Don't Look Now

Like a Tootsie Roll Tootsie Pop, I'm a sucker for the 70s.

This movie about a husband and wife on a working holiday in Venice following a family tragedy creates a sense of dread and foreboding by trying to ignore the dreadful and foreboding that surround them.

It also has the best and least erotic sex scene I've seen in ages. The 70s just gets me.

An interesting adaptation. Trying to keep track of the timeline was interesting.

To be honest, I was here for Julie Christie.

I looked, and I saw, and I was satisfied. A very strange film. Slow paced. Good cast. There's a remake on It's way, and I feel it needs one.

A weird slow burn of a movie. The ending and the sex scene make this worth watching.

Visually, "Don't Look Now" is certainly different, almost experimental. But it's so hung up on those visuals that it forgets to bring the story along with it. The film is plodding, but when it moves, it jumps around within the alleys and canals of Venice. It's disorienting to say the least and maybe the location is part of the director's game.

This isn't a scary movie. There are a number of moments when we get a glimpse of a red-coated, ghostly figure that resembles what John (Donald Sutherland) and Laura's (Julie Christie) daughter was wearing when she died. It feels a bit like a predecessor to many of today's Horror movies that feature a scary little girl. There aren't many moments of horror or tension, except for the early death of the girl. Outside of that, Religion is flirted with but it doesn't play any substantial role in the plot.

Julie Christie's joy upon hearing details about her daughter from a blind but psychic woman is a standout moment. She lights up a movie that to this point had been dreary as Hell. She's gorgeous and I had a hard time with Sutherland being paired with her. He's no fun to watch in this movie and the love-making scene with Christie doesn't help. The director goes absolutely Austin Powers in the scene, strategically hiding Sutherland's naughty bits a number of times. Funny is what it is.

The ending was a total letdown. It's sort of makes sense and it's a twist, but it's too much of stretch.

Like most younger audiences, older movies have a disadvantage in trying to win me over. Filmmaking styles/techniques evolve, tastes change, fresh stories become stale, and of course special effects improve by leaps and bounds. Despite all this, I still enjoy giving old movies a chance and finding a 50+ year old movie that overcomes these hurdles is always incredible. Unfortunately, this movie is not one of those. There was nothing wrong with it technically - it was very watchable - but the style and story were just odd. So many scenes felt random and unnecessary, with odd interactions and characters that never rise to the level of a B- or C-plot, but for some reason get attention anyway. Most screenwriting advice is to have every scene be critical to the story, but that certainly isn't the case here. Perhaps they were trying to build mystery with red herrings and non sequiturs, but it ended up feeling more aimless. The performances at times hit a naturalistic quality that I liked, but it wasn't enough to save a story that I wasn't invested in. Add to that a head-scratching ending and the end result is a big misfire - too weird and art house for me.

This is a great example of how much better movies are today. With the exception of the amazing The Conversation and a few others, I loathe the movies made in the 70's. Everything from the pacing to the dialog to the music just really sucks in ways that I can't put into words. I saw this film on Roger Ebert's "best of" list so I thought it would be worth a look. It turns out that it is the prototypical 70's movie. Hell, they couldn't even get the sex scene right (several minutes of watching the two leads roll around). Without saying too much, there were two ways the movie could have gone and this movie went the really crappy way. What a waste of time.

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3 Thoughts After Watching ‘Don’t Look Now’:

1. This movie was way too long. Tons of meaningless scenes and character interactions. Such an extraordinarily roundabout way of telling such a simple story.

2. Why did every character other than the couple seem duplicitous? The sisters, the bishop, the police. Were they all meant to be red herrings? If so, the effect was lost on me. I would say it was anticlimactic if there were any build-up whatsoever.

3. The best part about this film was Venice. A gorgeous city I’d love to visit and certainly an interesting setting for a horror-type film.

If a drawn-out and rather explicit sex scene is the most interesting part of a psycho-thriller, then something is amiss. I know that "Don't Look Now" has its fans, but it didn't grab me at all. What did impress me a little bit were the sets, even though I found it irritating that Venice seemed unnaturally empty almost all the time. Overall, though, the movie bored me more than anything else, and I couldn't relate to Donald Sutherland's acting either. So all in all, this movie is quite a letdown, at least for my taste.