Don’t Look Now (1973)

I’ve had this film for ages but resisted watching it. Probably cus I’d seen Nicolas Roeg’s Bad Timing (and had a bad time with it, bu bum).

It turned out to be as bad as Bad Timing was: by “bad” i mean dull, dated, and, er, dreadfully pretentious (i hate using that cliche criticism “pretentious” in a review – but for this film it feels warranted)  Roeg might have seemed like a radical arthouse director back in the 70’s; lots of trippy editing indicative of subconscious suggestivity, zooming the camera all over the place, contrived symbolism, perplexes aplenty to be puzzled about while you watch etc. Cerebral complexity redolent with psychological depth could be inferred if you wanted to infer it. Roeg obviously did. But i didn’t.

The acting has had all the life sucked out of it. Probably the fault of the script, plus Roeg’s convoluted direction. Mind you, I like Donald Sutherland’s perm about as much as i like Nicolas Roeg’s directing. Not a lot. He’s an odd-bod is Sutherland; big awkward teeth piled up in his mouth like ill-fitting dentures. And he does a lot of blank looking into camera as if he hadn’t got a clue what was going on half the time. This may have been deliberate – to suggest perplexity – or simply a failure to inhabit the interior of his character (i think the latter) Julie Christie doesn’t fare much better either, even though she tries – the love – sweetly, sadly, hopelessly, to save her character from the static inertia into which its been cast. The (in) famous sex scene between the pair of them (did they or didn’t they?) is tame by today’s more explicit standards; typically, Roeg is nervily splicing in to this coitus interruptus his flurry of hectic imagery. Actually, i find the editing in Roeg’s films, too frenetic, and too conspicuously up to something; he can’t seem to leave things alone; its like he’s not got enough trust in the script or the acting to let it be direct; he has to be inserting himself as director, cut and pasting his Freudian pseudery in, avidly stirring in subconscious subtext.

Roeg manages to make Venice look like a labyrinthine mess of murkiness, confusingly decontextualised, as if it were some kind of vacant studio set design, devoid of any real life or actuality. The sound design is also lifeless; dialogues sounded flat and toneless. Or maybe its cus they were so wooden.

“You don’t want to be listening to those 2 neurotic old women caught up in psychic mumbo jumbo” says Donald to Julie at one point.

Which could be applied to the whole film; a load of religio/psycho/psychic mumbo jumbo it is. Those of an excessively neurotic disposition will no doubt get tortuously caught up in it.

The rest of us should stay clear – and get back into the 21st century. Don’t look then, look now. Cus Roeg’s 1970’s films look very then (i.e. passe) and not much like now (i.e. relevant)

Dir: Nicolas Roeg, England

3/10

Billy Liar (1963)

Tom Courtney about to run off on the midnight train to London with Julie Christie.

Only he doesn’t. You want him to. But he chickens out.

Sir Tom is a (dis)spirited sarky funeral clerk, (Leonard Rossiter is boss Shadrack) with dreams of being somewhere and someone better. “A writer? In London? Don’t talk so bloody wet!“

He’s got 3 girls on the go.

Plain prude – “Isn’t that nice?!” – Barbara; Brassy blonde -“You rotten lying cross-eyed git!” – Rita; and Lovely -“She just enjoys herself” – Liz (Julie Christe)

Albert Finney would have been more convincing as the bit-of-rough womaniser; Courtney’s dour effeminate face, thin pursed lips, and weak loopy grin, are more suited to “Making a “bloody laughin stock out of” his bloody dad. Being a cheeky bastard. Up his Northern self. A wannabe. A dreamer. A procrastinator. A waster.

He’s a loser. So he’s sympathetic. You’re rooting for him.

“Just pack it in – and grow up” (says fellow funeral clerk Rodney Bewes)

But I didn’t want him to pack it in.

Or grow up.

I like these black & white “New Wave” Brit films of the 60’s loads.

Dir: John Schlesinger, UK

7.5/10