The movie David Cronenberg was “stunned” by
The films of David Cronenberg remain some of the most viscerally terrifying moments of cinema ever recorded. Known for developing the body horror genre, Cronenberg has given the scarier side of film history a sense of dread occurring from within the human corpus from diseases and transformations.
He’s explored the human body in movies such as Shivers, Scanners, Videodrome and The Fly, but he also ensures that he looks at the psychological perspectives of the human experience too, particularly in his later work in the drama and thriller genres.
While David Cronenberg has thrilled and shocked and terrified over the years, he’s also had the same effects occur in him as per the works of his fellow filmmakers. He once drew attention to a 1973 thriller movie by Nicolas Roeg by the name of Don’t Look Now, an adaptation of a 1971 short story by Daphne du Maurier.
“This was a movie that really stunned me,” the director once said. “I was really very impressed by it. Just a very, very strong movie. Very strange. Very much about death, but at first, you’re not aware that that’s really the subject matter. It’s really a love story, but it’s really a love story about love and death.”
Don’t Look Now stars Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie as John and Laura Baxter, a married pair who depart for Venice after the accidental and untimely death of their daughter. John has been given a job to repair a church, where he meets a nun who tells him that his daughter is trying to contact him from the afterlife.
Cronenberg then explained that when asked what his favourite movie is, he finds it hard to pick out just one, given the fact there are so many, but he always thinks of Roeg’s film. “Just recently, someone said, ‘Tell me a movie that is one of your favourite movies,’ which is very hard to do because there are hundreds of movies that I love. But I did say, Don’t Look Now.”
The film icon actually went one further than his “stunned” claim, though and suggested that Roeg’s film is actually the most frightening that he’s ever seen. In an interview with The Guardian, the director admitted that what’s most frightening comes down to the individual person, particularly considering their age.
But for an adult, Cronenberg said, “For me, Don’t Look Now, Nic Roeg’s film with Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland. That really got to me; that was very effective film-making. Its anticipation of death was so palpable. On the other hand, if the person who asked this question saw it, maybe it wouldn’t have any effect. There’s no absolute universal.”
Don’t Look Now is an acclaimed work of Roeg’s, and though it falls mostly into the thriller genre, it has been influential in the development of modern horror, with a unique editing style and the use of flashbacks and flashforwards. The perception of the viewer is put into doubt according to the narrative.
Check out the film’s trailer below.
