Don't Look Now (1973)

A Haunting Masterpiece of Grief and Premonition

Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now (1973) is a film that defies easy categorization. Ostensibly a supernatural thriller or horror story, it is, at its core, a harrowing meditation on grief, trauma, and the instability of perception. Adapted from a short story by Daphne du Maurier, the film weaves psychological dread, erotic intimacy, and eerie premonitions into one of the most artistically accomplished and emotionally unsettling works of 1970s British cinema.

Visually bold and narratively elliptical, Don’t Look Now is a masterclass in film editing and mood-building, combining cerebral storytelling with chilling suspense. Its influence can be felt across decades of cinema—from the psychological horror of Ari Aster to the fragmented narratives of Christopher Nolan. Yet it remains uniquely its own—a dreamlike mosaic of love and loss filtered through the atmospheric decay of Venice.

Plot Overview: Premonitions in the City of Water

The film opens in rural England, where married couple John (Donald Sutherland) and Laura Baxter (Julie Christie) suffer a devastating tragedy: the accidental drowning of their young daughter, Christine, who was wearing a red raincoat at the time. This traumatic event sets the emotional tone for the rest of the film—grief not as a temporary state but a haunting presence.

Some time later, John and Laura travel to Venice, where John has been commissioned to help restore a crumbling church. The city—gloomy, beautiful, and labyrinthine—becomes a mirror of their emotional state. While there, they encounter two elderly sisters, one of whom claims to be psychic and tells Laura that she can see Christine’s spirit. This encounter seems to offer Laura comfort but unsettles John, who dismisses such things.

As the couple try to recover, John begins experiencing strange visions—flashes of a figure in a red coat, glimpses of his wife appearing in strange places, and ominous premonitions that blur the line between reality and illusion. Meanwhile, Venice itself seems to close in on them, its canals and alleyways becoming increasingly sinister.

What follows is a slow, inexorable descent into a conclusion that is both shocking and tragically inevitable.

Themes: Grief, Time, and the Supernatural

The Persistence of Grief

More than a horror film, Don’t Look Now is a grief film. It examines the ways in which the death of a child creates an unbridgeable chasm between people. While Laura seeks solace in the possibility of an afterlife, John throws himself into work and denial. Their love is still alive, but the death haunts every scene—seen in quiet gestures, tense silences, and private reveries.

Time as a Labyrinth

Roeg constructs the film as a fragmented timeline, using flash-forwards and disjointed editing to suggest that time is not linear, but circular and recursive. John’s visions may not be madness or fantasy—they might be glimpses of the future. The red-cloaked figure he sees throughout the film is not just a ghost of his daughter—it is time itself, looping back to meet him.

The Ambiguity of the Supernatural

The film never definitively answers whether the psychic visions, ghostly encounters, or strange coincidences are real or imagined. This ambiguity is its power. Roeg isn’t interested in resolving the supernatural but in immersing us in a world where intuition and feeling carry as much weight as logic and evidence.

Performances: Emotional Honesty and Subtlety

Donald Sutherland gives one of the finest performances of his career as John—a man unmoored from reality, struggling to maintain rational control in a world where rationality is crumbling. His increasingly anxious demeanour, awkward movements, and haunted expressions all contribute to the film’s psychological unease.

Julie Christie, radiant and emotionally open, plays Laura as a woman who embraces her grief more openly, seeking peace and connection where John clings to scepticism. Their chemistry is palpable and essential. The infamous love scene between them, shot with rare tenderness and sensuality, is one of the most honest portrayals of married intimacy in cinema—intercut with post-coital dressing and laughter, it humanizes them beyond the tragedy.

Direction and Editing: Roeg’s Cinematic Poetry

Nicolas Roeg’s direction is the engine of Don’t Look Now's haunting power. Formerly a cinematographer (The Masque of the Red Death, Fahrenheit 451), Roeg brings a visual richness and experimental instinct to the film. He employs disorienting cuts, match-frame editing, colour symbolism, and a non-linear narrative structure that was radical for its time and remains deeply influential.

The editing by Graeme Clifford is particularly remarkable. Rather than a tool for continuity, editing here becomes a way to access memory, sensation, and premonition. Flashes of red, water, broken glass, and reflections recur obsessively, like fragments of a shattered psyche.

Venice: The Living Labyrinth

Venice is not merely a backdrop—it is a character. Roeg strips away the romantic, postcard view of the city and instead presents it as foggy, decaying, and treacherous. The canals are not tranquil but suffocating. The city’s beauty becomes eerie; its timelessness, claustrophobic.

The maze-like geography of Venice reflects the disorientation of grief, where nothing leads to resolution and every path seems to circle back on itself. Even the city’s physical instability—the sinking buildings, the dampness, the narrow alleys—mirrors the emotional instability of the characters.

The Red Coat: Symbol and Spectre

The motif of the red coat, first worn by Christine and later glimpsed throughout the film, is the most potent symbol in Don’t Look Now. It evokes innocence, trauma, memory, and foreboding all at once. The bright red against Venice’s grey palette acts like a visual alarm bell—a sign of danger and déjà vu.

Roeg uses it to masterful effect, turning a child’s garment into a harbinger of doom and an emblem of grief. When the film’s ending recontextualizes the red figure, it lands with devastating impact—both shocking and tragic, and yet, in retrospect, entirely inevitable.

The Ending: A Vision Fulfilled

The film’s final sequence is one of the most unforgettable in cinema. Without spoiling it for those who haven’t seen it, suffice to say that the surreal, dreamlike build up resolves in a single, brutal moment of clarity. It’s a moment that redefines the entire film—suggesting that what seemed like coincidence or hallucination was actually fate.

This conclusion doesn’t provide catharsis; it deepens the tragedy. But it also reaffirms Roeg’s central obsession: that life is not a line, but a spiral, and that moments of joy, love, loss, and death are all entangled.

Reception and Legacy

Upon release, Don’t Look Now was both celebrated and controversial. Its explicit love scene stirred debate (and persistent rumours of un-simulated sex, never confirmed), but critics praised its innovation and atmosphere. Over time, it has grown in stature, now frequently cited among the greatest British films ever made.

Filmmakers as varied as David Lynch, Lars von Trier, Christopher Nolan, and Ari Aster have cited Roeg’s influence. In particular, his fluid sense of time, dreamlike editing, and use of visual motifs continue to resonate with modern auteurs.

The British Film Institute ranked Don’t Look Now as the 8th greatest British film of the 20th century, and its reputation has only solidified with retrospectives and restorations.

Conclusion: A Cinematic Séance

Don’t Look Now is not a horror film in the conventional sense—it’s a séance of memory, grief, and uncanny perception. It is a ghost story told in fragments, shadows, and echoes. Through its masterful editing, deeply felt performances, and Roeg’s singular vision, it taps into the subconscious in ways few films ever do.

This is a film that lingers long after viewing—not just because of its final image, but because of the emotional and psychological undercurrents that build toward it. Like the city it inhabits, Don’t Look Now is mysterious, beautiful, and full of hidden dangers.

It is not just one of the best films of the 1970s. It is one of the most enduring expressions of cinematic grief and psychological horror ever made.