On Loca­tion: The house from Don’t Look Now

Access to the fol­low­ing loca­tion was kind­ly agreed with the per­mis­sion of the cur­rent occu­pants. All infor­ma­tion regard­ing the details of the loca­tion have been omit­ted to acknowl­edge their wish for pri­va­cy. This loca­tion should not be sought out or vis­it­ed with­out pri­or consent.

One of the first images that comes to mind when think­ing of British cin­e­ma is a lit­tle girl in a red coat. She is in the large gar­den of a coun­try house in win­ter­time, the grass damp and the leaves hav­ing long fall­en to the ground. She is play­ing near a pool of water when her ball, vibrant­ly red like her coat, rolls onto its sur­face and drifts towards its cen­tre. Her broth­er is rid­ing a bike when its wheels ride over a shin­ing piece of glass and shat­ters it.

The girl drowns in between shots, frag­ment­ed like the bro­ken glass; the par­ents becom­ing grad­u­al­ly aware of the unfold­ing tragedy hap­pen­ing while sat at the fire­side. This open­ing has stayed with me ever since first view­ing, that icy gar­den arguably defin­ing a whole move­ment of inno­v­a­tive post­war British cin­e­ma. It is of course the start of Nico­las Roeg’s 1973 adap­ta­tion of Daphne du Maurier’s ​‘Don’t Look Now’.

Don’t Look Now charts the trag­ic sto­ry of John and Lau­ra Bax­ter (Don­ald Suther­land and Julie Christie). Their daugh­ter Chris­tine (Sharon Williams) trag­i­cal­ly drowns in a pond in their gar­den which leaves them grief-strick­en. Seek­ing to escape the house and its bad mem­o­ries, John takes a com­mis­sion to restore a build­ing in Venice, and the pair trav­el to Italy in the hope of rebuild­ing their lives as much as rebuild­ing the ancient church. Lau­ra befriends a pair of elder­ly women (Hilary Mason and Celia Mata­nia), one of whom claims to be psy­chic and who can sup­pos­ed­ly still see Christine.

The rev­e­la­tion slow­ly dri­ves a wedge between the cou­ple, with John eager to move on. How­ev­er, the ghost of their guilt soon man­i­fests in the canals of the city as John is slow­ly haunt­ed by visions of what appears to be his daugh­ter, still wear­ing the coat she died in. But how are these visions con­nect­ed to a spate of mur­ders befalling the city and the strange coin­ci­dences matched by the pre­dic­tions of the psychic?

The open­ing loca­tion house and its adjoin­ing sluice ponds is one of the strongest evo­ca­tions of place in all of 1970s cin­e­ma. Roeg frag­ments the basic sce­nario of the girl drown­ing, fill­ing the screen with visu­al motifs that come to mark the rest of the film. With Antho­ny B Richmond’s cin­e­matog­ra­phy, the win­ter colours of the gar­den are ren­dered in beau­ti­ful­ly crisp tones, lit­tered with reds that play a huge role in the man­i­fes­ta­tion of guilt and sor­row when the film even­tu­al­ly jumps to Venice.

Even though cut with­in the cas­cad­ing rhythm of mem­o­ry, the house in ques­tion is incred­i­bly well-mapped and por­trayed, as if seen through a flick­er book of past and future haunt­ings. Roeg and Rich­mond explore the space beau­ti­ful­ly, with the grounds seen var­i­ous­ly in momen­tary, wide shots pro­duc­ing the qual­i­ty of a child’s perspective.

The house in ques­tion was owned by David Tree, a not­ed per­former in pre­war British film and the­atre. He act­ed with the likes of James Mason and Wendy Hiller, and was direct­ed by some of British cinema’s biggest names includ­ing Zoltan Kor­da and Antho­ny Asquith. The house was found by Roeg in a list­ing for film loca­tions, the direc­tor lat­er cast­ing Tree as the head­mas­ter of the film, Antho­ny Bab­bage, when real­is­ing his cin­e­mat­ic and act­ing her­itage. It would be Tree’s final role in act­ing, devot­ing his time to his sec­ond career in farm­ing and gar­den­ing that had occu­pied him since he mar­ried in 1946. Such tran­quil­li­ty, how­ev­er, belies the prob­lems that beset the crew in film­ing this short segment.

With Sharon Williams becom­ing agi­tat­ed and unwork­able due to her fear when being sub­merged, the major­i­ty of the under­wa­ter sequences even­tu­al­ly required the use of a water tank, and a num­ber of girls were used for com­ple­tion of the sequence. Gra­ham Clifford’s inno­v­a­tive edit­ing more than masks the shift between real and fake, how­ev­er, cre­at­ing a heady, unfold­ing night­mare. I make the jour­ney to just out­side Lon­don where the house still sits today. The late autumn light shares more than a pass­ing resem­blance to that of the film, which was shot at rough­ly the same time of year in Decem­ber 1971.

The cur­rent occu­pants pick me up and we trav­el togeth­er to the house. Meet­ing fam­i­ly mem­bers who wit­nessed the film­ing of the sequence, it’s clear that Don’t Look Now had more of an effect then mere­ly scares and enter­tain­ment. For the few days that the film crew were at the farm, Don­ald Suther­land joined in with fam­i­ly life. They were cap­ti­vat­ed by the event of a cast and crew descend­ing upon their home, and with one of the daugh­ters inspired to go into the film indus­try, it is clear that the expe­ri­ence had a pro­found effect.

As we sit in the kitchen talk­ing and look­ing out over the gar­den, I spy sev­er­al lady­birds walk­ing along the white-paint­ed win­dow frames; bright red still qui­et­ly haunts the house. I’m shown around some of the rooms used in the film: the liv­ing room where Suther­land and Christie are dan­ger­ous­ly dis­tract­ed by their work, the kitchen that Suther­land runs fran­ti­cal­ly through when real­is­ing some­thing is ter­ri­bly wrong. Then we head down to the famous sluice pond, and I try to fig­ure out the exact angle from which we see Chris­tine lean­ing ever more dan­ger­ous­ly towards the water from the small wood­en footbridge.

One aspect that becomes more obvi­ous upon see­ing the house is how its design itself had poten­tial links to Sutherland’s char­ac­ter, con­firm­ing Roeg’s deci­sion for the loca­tion. With half the house col­laps­ing many years ago, it was part­ly rebuilt in a dif­fer­ing mate­r­i­al. As Roeg has point­ed out in pre­vi­ous inter­views, it was the per­fect house for John who was clear­ly a man plagued by uncer­tain­ty; a man who could nev­er decide whether to live in a house made overt­ly of bricks or wood, opt­ing instead for one made of both.

Such a sub­tle detail sug­gests the lev­el of thought that the direc­tor went into when con­sid­er­ing even the most basic aspects of his film­mak­ing. But Roeg ulti­mate­ly found what he was look­ing for in this idyl­lic house­hold, per­haps some­what iron­i­cal­ly con­sid­er­ing that he made it the site of the fam­i­ly tragedy that haunts one of his most melan­cholic films.