Film Diary: Don't Look Now (Nicholas Roeg, 1976)

[enitharmon]

I've got a bit of catching up to do. This was the first film I watched after the move, back at the end of May.

They say you shouldn't go back, and perhaps this film is the one to prove me right. I had very fond memories of it, not least because Julie Christie is in it, and Donald Sutherland, and the lovemaking scene is legendary (when I was talking to Julie Christie on the phone once, as you do, I asked her about that and she giggled and said what a lovely man Donald was). But also because I recalled a film full of quiet menace with a shocking dénouement. A little surprising, I always thought, that it came froma short story by Daphne du Maurier (Ian McEwan's The Comfort of Strangers isn't a million miles away, either.)

It was a little disappointing, really. Julie Christie looked gorgeous, of course. Donald Sutherland looked preposterously 1970s, and the whole thing looked dated in a way that much older films don't. Ah well, let's write this one off to experience. And it wasn't that bad...