Venice is sinking. You can see it in the slime on the canal walls and the way the gargoyles seem to be drowning in their own shadows. This isn't the postcard version of Italy. It’s the version Nicolas Roeg wanted you to see in 1973—a crumbling, damp labyrinth where time doesn't behave.
Don't Look Now Roeg is a film that people think they know because of "that" sex scene or "that" ending. But if you're only watching for the jump scares or the gossip, you're missing the point. Honestly, it’s not really a horror movie. It's a study of how grief makes you crazy. It’s about how a husband and wife can be in the same room but living in completely different universes because their daughter drowned in a pond back in England.
The Logic of a Shattered Mind
Most directors tell a story like a straight line. Roeg? He tells it like a broken mirror. He was a cinematographer before he was a director, working on stuff like Fahrenheit 451, and you can tell. He doesn't care about "first this happened, then that happened." He cares about how a sound in the present reminds you of a trauma in the past.
Take the opening. It’s arguably the most famous prologue in British cinema. John Baxter (Donald Sutherland) is looking at slides of a church. His daughter, Christine, is outside in a red mackintosh. She’s playing by the water. Inside, John knocks over a glass of water. The red ink on the slide starts to bleed. It looks like blood.
The editing here by Graeme Clifford is wild. It cuts between the spilled water inside and the pond outside. It’s predictive. It’s psychic. John feels something is wrong before he knows it is. By the time he’s running outside, it’s already too late. He pulls her out, but she’s gone. That image of the red coat against the grey, flat water stays with you. It’s the "key" to the whole movie.
Why the Editing Style is Actually the Plot
People often find the editing in Don't Look Now Roeg confusing. It’s disjunctive. It’s "artsy." But there’s a reason for it. John Baxter has "the sight." He’s a clairvoyant who refuses to believe he’s clairvoyant.
- The Flash-Forwards: We see things before they happen because John is seeing them, even if he doesn't realize it.
- The Famous Sex Scene: This caused a massive scandal. People thought Sutherland and Julie Christie were actually doing it (they weren't). But the genius isn't the nudity; it’s the intercutting. Roeg cuts between them making love and them getting dressed for dinner afterward. It’s mundane mixed with the sacred. It shows that even in their most intimate moments, they are already moving toward the "next" thing. They are trying to repair a marriage that was broken the moment that girl hit the water.
- Aural Matches: A woman’s scream in one scene becomes the screech of a drill in the next. It’s jarring. It’s meant to be.
Venice as a Graveyard
When the Baxters move to Venice for John’s work—restoring the church of San Nicolò dei Mendicoli—the city becomes a character. It’s winter. The tourists are gone. The hotels are draped in dust sheets.
Roeg used real locations, and they are grim. He avoided the glitz of St. Mark’s Square for the most part. Instead, we get the Ristorante Roma (where they meet the psychic sisters) and the narrow, terrifying alleys of the Calle di Mezzo.
The two sisters are key. One is blind and claims she can "see" their dead daughter. Laura (Julie Christie) wants to believe it. She needs it. It gives her a reason to smile again. But John? He hates it. He thinks it’s "muck." He’s a man of logic, an architect. He fixes things with his hands. You can’t fix a ghost.
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"Nothing is what it seems."
John says that line himself. It took fifteen takes to get it right because it’s the thesis of the whole film. John spends the entire movie looking at things—through cameras, through magnifying glasses, across canals—and he gets almost everything wrong.
The Misinterpretation of the "Red Figure"
This is the part everyone talks about. Throughout the film, John sees a small figure in a red coat darting through the Venetian alleys. He assumes it’s his daughter. Or a ghost of his daughter. Or a child in danger.
He’s so blinded by his own grief and his secret "sight" that he ignores every warning. When he sees his wife on a funeral barge with the sisters—even though he knows she’s supposed to be on a plane to England—he thinks he’s seeing a kidnapping or a conspiracy. He doesn't realize he’s seeing a premonition of his own funeral.
The ending at the Palazzo Grimani is one of the biggest "gotchas" in history. But it’s not a cheap trick. When the "child" turns around and it’s actually a middle-aged woman with a knife, it’s the ultimate realization that John’s "sight" was useless because he didn't have the faith to understand it.
The Legacy of Roeg's Masterpiece
In 2024, following Donald Sutherland’s death, the film saw a massive surge in streaming. It’s currently sitting with a 93% on Rotten Tomatoes. Why does a 50-year-old movie still feel so modern?
Because it doesn't treat grief like a Hallmark card. It treats it like a sickness. It’s a film where the "horror" is just the inevitable end of a man who couldn't accept the irrational.
If you're going to watch Don't Look Now Roeg, you need to pay attention to the colors. Red isn't just a coat. It’s a warning. It’s in the church slides, the wine, the blood on the tiles. Roeg uses it like a beacon, leading both the character and the audience toward a destination that was decided in the very first ten minutes of the film.
What to Look for on a Rewatch
If you’ve seen it once, you haven't really seen it. You have to go back.
- Watch the water. It’s everywhere. It’s the thing that kills, and it’s the thing that carries the dead.
- The Bishop. Notice how the Bishop (played by Massimo Serato) reacts to John. There’s a strange, detached cruelty to the religious figures in this movie.
- The glass. Smashing glass is a recurring omen. Every time a window or a lens breaks, someone is about to die or fall.
Don't expect a resolution. Roeg doesn't give you one. He leaves you in that funeral boat with Laura, who is smiling—perhaps because she finally believes her husband and daughter are together, or perhaps because she’s simply lost her mind. Either way, it’s haunting.
To truly understand the impact of Roeg's work, you have to stop looking for the "monster" and start looking at the gaps between the frames. The horror isn't the woman with the knife; it's the fact that John walked toward her willingly because he couldn't let go of a memory.
Next Steps for the Cinephile:
Check out Roeg’s other "time-shattering" works like Performance or The Man Who Fell to Earth. If you want to dive deeper into the Venice of the film, look into the restoration history of San Nicolò dei Mendicoli—much of the scaffolding and "ruin" you see in the film was real, as the city was undergoing a massive "Venice in Peril" campaign at the time.
Explore the original Daphne du Maurier novella. You’ll find that while the movie is famous for the drowning, in the book, the daughter actually dies of meningitis. Roeg changed it to drowning specifically to make the water of Venice feel like a recurring murder weapon. It was a choice that changed film history.