For a film often touted as one of the best British movies of all time, Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now is, at least on paper, a relatively surprising choice – just look at the towering achievement of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s The Red Shoes, or the grandeur and scale of David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia; a huge number of films pale in comparison to two of the best films ever made.So what is it about Roeg’s film that on the same level as the best of British cinema?
Firstly, and quite simply, there aren’t many films that can claim to be as meticulously crafted as Don’t Look Now, and, in terms of technical skill, Roeg’s film is something of a masterclass. Squeezing tension from even the most mundane situations, such as the eerily prescient toy soldier Christine is playing with before her tragic death (“fall in”), Roeg manages to keep a deeply unsettling atmosphere running throughout the film from the opening sequence to the final credits. And what an opening it is, too. Roeg kicks the story off in dramatic style (an opening that Lars Von Trier surely drew influence from for Antichrist) with the tragic death of a little girl in a vivid red plastic coat.
This coat will be seen sporadically later on as John, the young girl’s father, is plagued by visions of his late daughter while working in overcast Venice. Are his wife’s obsessive attempts to speak to their daughter through a psychic eating away at his sanity? Or does he have psychic abilities himself? Either way, he’s not sure what’s going on in Venice, and he wants to know – and this inquisitive self-doubt is imbued in the audience; we want to know what’s going on as much as John does. But even the most invested of audiences would struggle to predict the grizzly outcome of this beautifully made story.
Don’t Look Now is a ghost story where even the ghosts aren’t quite as straightforward as they seem, as well as a film driven towards its devastating conclusion by a combination of smoke, mirrors, and a vivid red plastic coat. It truly is one of the greats.
