Anatomy of a Scene: The dizzying finale of Nicolas Roeg’s ‘Don’t Look Now’
Nicolas Roeg’s 1973 film Don’t Look Now isn’t an easily digestible piece of cinema. From the very beginning, there is an emphasis on striking imagery that produces a strong reaction in the viewer, like eerie reflections in water foreshadowing disaster, flames, and blood spilling over an image of a figure in a church wearing a red-hooded coat – just like the one worn by the little girl playing outside. This little girl, the daughter of Donald Sutherland’s John and Julie Christie’s Laura, subsequently drowns, which sends John to her rescue through a seemingly psychic impulse.
He is too late, and his child dies in his arms. Thus, John and Laura relocate to Venice, where John begins working on the restoration of a church. Yet, with a serial killer on the loose, a pair of sisters (one psychic) frequently appearing and warning the couple, and John’s recurring sightings of a red-coated figure, an atmosphere of unease descends over the narrative. Roeg uses disjointed imagery to prolong a feeling of tension and uncertainty, helping us to identify with the grieving John, who becomes even more lost and paranoid as the movie goes on.
Grief can truly change a person’s mental state indefinitely, and in the case of Sutherland’s character, he finds himself fixated on the image of the red-coated figure whom he only sees from behind. He is haunted by the memory of his daughter, who he was so close to saving, and, evidently, his attempt to run away from his pain by moving to Venice has only amplified his mental state. You can’t run away from your issues when they’re as severe as grieving your own daughter.
The movie was inspired by Daphne du Maurier’s eponymous short story, so of course, there’s a shocking twist. At the end of the film, John goes on a mad, determined chase to discover the identity of his red-cloaked tormentor, a mysterious figure who is always running away from him with their face concealed. Once he gets to the church, the cloaked figure stands with their back to him while the camera flicks between them and John. With a lack of music, the scene relies on the tension between the two – this moment of pure uncertainty and fear – to maintain a sense of palpable dread.
The film then cuts to the blood-soaked image of the red-cloaked figure sitting in a church pew that John studied at the start of the narrative. Suddenly, we’re back to John, whose smile drops as he realises that he is in serious danger. When the figure turns around, they reveal themselves to be a small old woman with an uneasy smile, shaking their head as though John had failed his test. He chose to ignore warnings he’d been psychically given throughout the trip, and he failed to realise and utilise his psychic abilities for good.
As clips flash before John’s eyes – the psychic woman’s screams, his son running in a field before his daughter’s death – John says a desperate “wait”, but it’s too late; the woman strikes him in the neck with a knife, killing him. Between clips of him dying, we see more flashbacks to earlier moments in the film, like Laura screaming, John rescuing his daughter, his near-death fall at the church, sex with his wife, the discovery of murdered victims in the river, police sketches, and the ocean. At this moment, we realise the amount of premonitions that John has experienced throughout the film – that the funeral boat was actually carrying his own body.
As John convulses on the floor, his life flashing before his eyes, tender piano music plays that makes for an emotive and tragic end. There are disorientating spinning camera shots of the ceiling before visions of his late daughter just before she died return. The red liquid that covered the mysterious photograph at the start of the film closes the movie, completely soaking the image this time. John’s grief comes to an end, but not before he experiences true pain.
The movie has been interpreted in various ways over the years, and it remains a work of art that both puzzles and enthrals viewers through Roeg’s use of flashbacks and its prevailing atmosphere of unsteadiness. John’s guilt over being unable to save his child is the driving force of the film, however, with his grief-stricken conscience preventing him from recognising his own impending death. Perhaps he thought he was able to ‘save’ his daughter by uncovering the figure in the red-cloaked figure or finding a sense of peace. In reality, he accidentally put himself in danger and ultimately lost his life to his erratic, unstable state of mind.
