instructed to take her to her husband at the police station.
When John and Heather finally reach the women's new hotel, Wendy offers him some whisky. Heather asks Wendy pointedly if she's put the photographs back out. From the moment we first see their collection of people in their frames, I wonder if they are family or family of a sort"”people who have passed on that she uses to help her channel conversations with the dead, like spirit guides.
Laura has arrived at the police station, and Inspector Longhi rips one of the sketches in half and writes the sisters' address on the back. Once she leaves, he studies the recent murder victim's photos. Richmond’s camera lingers on this for a second.
“She told you… she told you.”
As John visits with the sisters’, Heather is suddenly overcome by a mediumistic – seizure, a fit of feverish agony; Wendy demands that he leave immediately. However, John is relieved to escape the unsettling situation, anxious to get away from Heather's sudden paroxysm, writhing on the bed. But Heather cries out, " Don't let him leave- fetch him back!" Wendy finally agrees and chases after him, only to encounter Laura on the street in front of the building, who has just arrived after being at the police station.
Wendy ushers Laura upstairs, where the distraught Heather urgently implores her to find her husband. Desperately reiterating, scolding, defiant, with righteous counsel, she insists on emphasizing Christine's warning, "I saw Christine. Find him! She told you… she told you to leave Venice!”
Heather’s frantic plea for Laura to find John and the invocation of Christine’s warning imbue the scene with a palpable air of impenetrable anxiety.
Descent into the Underworld: The Emergence of the Red Devil and John’s Fatal Pursuit:
John walks back over the small stone bridge. Venice, a labyrinth of canals and winding streets, becomes a stage for Laura’s mounting panic and John's building euphoria to reach the little red figure he catches sight of again. A suffocating sense of portent hangs heavy as crisscrossing paths and frustrating detours conspire to keep Laura from John.
At the same time, Bishop Barbarrigo awakens with a shudder as if sensing the danger that surrounds John. He douses the "˜red' candle on a nearby bedtable. It is just a tiny touch of Roeg's red, like a warning in the darkness.
Laura, in a growing maelstrom of desperation to reunite with John, races through the city’s torturous routes but cannot reach him; fate seems determined to widen the gap between them. Each missed turn echoes the growing disconnect. She misses him at the police station and then does not make it in time before he shuts the iron gate between them, which becomes locked to her. In this intricate dance of souls, Laura's desperate pursuit of her husband becomes a poignant illustration of human connection just out of reach as John unknowingly widens the chasm between himself and salvation.
The Climax of Don't Look Now is as Hypnotic and Delirious as the Film's Overture:
John wanders the menacing shadowways of Venice's deep, winding alleys once more. Suddenly, he hears a piercing, ungodly cry and catches sight of the small, red, hooded figure running away from the scream. A slick edit invokes Christine walking by the pond again. John pursues, oblivious to all warnings, even as he hears the wailing of the abstract scream that reverberates through the night air of the cavernous swell of ruins.
He comes to an abandoned building, locking the iron gates behind him in the darkened, isolated spaces where he has seen the small figure; effectively, he has trapped himself inside.
Venice's canals are awash with shadows and mist. At the same time, Richmond's handheld camerawork becomes frantic as Laura strives to deliver John from harm through the foggy Venetian night, scrambling across rocking boats and pounding against the unyielding gate, desperate to reach him.
Roeg’s use of sound, particularly the ominous dripping of water, heightens the tension as John pursues his daughter's spirit.
Roeg abandons all subtlety; Don’t Look Now is about to plunge into Grand Guignol. The world dissolves into fog. Yet the director's operatic descent into Gothic horror and graphic violence hints at a larger ambition and suggests a deliberate attempt to unsettle the audience on a profound level. Not just to provoke and disturb us but also to offer a glimpse of grace"”of loss, love, and longing"”in a way that transcends mere comprehension and ultimately shakes off its transfixing scene. The result is a haunting visual elegy, a cinematic exploration of grief that resonates on a primal, unforgettable level.
John follows the small red imp up the stairs until it winds up settling in an upper alcove above a doorway. He hears it whimper and cry like an infant. He shouts up to it, "I'm coming." Climbing up the narrow stairwell, he enters the claustrophobic space where the figure huddles like a red shadow on the wall.
Now John has it cornered. At first, it keeps its back to him. Like a silent childlike enigma from a dark, forgotten fable, the red-hooded wraith stands poised to unveil one of the story’s darkest secrets.
He gently tries to coax them, using a soothing, fatherly, comforting tone. While it makes faint sounds of whimpering, he says in his most quiet voice, "It's okay. I'm a friend."
The intense sound of Laura running close by heightens the suspense, yet her presence in the scene is consistently thwarted. This growing sense of anticipation becomes gravely distressing, causing us to doubt the reliability of what we hear and see.
As Laura hurries through the winding streets and reaches the locked gate, she is barred from passing through it. In the short story, Longhi shouts to John a terrifying warning in Italian exclaiming, "il diablo." – the devil- but John has ventured too far now.
Fate seems to do everything it can to keep John and Laura divided by an invisible chasm, dancing to the rhythm of discordant fates as he approaches the end of his journey. It raises questions: How is it that John should always find himself on the verge of running into the diabolical thing, all leading up to the final moments when he's face to face with it? Is Laura persistently out of sync with John purposeful? Leaving it too late for her to save him?
In the final moments, the figure appears to be a lost and frightened child or perhaps even the supernatural manifestation of his daughter, Christine. Until this moment, it might have gone either way, dependent on John Baxter's consciousness itself, whether he is actually confronting the spirit of his daughter, an innocent child, or a wicked imp wielding a knife for the slaughter.
As the film hurtles towards its cruel reckoning, the veil of mystery is brutally torn aside, an uncovering so jarring; the moment of revelation is both a stunning crucible and an inescapable conclusion to the couple’s agonizing descent within the nightmare they've been living. The truth emerges from beneath the red hood. The small figure that has been haunting the dark streets and John's waking dreams.
John's once rigid skepticism toward Laura’s belief about their daughter’s beautiful spirit watching over them has undergone a chilling transformation in John. Where he once scoffed and dismissed her and Heather's visions, by the final moments of the film, he’s been consumed by desperation, chasing after a phantom in red as if it were their daughter miraculously resurrected. Having repressed his unearthly knowing, John can no longer distinguish between the dreams of a longing, grieving heart and reality.
"We shot the climax last, and I knew I was going to die in it, and I became literally convinced that I would die, and dying began to feel almost like a sexual rite." – Donald Sutherland
The mysterious figure's paradoxical aura – is at once pitifully fragile and ominously threatening as it faces the black corner. It’s not until the very last moments that the true nature of this character is finally revealed, as the disparate elements coalesce into a single, horrifying truth. The child has died, but the horror of the situation isn’t that we are left grievingly alive but that we must join her, and sooner than we think. The red coat conceals someone terrible, a non-child, an anti-cherub of mortality, grinningly shaking her head as she slashes our throat. (Peter Bradshaw- The Guardian 2011 article)
In a stunning, heart-stopping thrust of violence, the small hooded figure turns around to face John.
He realizes that it is not Christine but a grotesquely impish, sardonic, malevolent-looking old woman who pulls a gleaming butcher's knife from her red wool coat. His mysterious Id, much like Morbius's (Walter Pigeon) nightmare, comes to life in Forbidden Planet (1956); it has taken on its own solid, ugly, evil form. Mark Sanderson's essay refers to it as something like a "˜withered limb of Satan.'
John is stunned, the words “Wait…” dying on his lips. The little fiend shakes her head at him, slowly, without pity, from side to side as if to convey a message of finality. Seemingly disciplining him, saying No"¦ It is too late for you. Admonishing him for his refusal to listen, for his senseless stupidity and recklessness before she pronounces judgment on him with her blade.
Her movements are enigmatic yet deliberate. In a swift, merciless motion, she draws the sharp blade across John’s throat, severing it from one ear to the other. It is only now, in his final moments, that John realizes the truth – the red coat has been a clever misdirection, a tool to obscure the blurred lines between life and death.
A fan of classic horror from a very young age, I remember this arresting scene in the theater. I sat silently and was forever changed by this moment.
As John’s life ebbs away, he grasps the futility of his previous assumptions. The red coat, once a symbol of innocence, has been a mask concealing a darker purpose. The ambiguity up until now and John’s misunderstanding – sealed his fate. The misdirection has run its course. What he had been witness to all along were not figments of his past life but the future, which has now manifested as the present, with the grotesque vision of the red-hooded menace coming to life to claim his.
The moment of reckoning has finally arrived. Roeg swiftly brings the entire story full circle"”the epiphany that has been leading up to this moment when all is transformed"”the journey, the arrival, and the final awakening before death. It is a vision of terror and beauty combined. The climax is horrifying and heartbreaking.
The haunting apparition of the small girl – and the memories of Christine that have been plaguing him have all now converged – he has been having visions of his own death. He is shocked to discover this was not the red raincoat his daughter wore but a red duffle coat worn by the maniacal dwarf terrorizing Venice with a string of murders.
Did Venice have two serial killers, one who dumps their victims in the watery death of the canal? A watery death that symbolizes Christine's demise. And the devilish imp who wields a sharpened blade yet another plague upon the city?
Christine had tried to warn her father, but he refused to listen, and he"”of all people who said it himself"”misunderstood the warning. All was not as he thought it was. All was not as it seemed.
John's impish assassin, the red-hooded dwarf who incidentally looks mysteriously like one of John's gargoyles, has been lying in wait for him ever since catching a glimpse of her in the slide of the church at the opening of the film. An image that has become inextricably linked with the devastating loss of his daughter.
Venice, once a backdrop of romance and beauty, now twists into a macabre reflection of John's internal torment. John plunges into a psychic dreamscape, and as the story constantly informs us, "˜Nothing is what it seems.' What obscures are the boundaries between the living and lost"”those who have passed and those who breathe, the shadowed and the sunlit, and the dead and the living"”all collide. They form elusive shades in the dark"”a fever dream.
The city, with its eroding air, isolating atmosphere, crumbling palazzos, and dank alleyways, is the perfect landscape – as if at the crossroads of a tableau of Hell. Like a painting of Hell Scapes- invoking Hieronymus Bosch – grotesque like the gargoyles John restores. John was fixated, trapped in a morbid revival of Christine's final moments, literally seeing her everywhere he looked. Then, like Orpheus in Greek mythology, who famously ventured into the underworld to rescue Eurydice, John descends into Hades to retrieve his daughter, and what greets him there is something of a malevolent demon or his own private demon – ‘grief.’
This metaphor might imply that John's overwhelming guilt over not being able to save his daughter and his inability to confront his sadness unconsciously urge him to seek his own death as the only true way to be reunited with her.
A series of montages of his most recent life soak John's mind and fill the screen as his blood spills out from the angry gash. In his last moments, he sees his family and everything leading up to this moment.
Roeg's harmonic editing emerges and prevails as he conducts the visible and tangible that haunt the rest of the film, breaking them down and reassembling them in John's desperate, futile search for new meaning in the last moments of his life.
As the veil of life lifts, the shattered remnants of John Baxter’s existence converge in a fleeting instant of clarity, as certain as death. The broken wheel of the recent experiences of his life momentarily winds into a stark picture of the truth before all his memories fall apart.
The film’s most ingenious, ironically heartless, and sinister twist unfolds as John’s anguish and faltering precognition lead him down a path of brutal self-destruction. His life drains in a cold, dark place; his blood flows away in a vivid red tide. John's blood trails down the wall from over the doorway, spilling out from the alcove. It's an effective image. Horrifying even as his death is now continuing off-screen.
As his life drains out of him, Laura reaches her hands out to him through the iron bars of the gate; helpless, she calls out “Darlings" to John and her daughter. And she isn't entirely wrong. The bloodthirsty "˜diablo' who wears a color that is a tribute to its very being may very well be the manifestation of their dead daughter. Both have possibly arisen from the same subconscious, the same primal instincts that are now bringing their prophecy to fruition. John should not have "˜looked,' though; he needed to listen.
Nicolas Roeg brings this shattering revelatory turning point into a closed circuit of mortality and mourning from which there is no exit. The artful confluence of the pivotal last moments of John's death in Venice with the opening sequence of Christine's drowning creates an inescapable loop. The narrative is unshakably tethered to the certainty of death, loss, and longing. While Daphne du Maurier’s original story offers up a sense of unease, Don't Look Now is an otherworldly meditation and profound insight into the nature of grief that lingers.
FAREWELL ON A FUNERAL BOAT:
” In a scene where Julie's on the funeral barge, and the two older sisters are with her. We arrived at the set and Julie had a lot of make-up on and a veil. She also had this little tube with an acidic substance in it, and when you blow it, it makes you cry. Make-up wanted to see a stained cheek. I saw this scene and just thought they had a wonderful family life, and the sisters were weeping in the background, and I thought, that's fine from them. But I'd really like to have something step up and finish on a moment that was beyond the obvious. You see something that would be a secret in Julie Christie's head. So I said, "˜put the vale up, and when you're stood on the bow of the boat. I want you to smile. Undefeated, like Queen Christina!' I remember Julie said, "˜Oh God, Nic! Are you crazy?' I think it's fantastic. It's a big fuck you to fate. It's saying that the love they had couldn't be topped. Fantastic.” -Nicolas Roeg Interview with David Jenkins
In the film’s closing moments, a darkly humorous, almost gallows humor, yet strangely grand, poignant, and cynical confession washes over us. John’s sighting of Laura staged in-between Heather and Wendy wasn’t a queer mirage but him catching a glimpse of things to come. His own funeral.
They weren’t figures from his present life but mourners accompanying him on his final journey "“ a hearse boat. This realization dawns on John as he witnesses his own send-off.
The final scene unfolds like a classical elegiac tableau, a canvas painted in the grand strokes of myth. Laura, draped in the inky folds of mourning, funeral black, stands resolute, a pillar of grief on the vessel that carries her departed love, John.
The bittersweet beauty of the scene lies in Laura's unwavering gaze and serene smile, which hints at a deeper understanding. Here, she is saying goodbye to yet another of her loves, yet love is never truly lost but rejoined in the afterlife.
The enigmatic and elusive smile endures on Laura’s face while John's funeral barge sails down the canal"”like his trip down the river Styx"”and can be recognized as a wonderfully whimsical commentary on the story's conclusion. To us, the smile might come across as ambiguous and unsettling due to its inexplicable origin; it might just be that Laura has found acceptance.
Roeg has even suggested that Laura appearing radiant in the final scene of the funeral in Venice carries a dual significance. On the surface, her joyful smile conveys the sense that she believes Christine and John have been reunited in the afterlife. However, Roeg has encouraged the interpretation that there may be an additional, more personal reason behind Laura’s look of contentment – the knowledge that she herself is with child. This subtle implication adds a layer of hope and renewal amidst the somber proceedings, intimating that even in the face of profound loss, the promise of the cycle of life – a new life can emerge.
Roeg comments on Julie Christie's parting, intriguing 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 beautiful. Emotionally, the terrible events have given her a dreadful strength. Laura is smiling at some secret memory. . . Laura and John Baxter have had the best: it may be over now, but it can never be taken away from them. Laura knows this. She is locked deep in some other place where superficial things like tears cannot reach her"¦ As she smiles, I get chills. Grief takes many forms"¦ The beginning is birth, the ending is death, and all the rest is just anecdote. Life does not have a happy ending"”everyone ends up dead"”but movies can end happily. Laura has survived, triumphant"”death shall have no dominion over her"”their happiness may be in the past, but it was real and will always remain so. That is what you have to remember in your grief.”
Don't Look Now explores the interconnectivity of life that ties us all together using a single, unbroken, continuous thread:
Even if we decide not to delve deeper into the film’s psychological layers, it can also be interpreted as a straightforward horror story. Horror arises here as a consequence of our willful blindness to the possibility of such lurking forces at work. As I stated above, the horror is grief itself.
From beginning to end, it presents as a transcendental bad dream emphasizing the crucial conspiracy that unfolds between ourselves and the supernatural forces around us. That of the wicked and the divine, which doesn't just influence us but rather plays out its theater through us.
Don't Look Now, much like the vision of Roeg's Venice, is a dark, narrow alley of no-exits, missteps, treading water, and going in circles. It is a treacherous maze, It is a cruel illusion that leads nowhere near clarity. The final, shocking epiphany of a monstrous dwarf lurking in the gloom serves as both a revelation and an enigma, leaving us with even more questions.
CRITICAL RECEPTION:
"Don't Look Now does not aim to convert anyone to a belief in the occult, but by the end of the film, even the most skeptical may feel chilled, uneasy, unable to still the doubts and fear stirred in the dark, secret places of the imagination." – Stephen Farber, New York Times. "Don't Look Now Will Scare You Subtly," December 23, 1973
""¦a highly professional piece, more serious than satisfying "¦ Wintry Venice is the locale"¦ it has exactly the crypt-like patine called for by such a tale of cloistered terrors. The picture misses in the compounding of its effects; it fails Roeg's intentions to achieve a delicate balance between montage and muddle." – Roy Frumps, Films in Review, Volume XXV, Number 1, January 1974
""¦ The picture is the fanciest, most carefully assembled Gothic enigma yet put on the screen; it's emblazoned in chic and compared to such Gothics as Seance on a Wet Afternoon, it's a masterwork. It's also trash." "” Pauline Kale, New Yorker, December 24, 1973
""¦ Roeg successfully plunges us into a formerly peaceful, ordered world now smashed into jagged arcs and shards by sudden pointless death"¦ it is a tribute to Roeg's artistry that this originally tricky conclusion, like the rest of Don't Look Now, can transcend itself, even imperfectly. " "” Michael Dempsey, Film Quarterly, Volume XXVII, Number 3, Spring 1974