It's always fun to watch a good 70ies movie almost 35 years later, because any exquisite cinematography like in this film adds an aesthetic and historical pleasure to watching it, to what people already loved when the film appeared first.
I'm wondering why the film didn't receive more rewards in his time. The "SZ-Cinemathek" - a collectors choice of best films ever chosen by one of the three leading newspapers in Germany - lists "Don't look now" in his Top 50, and I can understand why.
In the first scenes shot in Hertfordshire, England, we think that John Baxter can see his child's death even though he's not near her, but later we understand that his child's death is the beginning of his foreseeing his own death. The tragedy about it is that he doesn't realize he does. Trying to be a rational guy who wants to protect his supposedly unstable wife from the supernatural, we - not him - realize that it is he himself who is closest to the irrational. Though Laura doesn't fully understand his condition she tries to protect him understanding more of it than he does; but she fails, because both of them are so tragically entwined in their fear about the other and about death, and both are so naive in the matter, that she can not keep him him from doing exactly the steps which will lead him to death.
As soon as he is alone in Venice he somehow becomes loose; he starts to loose himself to his second sight while still conceiving himself as the loving and caring husband. His misinterpreting of what he sees leads to the fulfilling of the prophecy about him. In the end he even forgets about meeting his wife who is back in Venice, while he is dragged into a strange pursuit of what might seem to him as a memory or reappearance of his dead daughter. He is not anchored in reality anymore but has not yet reached the other world fully like the blind one of the two sisters has. Being in a transit state in between he becomes an easy victim to the unnatural. Only too late he realizes his fatal error and that he had foreseen this creature before as the forerunner of death, being the most ugly twin of his earlier child.
Like all films which show present and future mixed into each other this film has to give an answer to the question as to how characters fulfill their prophecy even though their seeing what's going to happen influences what they're doing. In other words: wouldn't they be able to see the future, the future wouldn't be what they see. It's an interesting logical problem and dilemma to films who use this motive. "Don't look now" solves it by keeping John Baxter in the dark about his visions so that he finally dies because he doesn't recognize himself, or better: it takes his death to make him see the truth about himself.
These are great motives about the human condition and separate this film clearly from being just a horror film. It has more in common with Kubricks "Eyes wide shut" in this respect, for example.
I'm wondering why the film didn't receive more rewards in his time. The "SZ-Cinemathek" - a collectors choice of best films ever chosen by one of the three leading newspapers in Germany - lists "Don't look now" in his Top 50, and I can understand why.
In the first scenes shot in Hertfordshire, England, we think that John Baxter can see his child's death even though he's not near her, but later we understand that his child's death is the beginning of his foreseeing his own death. The tragedy about it is that he doesn't realize he does. Trying to be a rational guy who wants to protect his supposedly unstable wife from the supernatural, we - not him - realize that it is he himself who is closest to the irrational. Though Laura doesn't fully understand his condition she tries to protect him understanding more of it than he does; but she fails, because both of them are so tragically entwined in their fear about the other and about death, and both are so naive in the matter, that she can not keep him him from doing exactly the steps which will lead him to death.
As soon as he is alone in Venice he somehow becomes loose; he starts to loose himself to his second sight while still conceiving himself as the loving and caring husband. His misinterpreting of what he sees leads to the fulfilling of the prophecy about him. In the end he even forgets about meeting his wife who is back in Venice, while he is dragged into a strange pursuit of what might seem to him as a memory or reappearance of his dead daughter. He is not anchored in reality anymore but has not yet reached the other world fully like the blind one of the two sisters has. Being in a transit state in between he becomes an easy victim to the unnatural. Only too late he realizes his fatal error and that he had foreseen this creature before as the forerunner of death, being the most ugly twin of his earlier child.
Like all films which show present and future mixed into each other this film has to give an answer to the question as to how characters fulfill their prophecy even though their seeing what's going to happen influences what they're doing. In other words: wouldn't they be able to see the future, the future wouldn't be what they see. It's an interesting logical problem and dilemma to films who use this motive. "Don't look now" solves it by keeping John Baxter in the dark about his visions so that he finally dies because he doesn't recognize himself, or better: it takes his death to make him see the truth about himself.
These are great motives about the human condition and separate this film clearly from being just a horror film. It has more in common with Kubricks "Eyes wide shut" in this respect, for example.