One of the most famous love scenes in the history of motion pictures was suggested by just three sentences in the story that inspired it. In Nicolas Roeg\u2019s Don\u2019t Look Now<\/em> \u2013 a film made half a century ago that hasn\u2019t lost an ounce of its power \u2013 John and Laura Baxter are a couple staying in Venice while he\u2019s restoring one of its many neglected churches. He\u2019s preoccupied with his work; she\u2019s haunted by the recent death of their young daughter Christine. A chance encounter with two sisters, one of whom is psychic, gives Laura the peace of mind she\u2019s been seeking for months, and before heading out for dinner that night the couple makes love, tentatively at first, then going all in, releasing the pent-up passion they continue to feel for each other, but have been unable to express due to their loss.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What makes the scene so iconic is the way Roeg and editor Graeme Clifford juxtapose John and Laura\u2019s lovemaking with the two of them dressing afterwards, complemented by Pino Donaggio\u2019s delicate score (the composer\u2019s first). In comparison, the passage from Daphne du Maurier\u2019s 1971 short story is almost perfunctory. It is also, like the rest of \u201cDon\u2019t Look Now,\u201d told entirely from John\u2019s point of view. In the process of adapting it, screenwriters Chris Bryant and Allan Scott expanded the scope, keeping John as the main protagonist, but giving equal weight to Laura as she follows up on her first meeting with the sisters so the one with second sight (who also happens to be blind) can attempt to contact Christine \u2013 a scene John is emphatically not present for. Their most important addition, however, is the opening sequence at the Baxter family\u2019s country home, where the viewer witnesses the couple\u2019s last few happy moments before tragedy strikes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another key change is that John and Laura are not merely tourists on holiday; also, the time frame is moved from the height of tourist season to the brink of winter. This lends the city more of a chilly, empty feeling, making it much less welcoming and inviting to strangers. (The \u201cVenice in Peril\u201d sign at John\u2019s job site sounds a similarly grave note of warning.) Giving John an occupation (and a reason to stay after he\u2019s told to leave) also gives him a boss, in his case a perpetually preoccupied bishop who allows Bryant and Scott to address religious themes and contrast his belief system with John\u2019s rejection of all things spiritual.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the end, this blinkered attitude is what leads directly to John\u2019s \u201cbloody silly\u201d demise (as he calls it with his dying thought at the close of du Maurier\u2019s story). From the very start, when he spots someone in a red coat in one of his slides, to his final pursuit of the similarly clad figure he\u2019s seen darting around the canals at night, John has been warned many times over how dangerous it is for him to stay in Venice. The chasm between what we see and what we understand can\u2019t always be bridged, however.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When it was released in 1973, Don\u2019t Look Now<\/em> joined a small handful of Venice-set films that exploited its less tourism-friendly facets. Curtis Harrington\u2019s 1953 short The Assignation<\/em> followed a masked man in a black cloak through its canals, which were used by the robed villain in 1965\u2019s The Embalmer<\/em> to commit his murders undetected. Then came Luchino Visconti\u2019s 1971 film Death in Venice<\/em>, based on a Thomas Mann novel from 1912. Now Kenneth Branagh has set his third Hercule Poirot film \u2013 an adaptation of Agatha Christie\u2019s 1969 novel Hallowe\u2019en Party<\/em>, which takes place entirely in England \u2013 there. It\u2019s doubtful, however, that A Haunting in Venice<\/em> will match the one at the center of Don\u2019t Look Now<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cDon\u2019t Look Now\u201d is streaming on <\/em>Kanopy<\/em><\/a> and is available for <\/em>rent or purchase<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/dont-look-now-1024x576.jpg\")
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John is viewing slides of the church he\u2019s preparing to restore while Laura looks up the answer to a question for Christine, who is playing outside in her bright red plastic mac while her older brother Johnny rides around the grounds on his bicycle. When Johnny runs over a pane of glass, his fall prompts the first jolt of his father\u2019s latent psychic abilities, but it\u2019s really triggered by Christine\u2019s subsequent drowning, which John has a premonition about but arrives too late to prevent. (Donald Sutherland\u2019s wail as he holds her limp body in his arms is one of the rawest expressions of anguish ever caught on film, matched by Julie Christie\u2019s startled cry when she catches sight of them.) In all, a much more dramatic choice than the girl\u2019s death from meningitis in du Maurier\u2019s story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n