Forget the fact that Nicolas Roeg's career suffered a hiccup during the '80s and took a nosedive in the '90s. His output during the '70s (Performance, Walkabout, The Man Who Fell To Earth) defined an era in groundbreaking British film-making. In fact, 1973's Don't Look Now is still relevant enough for Steven Soderbergh to consciously rip off for the seduction scene in Out Of Sight.
Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland play bereaved parents who move to Venice after their 10-year-old daughter drowns. While she falls in with a pair of weird spinster psychics, he ignores his own premonitions and blurs the line between a series of murders and visions of his dead child.
Roeg cuts the action forwards, backwards and sideways with flare, creating an eerie, atmospheric mood that takes the city itself (Venice's crumbling churches and dark canals) and holds it up as a mirror for the disintegration of a marriage and the characters' grief-stricken mental breakdowns. One of the most dynamic and radical British films ever made.
