Don't Look Now

Nicolas Roeg's Don't Look Now opened in 1973 and won the BAFTA for Best Cinematography (Anthony B. Richmond). The film entered the Sight & Sound poll's upper tier in 2022 and is widely placed among the greatest British horror films ever made. Adapted from Daphne du Maurier's 1971 short story of the same name, with a screenplay by Allan Scott and Chris Bryant, the film consolidated Roeg's reputation as one of the most distinctive editing-driven British directors of his generation.

John (Donald Sutherland) and Laura Baxter (Julie Christie) travel to a wintery off-season Venice, where John has been commissioned to restore an ancient church, in the months after the death of their young daughter. There they encounter two elderly Scottish sisters (Hilary Mason and Clelia Matania) — one a blind psychic — who claim to be able to see the daughter. The film follows the Baxters' deepening encounter with the city, the sisters and their own grief.

Roeg, who had begun his career as a cinematographer (Walkabout, Performance), used elliptical cross-cut editing throughout the film in a manner that had not previously been attempted at this scale in British cinema. The opening drowning sequence and the famous Christie-Sutherland love scene have been written about repeatedly as among the most carefully constructed sequences in the medium. Pino Donaggio's score — his first major film commission, after a 1960s Italian pop-singer career — would launch a distinguished horror-cinema score career including most of Brian De Palma's subsequent work.