Now don't look

The beloved daughter of the British couple, Baxters, John and Laura, drowned in a pond, playing on his shore in a bright red cloak. Stunned by this tragedy, the couple go to Venice, where John is engaged in the restoration of the church of San Nicolo dei Mendicoli . However, the aura in the city of shadows is not quite suitable to forget about the mountain. Corpses are constantly being removed from the canals - apparently, a serial killer is operating in the city.

The Baxters meet two strange sisters ^[3] , one of whom, completely blind, claims to have made contact with the spirit of the deceased girl. According to the medium , the child tried to warn his parents that while they were in Venice, their lives were in danger.

Although John marks the sisters ’prediction as an empty superstition , strange visions begin to haunt him - either he sees a deceased daughter in the waters of the Venetian canal, then he takes out a baby doll from the water, then he sees a running child in a red cloak in the maze of twilight streets.

The final of the film confirms the correctness of those who believe in communication with the spirits of the dead, and those who adhere to the scientific picture of reality. Chasing a ghost in a red cloak, John fell from a knife clamped in his hand. The dwarf in the red cloak turned out to be the same maniac that the Venetian police were looking for.

In the finale, Laura, accompanied by clairvoyant sisters, escorts her husband in a funeral gondola on his last journey. A faint smile plays on her lips: she knows that her husband and daughter are now together. This strange picture appeared to John the day before the murder. ^[4]

• Julie Christie - Laura Baxter
• Donald Sutherland - John Baxter
• Hilary Mason - Heather
• Clelia Matania - Wendy
• Massimo Cerato - Bishop of Barbarigio
• Renato Scarpo - Detective Longy
• Adeline Poerio - the dwarf killer

• Director: Nicholas Rog
• Producer: Peter Katz
• Screenwriter: Alan Scott , Chris Bryant
• Composer: Pinot Donaggio
• Operator: Anthony Raymond
• Montage: Graham Clifford

“Now don’t look” along with “The Exorcist ” and “ Omen ” belongs to the classic clip of mystical thrillers, which were shot in the early 1970s on the wave of success of “The Rosemary's Baby ” by Roman Polansky ^[5] . The difference between Rogue's film is that its creation was not financed by the largest Hollywood studios, and it was not intended for such a wide audience. Trying to create something more sophisticated and intellectual than an ordinary horror film , Rogue weaved into the fabric of the film references to " Death in Venice " by Thomas Mann and " In Search of Lost Time " by Marcel Proust ^[6] . At the time of the premiere, the artistic merit of the film with a specific explosive installation technique was eclipsed by the hype around the erotic scene, which was unusually frank by the standards of the time, in which stars of the first magnitude starred - Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland. In many British cinemas, the film was shown in tandem with the “ Wicker Man ” tape, as the distributors found thematic echoes between them.

From the very beginning, the director was confused in the script by the fact that the Baxter spouses kept arguing and quarreling. To convey to the viewer the true degree of their closeness to each other, he unexpectedly decided for the film crew to include in the film an unusually long and erotic scene between the main characters by the standards of commercial cinema of the early 1970s. It is believed that Sutherland and Christy first met on the set, and the bed scene was the first episode in which they were shot. Christie was shocked at the start of filming. Subsequently, American zealots of public morality said that in this form the film could not be released in the United States for wide distribution. Christie's civil husband, Warren Beatty , also demanded a seditious scene. Going to meet the critics, Rogue shuffled the “nude” with the forwards of preparing the spouses to leave the house. In this form, the erotic scene was recognized as having the necessary artistic merit in order to enter the rental version of the film.

The Italian producer Hugo Mariatti, a longtime friend of Rogue, helped find the composer for the film. At that time, a little-known but promising 32-year-old composer from Venice Pino Donaggio willingly agreed to help in creating the thriller. Music, according to the director, was to become one of the key artistic means of this picture. After the release of “Now Don't Look,” another thriller master, Brian De Palma , drew attention to the Venetian, inviting him to collaborate on the film “Carrie” .

• Cinematography Anthony Raymond was awarded the BAFTA Prize for 1973 .
• The writer Daphne Dumorier , rarely acknowledging the successes of the film adaptations of her works, approved the film, expressing, however, a shame that Julie Christie was not able to play in all the pictures in her books.
• Scenes from the film are cited in some popular films of the 21st century, including the “ Casino Royale” ^[7] and “ Get to the Bottom of Bruges ” ^[8] , and in the last one of the characters directly refers to the Venetian film Rogue.
• In the list of 100 best British films for 100 years according to the British Film Institute, the film of N. Rogue was in the top ten ^[9] .
• During a readership survey conducted in 2011 by the London-based Time Out to identify the best film in the history of British cinema, the “Now Don't Watch” tape scored the most points ^[10] .

Dumorier biographers argue that the writer coded her love affair with other women with the epithet "Venetian." Thus, “to go to Venice” for her meant “to have an affair with a woman” ^[6] . After the loss of her lover, Gertrude Lawrence , Dumurier left for some time in real Venice ^[6] .

• “Now Don't Watch” on the Internet Movie Database
• Now don’t look at the allmovie website