Don't Look Now and Other Stories (Penguin Modern Classics)

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But later in the story, Christine, according to the blind sister, is worried about her father and the danger that awaits him if he stays in Venice.

His hopes for an unaffected life are dashed, though, when Laura learns that the blind sister is able to “see” a happy Christine seated next to Laura and John as they eat lunch. Glass is frequently used as an omen that something bad is about to occur: just before Christine drowns, John knocks a glass of water over, and Johnny breaks a pane of glass; as Laura faints in the restaurant she knocks glassware off the table, and when John almost falls to his death in the church, a plank of wood shatters a pane of glass; finally, shortly before confronting the mysterious red clad figure, John asks the sisters for a glass of water, an item with a symbolic connection to Christine's death.John hopes that the holiday “could yet turn into the cure she needed, blotting out, if only temporarily, the numb despair that had seized her since the child died. After learning of the murderer from the English tourists at the police station, John revises his previous description of the sisters as “freaks” to “diabolical” criminals who “might even be the murderers for whom the police sought”—but he immediately recognizes the dent in his logical armor by thinking, “This is the way people go off their heads. Roeg frequently drew upon the world of pop music for his work, casting Mick Jagger in Performance, David Bowie in The Man Who Fell to Earth and Art Garfunkel in Bad Timing, and in turn his films have served as inspiration for musicians. At a narrative level the plot of Don't Look Now can be regarded as a self-fulfilling prophecy: it is John's premonitions of his death that set in motion the events leading up to his death. Du Maurier’s world does not ask much introspection of readers, only that they come along for the ride.

Similarly, Ryan Murphy considers his television series American Horror Story to be a throwback to '60s and '70s psychological horror, citing Don't Look Now, Rosemary's Baby and The Shining as particular examples. While many changes were due to the logistics of filming in Venice, some were for creative reasons, the most prominent being the inclusion of the love scene.

Does it appear more often in some parts of the world, and are some people more susceptible to it than others?

And when Laura tells him that the blind sister believes him to be psychic, he answers, “Fine, my psychic intuition tells me to get out of this restaurant now,” wanting to get as far away from the sisters as possible. As the story grows more and more ominous, the “Laura side” of John’s mind, like the murderous dwarf, grows more powerful and dangerous.She and John seem to be comfortably middle-class because they have traveled overseas a number of times, own a car, and can afford to send their son to a boarding school. It also topped a similar list organised by Time Out London in 2011, in which 150 film industry professionals were polled. In John’s mind, Laura is not the master of her own mind or actions—someone must be controlling her as if she were a puppet.

Canby considered the "sincerity of the actors" to be one of the better aspects of the film, [62] while Kael found Christie especially suited to the part, observing she has the "anxious face of a modern tragic muse". Concerned about his wife's mental state and with reports of a serial killer at large in Venice, John reports Laura's seeming disappearance to the police. It has led to some critics re-evaluating their original opinions of it: Roger Ebert, nearly thirty years after his original review, stated that he had come to an "accommodation" with his reservations about what he termed the "admitted weakness of the denouement". Don’t Look Now,” opens with John, a British tourist in a small town outside of Venice, noticing two elderly twin sisters sitting at a nearby table. For the short story by Daphne du Maurier from which it is adapted and the collection it appears in, see Not After Midnight, and Other Stories.

Filming began in England in December 1972, breaking off for Christmas, and resuming in January 1973 for seven more weeks in Italy.