Barnes & Noble

Venice is definitely not for lovers in Nicolas Roeg's 1973 gothic chiller. Based on a Daphne du Maurier short story, Don't Look Now tells the story of a married couple, superbly portrayed by Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland, whose to visit that romantic Italian city is tainted by their grief over their recently deceased daughter. Their stay in the familiar tourist destination takes on a nightmarish aura as they are overcome by eerie, synchronistic forebodings of worse things to come. Roeg unfolds the narrative slowly, with a subliminal seductiveness that gives sinister undertones to the simplest gestures and creates an overpowering aura of lurking danger. The wounded couple appears emotionally frozen in the aftermath of their loss, and they are believably susceptible to a blind old woman who claims to have visions of their daughter. But Venice is the real star here. It is not the sunny Italian playground of movies like Summertime or A Little Romance but the menacing city of films like Paul Schrader’s The Comfort of Strangers and, of course, Visconti’s Mahler-soaked adaptation of Death in Venice. Roeg presents Venice as a great, ancient maze, its gray decay freighted with Jungian archetypes and psychological metaphors. The result is one of the most enigmatic and unsettling thrillers of all time. Gregory Baird

All Movie Guide

A married couple is haunted by a series of mysterious occurrences after the death of their young daughter in this enigmatic chiller. Based on a story by Daphne du Maurier, whose works inspired Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca and The Birds, the film centers on Laura and John Baxter (Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie), who have recently relocated to Venice so that John can oversee the architectural restoration of an old church. Both hope that the change of environment will allow them to forget the recent tragic demise of their child, but they instead find themselves surrounded by reminders of death, as the city attempts to deal with a series of unexplained murders. The eeriness intensifies when they encounter a blind psychic and her eccentric sister, who promise to contact her daughter's spirit. Laura embraces the idea, but John remains skeptical until he experiences his own visions: fleeting glimpses of someone in a red coat similar to one that belonged to his daughter. Judd Blaise

Product Details

• UPC: 032429068729
• Source: PARAMOUNT
• Presentation: Wide Screen
• Sales Rank: 5,366