Only three times in my life have I made a total idiotic spectacle of myself in a cinema by screaming and stamping my feet on the ground through uncontrolled fear.
The first time, when I was a young teenager, was during a screening of a 1957 English classic, The Green Man, with Alastair Sim. The second time was on my first viewing of Hitchcock's Psycho. And the third and final time was during the first cinema release of this classic psychic-horror story that is Nicolas Roeg's Don't Look Now.
The suspense holds up well on its DVD release. The film seems, in fact, as fresh as when it was made 30 years ago. It stands as a great achievement of the cinema - as does Roeg's underrated rock-crime masterpiece Performance for that matter, and his Walkabout.
Don't Look Now stems from the pen of the English writer Daphne du Maurier, who was also responsible for the genesis of the Hitchcock movies Rebecca and The Birds. As much as I love Rebecca, Roeg succeeds best in bringing to the screen the implicit eroticism that underpins Daphne du Maurier's writing, which contrasts so well against the tension and fear of her themes.
Erotic? Don't Look Now,, as well as being one of the most frightening movies I've ever seen, is also amongst the sexiest. The love-scene between Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland was the most realistic until Pedro Almodovar came along with Live Flesh. There were rumours at the time that the scene was filmed by Roeg by simply giving his stars a joint to smoke, and then letting nature take its course - everything on screen strenghens that tale.
The tale's conclusion is as unexpected the second time around as that first foot-stomping time - I had very nearly succeeded in blotting it out of my memory. And it held all its original potency, though this time I didn't scream. The impressive thing, though, is that on this second, long-delayed viewing, the incidental details throughout the film became apparent as the careful pattern of images and references they always were - building subliminally towards an inexorable conclusion.
The film is set in timeless Venice. The only thing dated in the entire movie is Donald Sutherland's bouffant hairstyle. See it, scream, then see it again.
The two-channel sound here is appalling. I would rather have this sound with this movie than no movie at all - but we are given harsh, thin and often distorted sound, with a particularly ugly upper register. Even transfers of some early 1930s movies have a better quality soundtrack than this. It does its best to destroy dialogue and makes a mockery of the great score composed by Pino Donnagio.
It is a shame that the overall quality of this movie is marred by the appalling soundtrack. We could forgive the two-channel sound, and the slightly washed-out colours, but the sound needs remedying. However, I'd recommend rental as it is, for despite this flaw this is a film which must be seen.
