Don’t Look Now (1973)

The first six min­utes of Nico­las Roeg’s baroque chiller Don’t Look Now are so utter­ly per­fect, it’s easy to for­give some of the nar­ra­tive flat­u­lence of its lat­ter half. It opens on a scene of two chil­dren, broth­er and sis­ter, play­ing on the banks of a murky pond in the Eng­lish coun­try­side. The girl, Chris­tine (Sharon Williams), is dressed in a famous red rain­coat. Her white-blonde locks tum­ble down her upper back. She has tiny, beady eyes.

In the open­ing shot she is push­ing a wheel­bar­row while a heav­en­ly white horse gal­lops and whin­nies in the mid­dle dis­tance. Already you can see the pos­si­ble crossover of worlds, where the horse has arrived from anoth­er plain to escort Chris­tine across the bor­der. John­ny, Christine’s broth­er, tools around on a bike, skid­ding around trees very much in his own world. The sun is low in the sky, cool­ly back-light­ing the lush verge in which the pair frol­ic. The red of the rain­coat is a sear­ing blot on the frame, like a molten core about to explode.

The cam­era then switch­es per­spec­tive and we can see a big house in the mid­dle dis­tance. Chris­tine is kneels over the pond from a small, mossy bridge, peer­ing down­wards and strate­gis­ing how to retrieve the ball she just pur­pose­ly tossed in there. We cut sud­den­ly from the red coat reflect­ed in the pond to a fire burn­ing in front of a guard mesh – a pull-back reveals Lau­ra (Julie Christie) and John Bax­ter (Don­ald Suther­land) going about their busi­ness, her read­ing a book, him flip­ping through slides of church inte­ri­ors (he works as a church restorer).

In one of his slides John spots the same red coat, and direc­tor Nico­las Roeg holds on the reac­tion in his eyes for a moment, as attempts to deci­pher exact­ly what he’s see­ing. He glances over to Lau­ra, but her back is to the screen. He won­ders if she’s spot­ted it too, and whether he should maybe show her, or ask her opin­ion. Anoth­er har­bin­ger: Lau­ra, it tran­spires, is search­ing for the answer to a ques­tion asked of her by Chris­tine: if the world is round, why is the ice on a frozen pond flat?

John looks hard­er at the slide, direct­ly rather than pro­ject­ed on the big screen. The fig­ure in the red coat is clear­ly there. On the sound­track, a spooky lit­tle arpeg­gio plays out on an elec­tric syn­the­sis­er as Roeg and co-edi­tor Graeme Clif­ford cut back to Chris­tine by the pond. The ten­sion mounts. Chris­tine runs along the bank of the pond and the cam­era pans along, cap­tur­ing her shim­mer­ing reflec­tion. It’s a longish shot, with ghost­ly resonances.

John­ny, mean­while, rides over and smash­es a small pane of glass. The sound of the smash­ing is cross-cut with Christine’s foot pen­e­trat­ing the shal­lows of the water. It’s as if a translu­cent safe­ty bar­ri­er on the pond has been bro­ken. At that very moment, John looks up from his slide, react­ing to the smash, but is instant­ly inter­rupt­ed by Lau­ra answer­ing her daughter’s ice triv­ia. Lau­ra puts her hand to her mouth and it cuts to Chris­tine, bring­ing her hand down from the same posi­tion. The idea of psy­chic and phys­i­cal con­nec­tiv­i­ty is a theme that runs through the film.

Chris­tine has man­aged to retrieve the ball, but decides to toss it back into the pond. The moment the ball hits the water, John spills a glass of water on the slide, and the red of the coat in the image begins to smudge and run. The ink resem­bles blood, if indeed it is not actu­al blood. Either way, it’s not look­ing good for lit­tle Chris­tine. Her fate is sealed by this point.

With­out a sound, John looks up and into the mid­dle dis­tance, like he’s attempt­ing to intu­it some­thing but the infor­ma­tion is too opaque to swift­ly deci­pher. He edges towards the door before pick­ing up pace and head­ing out­side. He sud­den­ly has to check on the kids. As he steps across the breach, Chris­tine is seen (but not heard) descend­ing into the pond, face upwards as if a strug­gle has already occurred and she’s at the point of giv­ing up.

John­ny screams for help, but John runs straight past him, his eyes locked on the pond, now eeri­ly still. He stag­gers and, in a sin­gle motion, wades into the gloomy water. Sutherland’s force­ful con­vic­tion in this moment is heart­break­ing in and of itself. He sees some­thing, but we cut back to Lau­ra who is now inspect­ing the smudged slide.

The red liq­uid bub­bles, but she toss­es it aside. It’s sits on top of a well-placed book named ​‘Beyond the Frag­ile Geom­e­try of Space’, which could be an alter­na­tive title for the movie. The liq­uid starts to shift across the frame. It’s sen­tient, drain­ing from that lit­tle mys­te­ri­ous fig­ure in the red coat and spi­ralling sym­bol­i­cal­ly into the inte­ri­or of the church. John has retrieved the now-limp Chris­tine and, in slow motion, lifts her from the water, but it’s too late. He cra­dles her and screams out.

The sound­track, at that cru­cial moment, includes the trill of a harp, direct­ly fol­lowed by indus­tri­al bleat­ing. And then we exit this momen­tary dream state, and John trans­ports Christine’s corpse to the house after fail­ing to resus­ci­tate her. Lau­ra, obliv­i­ous the the entire acci­dent, sees John with the body and screams out, only for her ago­nised yelp to be inter­rupt­ed by a hard cut of a drill bur­row­ing into a stone wall cov­ered in sea­weed. It’s one of the great open­ings. Every frame is cal­cu­lat­ed perfection.