subscribe to this pageHarrison, Stephanie. Adaptations: From Short Story to Big Screen. New York: Three Rivers Press, 2005.
Harrison’s book neither deals directly with Roeg’s film, nor with du Maurier’s short story that inspired it, but it is essential to any analysis of Don’t Look Now. The process by which a director adapts a short story into film is important, because a short story is just that, short. A director must take something that rarely lasts over fifty pages and turn in into a film that usually lasts over two hours. A director must take the story and ‘run with it;’ in some ways making the story his own. Harrison analyzes 35 short stories and the films they spawned. She separates the films and analyses into sections based mainly on genre (Horror, Western, etc.). Don’t Look Now is a hybrid film, so it would not snugly fit in any of the genres that Harrison chooses, but it does have horror, drama, erotica, and auteur elements to it. Harrison describes four different auteurs (Altman, Hitchcock, Kubrick, and Kazan) and their individual styles of adaptation. She calls Altman, for instance, the “translator” (3), because he attempted to stay as true as possible to the original story. There is little to no literature written about Nicholas Roeg, so it is impossible to know whether or not he would fit in with any of the different auteurs.
One point I found very interesting in Harrison’s analysis is her idea that audiences are less hard on films based on short stories for being true to their source material, because “few short stories are embedded in the public’s consciousness in a way that popular novels are” (xvi). In the case of Don’t Look Now, both the story and the film seem to have been lost from the public consciousness (due, in part, to the success of The Exorcist, which was released the same year as Roeg’s film). Harrison’s book, as I said above, never mentions Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now, but by looking at the process by which other writers have adapted short stories, we can get a sense of the different approaches to it and how Roeg many have gone about doing it. Roeg took a fifty-four page short story about a man’s blindness to his abilities and his fate and refashioned it into an unsettling drama/thriller about a married couple and ...
Color plays an important part in Don’t Look Now, especially the color red. Roeg weaves red throughout the film, from Christine’s plastic raincoat to the Band-Aid on Johnnie’s finger, from the lettering of the “Venice in Peril” sign to the bathrobe of the sisters’ neighbor. In Du Maurier’s story, the color red is not mentioned, so the use of the color is all Roeg’s doing. Beyond merely linking Christine to the murderer, the color red also serves a more symbolic purpose. Roeg ties the color red to the blind sister, Heather, and her psychic visions. The fact that Heather can see Christine’s red jacket is not as mysterious as the fact that she knows what the color red is. If she has been blind since childbirth, which her sister, Wendy, intimates to Laura and John, there is no way she would know what red looked like. Heather is already semi-divine in her ability to see the future, but the presence of color in her prophetic visions ties her into the tradition of Christian visions.
Benz’s text was part of a 1972 conference in Switzerland call the Eranos conference. Famous psychologists, theologists, phenomenologists, and other types of scholars from around the globe met to discuss “The Realms of Colour” (ix). Benz, a well-known protestant theologian and church historian, focused his lecture on color and its relation to Christian visions, such as the prophecies of Revelations (170-171). At times hard to follow, Benz basically explores the connection between the vivid colors and physical descriptions in Christian visions and their relation to God and mortality.
Benz explains that, “As a rule the eyes are closed in the visionary ecstatic state; the physical capacity for sight through the eye is eliminated” (159). Heather’s visions definitely follow in this tradition, because, as a blind person, she does not have the capacity for sight. The “ecstatic state,” which Benz references, is ambiguous, but could be interpreted as the epileptic-like trance that Heather falls into when experiencing her visions...
Von der Lippe places Don’t Look Now into a genre specific to Venice. He compares Don’t Look Now to Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice, Ian McEwan’s Comfort of Strangers, etc. and finds common threads in them which he weaves into a genre. Much in the same way that film critics found similar styles in American crime films and called them “film noir,” Von der Lippe sees these works as Venice-specific works (a term which he does not actually use). In these works, Venice is defined by its labyrinthine design. Venice is also described as a place of escape; as Von der Lippe writes, “All of the travelers have left their northern homes in search of that which has been lost.” Venice is where their search takes them, but, unfortunately, they will never find what they are looking for in Venice. Von der Lippe sets up Venice as the only logical place where Don’t Look Now could be set. Venice is a disorienting place and a place of escape, and Don’t Look Now is about a couple escaping their troubles, searching for answers, and getting lost in their search (although it is only John who gets lost). Von der Lippe shows that it is not just Laura who is impervious to the trappings of Venice, but all of the women in these Venice-specific works. He writes, “Most often it is the women of these tales who are strong - who traverse the labyrinth with relative ease and confidence.” He does not go into detail as to why it is the women who are able to “traverse the labyrinth,” but he describes in depth how the women do this in each work.
Von der Lippe focuses most of his essay on the recurring theme of the labyrinth in the various works. He argues that, “central to the continuing fascination with Venice and the dominant metaphor in this archetypal tale is the “labyrinth.”” As we have seen in other essays concerning Don’t Look Now, the twisting, confusing geography of Venice is central to Roeg’s film...
Daphne du Maurier’s short story deeply influences not only the events in Nicolas Roeg’s film of the same name, but also the themes Roeg explores in the film. The plots of the story and the film are basically the same, although (obviously) there are scenes in the film, which do not come from du Maurier’s story. The opening sequence of the film (which shows Christine’s death), for instance, is an invention of the director, Nicolas Roeg. Du Maurier’s story begins at the café, relegating Christine’s death to the memories of John and Laura. Surprisingly, the film stays very true to the short story and the added scenes do not deviate from the overall direction of the plot. The sisters, in the story, are identical twins (although the ‘seeing’ sister is grayer than the other) and remain mysterious characters throughout. In the film, their paths cross many times with the Baxters (John and Laura) and Laura has many conversations with them. The female characters, Laura and the sisters, have a much larger role in the film than the short story, which focuses almost entirely on John and his struggles.
The main differences between the film and the short story are the addition of a character, Bishop Barbarrigo, and John’s job restoring the church. In du Maurier’s story, John and Laura are on vacation in Venice and John’s job is never discussed. A tertiary result of this is that there is no need for the Bishop character, whose job is to oversee John’s renovation of the church (in the film). The central role of churches and church figures in the film bring a religious element to the film that is absent in the short story. The theme of faith (and lack of faith) is therefore also absent. The film creates a sense of dread using ever-present murders and strange coincidences (such as John’s near death experience on the church scaffolding). The short story explores the themes of prophecy and ‘second sight,’ but there is not the same eerie sense of uneasiness. The fact that the film leaves Johnnie’s illness ambiguous (instead of saying it is appendicitis as the short story does) plays into the theme of the supernatural and the occult...
Wisker analyzes a few of Du Maurier’s short stories, including Don’t Look Now. Instead of solely focusing on the short story, Wisker explores themes and images in the film adaptation as well. The most important aspect of her analysis of Don’t Look Now is her explanation as to why John Baxter follows the murderer (to his demise). No other criticism or analysis of the film or short story, that I have read, offers a reasonable explanation as to John’s actions. Wisker explains that it is John’s “protective paternalism” (28) that causes him to try to help what he thinks is a young girl, because she reminds him of the daughter that he could not help. The film better illuminates this theme by making a visual connection between Christine’s red raincoat and the murderer’s red jacket. Wisker explains that, “John’s own suppressed torment at the loss of his daughter transfers into a desire to see this child safe” (28). John has no illusions that the hooded stranger he is following is the ghost of Christine, but he does think it is a little girl. John’s actions are explained as the actions of a man trying to redeem himself in his own eyes, by saving someone who reminds him of his daughter.
Wisker’s connection between the two sisters and the Fates, figures of Ancient Greek mythology, is another insightful analysis. The Fates were three sisters who controlled the lives of mortals by cutting their ‘life threads.’ Wisker writes, “We can read the twins as the fates with the thread cutting sister missing, appearing at the end in the pixie-hooded murderous dwarf” (28). Roeg expounds this theme in the film. First of all, he makes the dwarf a woman, whereas the gender of the dwarf is never explicitly mentioned in the short story. Secondly, the woman he gets to play the dwarf resembles the two sisters; she is stocky like Wendy and has a vulture-like visage like Heather. She could very well be their long-lost sister (who happens to be a dwarf). Finally, the way in which she kills John...
Hutchinson, Tom. Horror & Fantasy in the Movies. New York: Crescent Books, 1974: 13-36.
Hutchinson goes beyond merely mapping out the history of horror cinema, and dedicates the first chapter of his book to revealing the deeper meanings beyond certain horror films. Behind the blood and monsters, Hutchinson sees social commentary and much more, which the average viewer is completely unaware of. He events of The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) and concludes that its underlying message is, “that we ought to co-operate or else” (23). Hutchinson writes that Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), another 1950s sci-fi film, “carries a warning about loss of identity, an all-too-grim idea in a world where individuality is ironed out into uniform characteristics of thought and yes-saying” (23).
Hutchinson begins his analysis with the birth of cinema and the fantasy shorts of George Meliès. He moves into German Expressionist films, such as Robert Weine’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919) and Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1926) (19-21). He also refers to Hitchcock’s The Birds (1963) and Jacques Tourneur’s Cat People (1942) as further examples of horror films with social messages (23). Hutchinson argues though, that one cannot simply voice these messages, or warnings, to the audience directly. As he says, they must be “wrapped up in trappings of tinsel before they will be accepted” (28).
Don’t Look Now (1972) is one of those films whose meaning is “wrapped in trappings of tinsel” (28). Hutchinson explains that, “[Donald] Sutherland here carries the seeds of his own destruction within himself, but will never know it” (29). Reflexively, we are placed in the same position as Sutherland, because we are also unable to interpret the signs to recognize the future (e.g. our doom). Hutchinson’s argument is that, “[Sutherland] is time-trapped in the way that we all are, unable to move beyond his three-dimensional context” (29). Hutchinson ties into a theme explored in other sources I have encountered, that of time and space (in Don’t Look Now). He, unfortunately, does not give the theme an adequate explication (quickly moving to the next film), but he does place the film in relation to other horror films that do more than just scare. One is easier able to understand Don’t Look Now, when placed in the context of other horror films...
Dempsey begins his review by comparing Roeg’s film to the source material, Daphne du Maurier’s short story. He blames the film’s “creaky plot” on Du Maurier, who (he claims), “specializes in romantic sludge” (39). Dempsey understands that the film’s weak plot is not the fault of Roeg, so he is not too harsh in his criticism of Roeg’s handling of the plot. He states that, “too often the gears grind when Roeg tries to shift from this old-hat storyline to the subtext of fear and uncertainty that he has built into it” (39). Dempsey actually compliments Roeg for creating a fascinating film from a plot, which he is admittedly not fond of. The saving grace of the film, according to Dempsey, is Roeg, more explicitly, his style. Dempsey writes that, “Roeg’s style pitches us headlong into [John and Laura’s] disorientation” (40). Dempsey allocates most of his review to explaining of Roeg’s style, which Roeg achieves through editing. Dempsey goes so far as to compare Roeg to the famous Russian montage filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein, because Roeg too “lean[s] heavily on editing for his effects” (40). The effect that Roeg produces with montage is the same effect described by James Palmer in his essay, “Seeing, Believing, and “Knowing” in Narrative Film: Don’t Look Now Revisited.” Using montage, Roeg “undercut[s] our total allegiance to reason” (41); in effect, making us mistrust out vision the same way that John mistrusts his. Roeg’s use of montage has the opposite effect of Eisenstein’s, undermining the action, instead of reinforcing it. Dempsey describes, “Roeg’s montage does not say that two shots are connected; it says that they might be” (41). The idea of not knowing, of being forced to puzzle it out, is the essence of Don’t Look Now and is the same theme discussed in Palmer’s essay.
Dempsey’s review, unlike any other analyses of Don’t Look Now that I discovered, features an in-depth analysis of the love-making scene, which is probably the most well-known scene in Don’t Look Now. He argues that, the intercutting of sex shots with shots of the couple getting dressed, “makes the sense doubly erotic-yet also melancholy” (41). We get the sense, from the intercutting, that, “no matter how intense their love or how satisfying their sex may be, John and Laura still cannot save themselves” (41)...
Palmer argues that Roeg’s film makes us question how we ‘read’ (i.e. understand) films in the same way that John questions his understanding of reality. Palmer writes that, “in Roeg’s film one may wonder if anything is what it seems” (14). We are shown events that may or may not occur and images that could not possibly exist in real life, which have the effect of undermining our sense of reality. Palmer puts forth that, “Don’t Look Now suggests that the physical world can mislead and, by extension, that the encoding of ways of seeing and interpreting a world presented in narrative film can also be called into question” (16). He interprets the dust that blows into Wendy’s eye (and obstructs her vision) as a metaphor for the calling into question of one’s method of “seeing and interpreting.” The film is self-reflexive, because it is about questioning one’s vision; one’s modus of interpretation, and the viewer is forced to question these things as s/he watches the film. The sequence where we finally see Heather’s blind eyes highlights this self-reflexive quality to the film, because we are only able to understand after we have seen after a later scene in the film. The proximity of the shot of Heather’s eyes and the shot of John and Laura leaving their home in the rain confuses the viewer as to who is seeing what, John or Laura (19). Only after we learn that John is psychic are we able to go back to this scene and reinterpret it, understanding that perhaps it is John who sees Heather’s blindness with his ‘second sight.’ Palmer also analyzes the opening credit sequence to show the self-reflexive quality of the film, that only by seeing the only thing are we able to go back and understand it...
Wilson, Kristi. “Time, Space, and Vision: Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now.” Screen 40(3) (1999): 277-94.
Wilson is a feminist film critic (she lets the reader know from the start), so her analysis of Don’t Look Now comes from a completely different perspective than other available analyses. She argues that the film represents “failed masculinity” (294), embodied by John Baxter and his failure to prevent his death. John’s failure comes from his inability to interpret space. The first hard evidence of this that Wilson brings up is the book John has written, Fragile Geometry (Laura is reading it in the opening sequence). Wilson argues that the title of the book reflects John’s own failure at understand the “fragile geometry” of time and space. Roeg’s montage, with its questionable linearity, visually represents this “fragile geometry.” Roeg blurs the lines between the real and the unreal and the past, present, and future. Wilson refers to the effect of Roeg’s montage as “slippage,” because Roeg moves between real and unreal, for example, so fluidly, that the audience rarely picks up on it. She articulates the effect of this “slippage” on the audience, when she explains:
All that seems solid where the film is concerned, whether we are referring to Roeg’s visually unconventional presentation of the narrative, or his character’s sense of architectural/geographical control, proves to be illusory. (294)
She argues that the sequence, in which blood appears on John’s slide, “provides a literal example of physical slippage between background and foreground” (290). Wilson sees John as a synecdoche for all men, in his inability to recognize “slippage” (i.e. recognize omens and portents), because all of the women in the film are attuned to the “slippage” and recognize when the unreal world (e.g. the spirit world) enters the real world. I disagree with this assumption, because I don’t see all the women as recognizing the “slippage.” Heather does, because she has the gift of ‘second sight;’ the other women merely believe that she can see the “slippage”...
Zorzi gives a vivid account of the rise of the Venetian Empire and its eleven-hundred year ‘Golden Age,’ using historical quotations, pictures, diagrams, etc. He traces the history of Venice, from its beginnings as a refuge for Romans, escaping from the barbarians that destroyed their Empire, to its own imperial dominance and mastery of overseas trade. Venice has an almost mythic quality to it, which it why Daphne du Maurier chose to set her short story, Don’t Look Now, in Venice. Zorzi writes of Venice’s beginnings, “Tradition and legend […] surrounds the founding of Venice in a mythology which is almost reminiscent of the Biblical account of the origins of the world” (10). The mysterious quality of the city makes it a perfect setting for Don’t Look Now, which toys with reality and makes us question our historical vision. Zorzi explains that Venice was seen as an “overbearing entity, which aroused hatred suspicion, worry and fear” (7). He describes Venice as an ominous figure, menacing those around it. Roeg captures this negative character of Venice in the film, making the city complicit in the death of John Baxter.
Zorzi explains that the Venetians were “descendants of the Romans that had opted for the freedom of the seas and lagoons rather than bend to the will of barbarian monarchs” (68). Venice is described as a safe-haven, a place for people to escape to (from the crumbling Roman Empire). Don’t Look Now captures this aspect of Venice, because John and Laura are refugees in a way. They are attempting to escape from their pain and sorrow over the death of their daughter by ‘escaping’ to Venice.
Understanding the history of Venice also illuminates certain moments of dialogue in the film. For example, when John says, “The deeper I go, the more Byzantine it gets,” he is referring both to the difficulties that arise as his renovation of the church progresses and the fact that Venice was built by Byzantines (i.e. citizens of the Roman Empire). The devotion of the police officers is also better understood, because, “An extremely strong sense of justice permeates Venetian civilization right from its beginnings” (137)...