Don't Look Now (1973) from Tuna and Johnny Web (Uncle Scoopy)

A thumb up from Tuna, a thumb down from Scoop.

Tuna's comments in white:

Don't Look Now (1973) is a Mystery/Thriller/Horror film starring Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland, based on a novel by Daphne Du Maurier.

The two lost a young daughter to drowning, and are now living in Venice, where Sutherland works restoring churches. Christie hasn't yet recovered from her daughter's death. Things change when she meets two sisters, one of whom is blind, but has "second sight", and tells her that her daughter is with her, and is happy. She also says that the daughter warns that Sutherland should leave Italy, because his life is in danger. There is a killer on the loose, as evidenced by bodies turning up in the canal.

Don't Look Now is famous as one of the first films in British cinema where the love scene may have not been entirely simulated. The extras on this DVD include a half-hour documentary in which Nick Roeg and some of the production team are interviewed about this classic movie. They talk at length about that scene -- apparently they hired a hotel room for an afternoon without telling anyone else what they were doing, and the whole thing was filmed in 90 minutes by Roeg and his handheld, the cameraman and sound recordist. You get the distinct impression that they still feel sworn to secrecy over what really happened on that day. Sadly neither Christie nor Sutherland are interviewed.

I dug deeper into the darkness of the sex scene between Sutherland and Christie, and found some interesting content. Several frames clearly show his face buried in her crotch, so the oral sex was not simulated. Other frames provide a  smoking gun as far as actual intercourse, showing his testicles resting on her anus - not proof by itself, but strong evidence of how things are lining up. The image quality is not at all good, and these frames are nearly black, but I think we have a new scene to add to the best real sex scene in a mainstream movie poll next time around.
 

Virtually every movie made from 1967-1974 is awful, even the ones that won awards. That's because the movies of that day didn't succeed based upon merit, but upon ideology. If the film had the right politics, it would become popular. If the director had the right politics, it would be praised by the critics and industry insiders. Don't Look Now wasn't popular - it is apolitical - but it won some awards and was generally recognized as a capable movie. It isn't. The cinematography is brilliant, and the acting is very good from the leads, albeit not so good from the supporting players. The plot is just awful. It is nearly two hours of complete boredom, with scene after scene outlasting its welcome. I held on just because I wanted to see the "mystery" explained.

Some day, the limits of human endurance will be tested by seeing if anyone can stay awake during a Nick Roeg film festival. Roeg, the director of Don't Look Now, was once a great cinematographer, so his directorial efforts are always beautifully composed and photographed.  Unfortunately, there is more to filmmaking than moving pictures. Roeg's films are always tainted by two major flaws:

1. Pacing. The man has no idea how to put together the final edit without creating a snoozefest. The final edits always include several scenes which do nothing to advance the plot and could easily have been cut. The scenes that should be in the films go on way too long, thus sapping the dramatic tension out of every situation. Sometimes, two scenes are intercut for no apparent purpose, instead of just letting them play out logically and separately. You could take the footage in Don't Look Now and create the best one-hour episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Unfortunately, Roeg takes that hour's worth of entertainment and stretches it out over a much longer time. I fell asleep twice during Don't Look Now, and I wasn't tired

2. Logic. There always seem to be complete lapses in his thought process. He introduces developments which either make no sense in context or are just downright silly. See below.

Spoilers:

When the mystery was finally explained, it was absolutely ludicrous. Donald Sutherland thought that he was experiencing second sight when he saw a vision of his dead daughter running around Venice. This was a fairly logical assumption, since:

1. He experienced a legitimate case of second sight in a different instance.
2. An old lady in town claimed to have the gift, and to feel the presence of the girl.
3. The apparition was dressed exactly as his daughter was dressed when she drowned - in a shiny red overcoat.

You know what the explanation really was? There was a serial killer wondering around Venice, skulking in and out of the shadows, and that is whom Sutherland mistook for the ghost of his daughter.

So what's so odd about that? I'll tell you. The serial killer was an evil dwarf who looked exactly like a ten year old girl.

So what's so unlikely about that? Well, I might have bought into it partially, except that the serial killer skulked around Venice in a shiny red overcoat. I know that I'm neither short enough nor evil enough to think like an evil dwarf, but if I were an evil serial-killing dwarf, I'd try to dress a little bit less conspicuously.

So there is your genius highly-acclaimed movie. You watch it for a couple of hours fighting to stay awake because you have to know the explanation, and when you finally see the explanation you laugh out loud, then feel like throwing something at the TV.

Anyway, it turned out that Sutherland was following a mass murderer around Venice, a process that led eventually to his death, as you might expect.

With the slow pacing, the heavy-handed aquatic symbolism, and the evil dwarf, Nick Roeg seems to have had an urge to copy the great Northern European filmmakers, notably Tarkovsky and Bergman. I have since constructed a theory. Roger Ebert once said there can be no good movie with a hot air balloon, and although I know what he's driving at with that observation, one must offer The Wizard of Oz and Around the World in 80 days as rebuttal evidence. On the other hand, there truly can be no good movie with an evil dwarf. As you may know, evil dwarves are a protected minority in Northern Europe, and certain quotas have to be met. The Universities at Heidelberg and St Petersburg lose all their government funding if they do not admit at least 4% evil dwarves to degree programs each year. Swedish and Russian filmmakers must also comply with these quotas. But it isn't good for movies. A comic dwarf, or good dwarves - no problem. Wizard of Oz, Foul Play, The Spy Who Shagged Me. But an evil dwarf? Bad Swedish melodrama and the premise for Wild Wild West.