Venice is the perfect spot for a thriller, especially a gothic one like this. It’s already all alleys and water and religious iconography. Creepy and in this film not even a little beautiful. Just all sinister decay. The unease was intense and I am generally afraid of discovering too late that I’ve made a fatal error. Brutal.

united kingdom, italy, 1973, english

NICOLAS ROEG


Don’t Look Now

I’ve never been to Venice. To be quite honest I’ve never really even been that excited to go. Not that I proactively haven’t wanted to, but it has never been high on my list of potential travel destinations. Italy I am very much wanting to visit, but Venice hasn’t piqued my interest nearly as much as Rome, or Milan. I think it’s mainly because I associate it with just being for tourists.

It’s funny because I really like boats and being on the water. With that in mind I bet I’d really like it there. I would not want to visit this Venice though, no matter what. Forgetting a serial killer wandering around, just the city itself in this film is a dark and foreboding character. You feel the presence of the place more than almost any film I can remember watching. Venice doesn’t seem to want the characters to be there and neither do we, eventually.

This is a horror film as much as a thriller. I vaguely knew that going in, but as is my usual style I was pretty unaware of what I was getting myself into. That’s not a bad thing, but man I really wasn’t prepared for the amount of dread I was going to be feeling. If I had been, I might have chosen to watch this during the daytime. Certainly going to bed right after was... challenging.

It’s a serious fear of mine I suppose. That of making that one fatal error, but not finding out you’ve made it until it’s absolutely impossible to change course. I am such a normally logical person. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I have my irrational moments, I am not Spock. But overall I’m a pretty measured and thoughtful person. Therefore the idea of making a mistake and being fatally unable to change it? Terrifying.

I cannot get the final scene out of my head. I suppose that means this was a success, although I must confess I haven’t quite stumbled into a larger message yet. Maybe something about grief, certainly something about death. Mostly I’m just amazed at how ugly they made Venice look, although maybe it was just the seventies, I don’t know.