don't look now

don't look now - directed by the great nicholas roeg, 1973 - is one of those movies i call pre-multichannel, because of its fracturing, its nonlinearity, and most especially its use of mirrors, reflections, broken glass and water that create such a perfect in-the-world-of-the-movie multi-image universe.
it's a quite brilliant film, seemingly forgotten for no good reason at all. and its use of sound is absolutely magnificent. and of course one of the great, great films ever set in Venice.

it is that rare thing, horror poetry -- which hitchcock is too, underneath it all, though less obviously. Don't Look Now's ending is completely terrifying without making any logical sense at all: a purely visual horror, at its penultimate scenes, and purely visual suspense all along. just brilliant.

and it contains, of course, one of the truly great, erotic and utterly believeable love scenes between a married couple -- or any couple - ever put on film: tenderness and flicking tongues and quivering hands, impossibly and perfectly intertwined with the before and after of lovemaking as adroitly as the couple themselves twine together on their rumpled hotel sheets.

just a remarkable film. i can't think what made me suddenly need to see it, after all these years -- oh yes, it was happening acrss the BFI guide to it, a slim little volume as they all are, and much as the writer - Mark Sanderson - also loves the film, he can scarcely do justice to this aspect of it, its multiness, since he does not, of course (no one does) have the lens of looking for multiplicity in visual narrative that this film so wildly, even brazenly, utilizes. A forgotten masterpiece.

Roeg, of course, would go on to do the great literally multichannel wall of TVS in 'The Man Who Fell To Earth" - but more on that later.