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

Product Information

Almost mimicking the story’s visions and premonitions, du Maurier has filled the narrative with moments that point to some future event. Du Maurier has John and Laura use humor and sarcasm to break the tension of the atmosphere around them, heavy with the memory of their dead daughter. John hears police outside the door, but the dwarf throws a knife at him, which sticks in his throat. The opening scene (in which he and Laura conjecture about the nationalities and sexual orientation of the sisters) is merely a game, but one in which they (albeit laughingly) try to discern everything they can about this strange pair of women: “You know what it is,” John tells Laura, “they’re criminals doing the sights of Europe, changing sex at each stop. As the story progresses, John grows increasingly paranoid as his bulwark of logic is assaulted—and eventually toppled—by the existence of psychic phenomena.

Don't Look Now was produced through London-based Casey Productions and Rome-based Eldorado Films, by producer Peter Katz and executive producer Anthony B. Sutherland also wanted to make the film but had some reservations about the depiction of clairvoyance in the script. Pressure during the 1960s on British lawmakers to address the disparity between women’s and men’s salaries resulted in the Equal Pay Act of 1970, doing away with what were referred to as “men’s rates” and “women’s rates” for the same job. Peter Katz, the film's producer, corroborated Sutherland's account that the sex was entirely simulated.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". She is reborn, in a sense, as a confident woman, finding more strength in the company of women than in that of men. She is all organization and purpose, arranging for John’s later departure and watching over the porter who has been assigned to find her a seat on a plane.

The intercutting technique used in the sex scene was used to similar effect in a sex scene featuring George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez. He believes that the headmaster and his wife will take care of his son just as well as he and his wife would. Although he mocks the sisters’ explanation of his own psychic powers (imagining them visiting he and Laura in England and holding “a seance in the living-room, tambourines appearing out of thin air”), he leaves their hotel in a hurry once the blind one falls into her trance.

While flooding has been commonplace throughout the history of the city, 1966 saw an especially severe flood. At the very end of the story, however, John’s mix of irony and alcohol will prove The reputation of Don't Look Now has grown since its release and it is now regarded as a key work in horror cinema.

Laura’s eagerness to believe the twin sisters’ stories about Christine makes John uncomfortable at first and then angry later when the twins show up again at dinner. At the cathedral she wades into a crowd of sightseers, “undaunted,” and begins studying a guidebook, “as had always been her custom in happier days. British women make their presence known in the political world when 29 are elected as Members of Parliament to the House of Commons in 1964—the largest number since women were first allowed to stand for election in 1918. Du Maurier’s world does not ask much introspection of readers, only that they come along for the ride.

Christie was initially sceptical, but Roeg felt it would not make sense for the character to be heartbroken if she believed her husband and daughter were together in the afterlife. Many say that Daphne du Maurier’s 1938 classic novel, Rebecca, is a variation of the Cinderella tale.