“What do you fear, Mr. Baxter?”

Don’t Look Now is only Nicolas Roeg’s third film (completing a bizarre yet exceptional trio with the studied anarchy of Performance and the sparse yet enthralling Walkabout) and, in some ways, it shows. The former cinematographer maintains total control over how he presents and withholds information - dropping clues and maintaining visual motifs; the film sometimes feels like an exercise in Roeg’s craft. Take the opening sequence: Roeg sets everything up meticulously--from the understated yet menacing threat of a static shot of rain hitting a pond, to the relaxed, comfortable intimacy of John and Laura’s relationship. Their daughter’s death in the pond is foreshadowed by the image shown above, a growing bloody stain on a slide John is examining detailing a Venetian church with a lurking figure dressed in red in one corner. It’s simple stuff, fully rooted in events to follow, but Roeg is smart not to pull his punches. John’s primal roar of despair as he drags his daughter from the water is instantly burned into the memory—but everything that previously passed remains in the back of your mind, later to be slyly evoked as we move into the alleys of Venice, one of the most perfectly unsettling locations in film history.

Don’t Look Now, despite all its disquieting power as a horror film, is primarily a study of a marriage burdened by grief: the film would fail utterly without its central couple (played by the assured Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie at the height of their skills). John buries himself in his work, trying to forget the deceased Christine, whilst Laura is adrift in sorrow. When a blind seer claims she can see her daughter with them, laughing happily, Laura grabs onto this shred of hope; John dismisses it (perhaps in denial of his own possible psychic gifts, glimpsed with his clairvoyance in the opening scene). The two are very convincing as a married couple: fully at ease with each other, but sundered by such an irreconcilable loss. Their chemistry is fittingly displayed in the famous love scene: Roeg cuts between the tenderness of the act itself and their dressing to go to dinner afterwards (Steven Soderbergh later paid homage by inverting the idea to the same effect in Out of Sight), and we see their effortless connection even when they are apart. This is the one truly happy moment Roeg grants both the couple and the audience, underlining the deeply human story of the film and truly earning the pathos of its opening and closing moments.

Despite all this, it is impossible to ignore the powerful, disturbing undercurrent that bubbles throughout the Venice scenes as well. There are precious few moments of action, and they are mostly red herrings or explainable mishaps. John follows a mysterious, hooded figure in red through the labyrinth of the city as his steadfast rationality is slowly bored down, both by his vision of Laura on a funeral boat and her growing conviction that their daughter is trying to contact them. There is another side-plot concerning a serial killer on the loose—but Roeg seems barely concerned with it, only using it in almost a throwaway manner to tie up the plot in the finale. All of this combines for a palpable mood—the grand, gothic, unfamiliar set of the city, the lurking danger in the hooded red figure and the endless canals that constantly remind the Baxters of their daughter’s fate. Aside from the catharsis of the love scene, Graeme Clifford’s skillful, clinical editing provides no relief from the tension, not until the brutal, shocking and remarkably upsetting finale (which I will try to keep unspoiled) which, whilst confusing, horrifying and difficult to watch, is also perversely just, giving a sense of deserved peace to such an emotionally ravaged relationship.

Roeg’s skill in preserving mood, tension and unmitigated horror in Don’t Look Now and balancing it with tender emotion and such a believable portrayal of a marriage is unparalleled among almost any director I have had the pleasure to see. His trained visual eye is impossible to refute; but it is his skill for storytelling, staggering and withholding information whilst constantly hinting at the terrible events to follow, that I truly admire here. Roeg never lets us fully abandon rationality and, as the credits roll, the preceding mood of prophetic doom complements the deep strike into the hearts of his audience.

Directed by Nicolas Roeg; written by Allan Scott and Chris Bryant; based on the short story by Daphne Du Maurier; cinematography by Anthony Richmond; editing by Graeme Clifford; original score by Pino Donnagio; production design by Giovanni Soccol; costume design by Andrea Galer and Marit Lieberson; produced by Peter Katz; released by Paramount Pictures. Rated R. Runtime 110 mins.

WITH: Donald Sutherland (John Baxter), Julie Christie (Laura Baxter), Hilary Mason (Heather), Clelia Matania (Wendy), Massimo Serato (Bishop Barbarrigo), Renato Scarpa (Inspector Longhi), Sharon Williams (Christine Baxter).