Don't Look Now
Remakes are becoming a dime a dozen this tentative cinematic age. Despite the odd few that are excellent, superb and amazing - so much so that you barely knew it was a remake - the chances are that any bombshell landing about a modern adaptation of an old film is met with many angry fists turning to the air screaming, “How very dare you?” See, there are many reasons to go down the remake/reboot route. For one, the original product could be spectacular in concept but poor in execution. Secondly, the excellence may be dated to a modern audience (which is a stretch because if you can’t appreciate the rich history of cinema because there isn’t a mobile in it, then you should just…no). Thirdly, you could have a superb new image from the source material that would truly magnificently work!
However, when you are dabbling with a film nominated as one of the Best of Movies of All Time in countless amounts of polls - then you are playing with fire boy! Or, well, in this case, water and today, executives at Studiocanal (noo, we trusted you) announced that Don’t Look Now is being refreshed for the digital age. Or as they put it, “a fresh take on Daphne Du Maurier’ devastating short story.”. And we are enraged. This certain film doesn’t need an adaptation or a reboot - Nicolas Roeg’s seminal horror wickedly toed the line between thrills and drama, enough for the film to consistently be trotted out as a perfect treatment of grief, twist endings and supernatural chills. It’s a film that should be re-mastered then re-released, rather than rebooted.
Don’t Look Now tells the story of an English family who are torn apart when disaster strikes and their daughter accidentally drowns. After accepting a job in Venice, the mother and father - Christine and John - leave to the Italian city in order to recapture the marriage and stability they lost through the anguish of their daughter’s loss. However, whilst there, John gets plagued by images of the child and premonitions of a funeral. Similarly, Christine connects with a local psychic who tells her some troubling information about her past and future. Could there be something more sinister going on?
Don’t Look Now is a stellar combination of fear and drama, all toiled with marital severance that needs the trip away in order to feel a sense of belonging and love. Director Roeg and screenwriter Allan Scott do not make this solely about the psychics or the thrills and instead carves those two theme around the re-blossoming of John and Christine’s love after death. In one of the most realistic and moving sex scenes, that caused riotous reactions upon first release, is a stellar reuniting of spirits and bodies that is both stirring, provocative and a truly heated scene. This visceral vein that plunges to the depths of heartache and pain, plus healing wounds through love and romance makes Don’t Look Now a tender thriller.Let’s not forget about the incredible acting of Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland, who bring enticing chemistry and luscious skilled performances to flesh out their characters with teaming emotions that battle against the unbelievable, themselves and one another.
It’s around this emotionality that Roeg builds the horror setting. With fluidity in the narration, John’s past, present and future meshing in a flurry of haunting imagery. As the red coat motif and the boated funeral each surround his conscious - making him question his own psyche - the alluring terror of the film naturally builds to this petrifying finale. Met with shocks and psychological ploys, Don’t Look
Now is teaming with mystery that unfolds with ever thudding pulse. As the tension mounts, pulling Christine and John apart again, Roeg ably entices you into this watery world of murkiness and an underbelly of darkness surrounding the pair who had not long suffered and suffered dearly.
Bending the boundaries of cinema, Don’t Look Now is the pinnacle of phenomenal cinematic story telling. The turbulence in Venice that stalk the minds of our grieving parents is tantalising with sexual reconnections and believable paranoia that creates an unparalleled film. Set against the seventies back-drop of Venice, the isolation surrounding the family as boat around the city is key to the drama and shock unfolding; is it all real? Or is it just the sorrow taking hold mentally.
It’s really hard to bring that to a modern age, especially a modern audience who has been put through the ringer of shock finales and ham-fisted supernatural movies that don’t hold a candle to Roeg’s romping horror. Keep Don’t Look Now as the masterpiece it is and allow young fans to discover the excellence through the successful streak. After all, we know a red-hooded figure we can call…