You know, usually when we crack open the file
on a horror classic for a deep dive, we're bracing
ourselves for the usual suspects. Right, the
jump scares, the teenagers making terrible decisions.
Like running up the stairs instead of out the
front door, exactly. Or, you know, maybe a guy
in a hockey mask. Yeah, the standard tropes.
But the film we are looking at today, it, um...
It doesn't really fit in those boxes at all.
In fact, calling it a horror movie almost feels
like a disservice, even though it is absolutely
terrifying. I agree completely. I mean, if you
go into Nicholas Regg's 1973 film Don't Look
Now expecting a standard creature feature or
a slasher, you're going to be confused. Very
confused. And honestly. Probably quite depressed.
But if you look at the comprehensive overview
we have of the film's production, the plot, and
the critical analysis, you realize it's actually
a master class in film editing. It really is.
It's a cinematic puzzle box. A puzzle box that
somehow leaves every single viewer absolutely
shaken. We are talking about the masterpiece
starring Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie.
Which is now widely considered a masterpiece
of British cinema, yeah. Right. It consistently
tops those industry polls, yet it's incredibly
divisive. So what's our mission today? Well,
our mission is to figure out how Roeg did it,
how did he use innovative editing, recurring
visual motifs, and one of the most controversial
sex scenes in history to build what they marketed
at the time as a psychic thriller. That term,
psychic thriller. is actually the perfect key
to unlocking this, isn't it? It really is. Because
the scary part isn't a monster under the bed,
at least not until the very end. The scary part
is inside the protagonist's head. It's a profound
exploration of grief. Exactly. It's about how
the human mind tries and ultimately fails to
process trauma. It uses the language of film
to trick the audience just as the protagonist
is being tricked. And to understand that, we
have to start right at the beginning, at the
source material. It's based on a Daphne du Maurier
short story, right? Yes, but Rogue took that
text and turned it into something purely visual.
So let's set the scene for anyone listening who
hasn't seen it or maybe hasn't seen it in 20
years. We start in an English country house.
Right. It's a Sunday afternoon. It's cozy. There's
a fire crackling. Donald Sutherland, playing
John Baxter, is looking at slides of an ancient
church he's commissioned to restore in Venice.
San Nicolò dei Mendicotti. Right. And Julie Christie,
playing his wife Laura, is reading nearby. It
feels totally safe. It feels mundane, which is
the trick. But outside, their children are playing
near a pond. And specifically, their daughter,
Christine, is wearing a bright red coat. And
while John is inside looking at these slides,
something happens. He knocks over a glass of
water. Right, a recurring motif we'll get into
later. A blot of red ink spreads on the slide
he's looking at. And he has this sudden hunch.
It's like a physical reaction. Here's the inciting
incident. He rushes out the door, running toward
the bond, but he's too late. The girl has drowned.
He pulls her out of the water, the small red
bundle, and just screams in absolute agony. It
is gut -wrenching. And this is where we get the
first piece of cinematic genius that critics
always point to, the transition. Right, you have
Laura, the mother, seeing her dead child, and
she opens her mouth to scream. But we don't hear
the scream. We get the oral match cut. Exactly.
Just as the visual of her screaming registers,
the sound cuts instantly and violently to the
high -pitched screech of a mechanical drill.
And visually, we smash cut from the Green Pond
in England to a gray, dusty church in Venice.
It's completely jarring. It physically hurts
to listen to. It makes you want to cover your
ears. That's the point. Roeg wants to bypass
your logic and hit your nervous system. He actually
got the inspiration for that technique from Alfred
Hitchcock. Oh, really? Yeah, from The 39 Steps,
where a woman's... scream transitions into a
steam train whistle, but here it serves a deeper
narrative function. It links the trauma of the
drowning directly to their new life in Venice.
Exactly. The pain hasn't been left behind. They're
just trying to escape their grief. So, they are
in Venice. John is working on the church. But
this isn't the romantic postcard version of Venice,
is it? Not at all. It's filmed in winter. It's
gray, damp, decaying. The geography of the city
is labyrinthine, which perfectly mirrors John's
mental confusion. And in this maze, Laura has
an encounter that changes the entire trajectory
of their lives. Right, she meets two elderly
sisters, Heather and Wendy. They meet at a restaurant,
and it seems harmless enough, but one of them,
Heather, is blind. And she claims to be psychic.
And she tells Laura the one thing a grieving
mother is desperate to hear. She says she can
see Christine. That she's happy. Yeah. And look
at the physiological reaction Laura has to this
news. She faints. Just total sensory overload.
But when she wakes up later, she finds comfort
in it. She's transformed. She stops taking her
pills. She's happy because she genuinely believes
her daughter is still with them. But John. John
is an architect. He deals in structural integrity,
logic, rational thought. He thinks it's absolute
nonsense. And that creates the central tension
of the movie. Laura heals through belief while
John dismisses the supernatural. Which ultimately
dooms him. Exactly. Because the tragic irony
here is that John is actually the one with the
psychic gift. He's the one having the premonitions.
Precisely. But he suppresses them. And let's
dig into how Roeg shows us that. Visually, the
sources emphasize the associative use of the
color red. Right. Red is the dominant motif.
It links the dead daughter to this elusive figure
John keeps seeing running around Venice. He keeps
catching glimpses of a small figure in a red
coat darting through the alleys. And his brain
immediately associates that red coat with Christine.
What's fascinating is that in the original Daphne
du Maurier novella, Laura was the one wearing
red. Oh, really? I didn't know that. Yeah, Roeg
intentionally changed it so the color signifies
the daughter and, by extension, death. And then
there's the water. I mean, the whole movie feels
damp. Water is in constant association with death.
Christine drowned in a pond, Venice is full of
canals, and there's a subplot about victims of
a serial killer being dragged from the water.
It's everywhere. I also noticed the glass. It
feels like breaking glass is a constant omen
of... Bad things. Definitely. Think about the
sequence. John knocks over a glass before Christine
drowns. Laura knocks over glassware at the restaurant
when she faints. And later, a plank shatters
glass when John nearly falls to his death in
the church. Right, it's like the movie trains
you to expect tragedy when you hear breaking
glass. But the thing that really messes with
your head is the editing. The fractured editing,
yeah. It feels like time is just completely fluid.
That's Roeg's signature style. You see it in
his other films too, like Performance and Walkabout.
He operates on the idea that the past, present,
and future exist simultaneously. So when John
sees things, he's not having flashbacks. No,
he is having flash -forwards. He's having premonitions.
The most famous example of this is the funeral
barge scene. Let's unpack that because it's so
crucial. Okay, so John is on a water bus and
he looks out. and sees his wife, Laura, standing
on a passing funeral barge. She's dressed in
black, and she's with those two sisters. Right,
but at this point in the plot, John thinks Laura
is in England. Exactly. He thinks it's the present.
He thinks she lied about leaving Venice. He misinterprets
the sign completely. He thinks he's a rational
man, so he thinks he's seeing a conspiracy. But
it's actually a vision of the future. It's a
vision of his own funeral. That is just wild.
The plot literally drives on his mistaken identity
and his misinterpretation of every sign. Now,
we can't talk about Don't Look Now without discussing
the infamous sex scene. Oh, absolutely. It's
arguably one of the most famous scenes in British
cinema. And looking at the production history,
it was completely unscripted. Rogue added it
at the last minute. Why did he do that? He felt
there were too many scenes of the couple just
arguing. He wanted to show that despite the grief
separating them, there was still a deep intimacy
there. But it's the editing technique that makes
it so memorable. Yes, it intercuts the couple
having sex with them getting dressed to go out
to dinner afterwards. It shows intimacy right
alongside routine. But it also served a very
practical purpose regarding censorship. Right,
the U .S. censors. The U .S. censors literally
told them, we cannot see humping. Unbelievable.
So Roeg used that fragmented editing to get around
it. By constantly cutting away to them getting
dressed, you never technically see the prohibited
continuous motion. He outsmarted the censors
with art. But what about the rumors, the urban
legend that Sutherland and Christie had unsimulated
sex on camera? That rumor has persisted for decades.
Former Paramount executive Peter Bart actually
claimed he was on set and saw it happen. And
didn't Warren Beatty get involved? Yeah, Beatty
was Christie's boyfriend at the time, and he
reportedly flew to London to demand the scene
be cut. So what's the truth? Donald Sutherland
issued a firm statement calling the claims completely
untrue. They maintain it was just excellent acting.
Well, it certainly looks real. Just like the
stunts. I was reading about that church scene
where John dangles from the scaffolding. That
was incredibly dangerous. Sutherland did the
stunt himself. Wait, really? No stunt double?
No, no double. And years later, the stunt coordinator,
Vic Armstrong, told him that the Kirby wire they
used wasn't actually designed for that kind of
stress. You're kidding. If the rope had slipped,
the wire could have snapped. That adds a whole
new layer of terror to that scene. Speaking of
adding terror, we have to mention the score by
Pino D 'Onozio. Oh, yes. He was a popular singer.
Right. He wrote, you don't have to say you love
me. Exactly. A casting director actually discovered
him on a Vaporetto in Venice. And what's fascinating
is that D 'Onozio couldn't play the piano. But
Rogold loved that. He felt the unsure playing
sounded like a little girl learning to play the
piano. Which perfectly fits the theme of the
dead daughter. It's so haunting. All right, we
are heading into spoiler territory here. We need
to talk about the climax and the twist. It's
essential. So John is staying in Venice. He thinks
Laura is in England. He sees the red -coated
figure again and decides to pursue it. Because
he thinks it's a lost child. He corners the figure
in a deserted palazzo. The figure turns around
and... It's not a child. It is a hideous female
dwarf. The serial killer we've been hearing about
the whole time. She pulls out a meat cleaver
and slashes his throat. It's so shocking. And
as John dies, we get that incredible montage.
His life flashes before his eyes. But it's actually
the realization that all his earlier visions
were of this exact moment. He foresaw his own
death and his own funeral, but he just didn't
understand. Exactly. So how did audiences at
the time react to this? I imagine it was polarizing.
Very mixed. The New Yorker called it distasteful.
The New York Times completely missed the mark
and called it a travelogue with no suspense.
A travelogue. That's absurd. But British critics
immediately hailed Rogue as a genius. And its
modern status is undeniable. Top 10 in the BFI
industry poll. And its influence is everywhere.
Casino Royale has Bond chasing a woman in red
in Venice. In Bruges, references it explicitly.
Ari Aster cites it as a key influence for Hereditary.
And ironically, Kiefer Sutherland. Donald's son,
stars in Flatliners where he's terrorized by
a child in a red coat. Not to mention the music
industry. Big Audio Dynamite references the film
in their song EMC2. So bringing it all together
for you listening. Why does this movie stick
with us? What is the real takeaway here? It suggests
that the world is full of signs we are just too
rational to see. It's a horror movie, but the
monster isn't the killer. The monster is grief.
It's the inability to let go. And the film operates
as a self -fulfilling prophecy. If John had just
believed the psychic warning to leave Venice,
he would have lived. His skepticism was the very
thing that killed him. Absolutely. But, you know,
thinking about that rationality, it leaves you
with a provocative question to explore on your
own. What if John's skepticism wasn't just a
flaw, but a psychological defense mechanism we
all use? What do you mean? Well, we pride ourselves
on being logical, but maybe our heavy reliance
on rationality is just a way to avoid processing
our own deep -seated traumas. We look away from
the truth because looking directly at it, looking
right at the grief, is what truly destroys us.
That's a powerful way to look at it. It really
makes you question your own blind spots. Well,
that's all for today's deep dive. Thanks for
exploring the canals with us, and we'll catch
you next time.