'The Most Harrowing Experience That You May Ever Endure'
After reading about the death of Donald Sutherland, I wanted to watch one of his films. Although I've seen, and have many favorite Sutherland performances, I wanted to watch a film I hadn't previously seen. Turns out the choice was easy. In the many tributes that read, his performance in 1973's Don't Look Now continued to pop-up. The film, and Sutherland's performance. were frequently called 'haunting', so my choice was easily made.
I didn't necessarily plan it, but Don't Look Now also features Sutherland's first, and hottest on-screen nude scene. Although the actor briefly showed his butt in Animal House, (1978) and Space Cowboys, (2000), neither scene compares to the extended nude scene in Don't Look Now.
Although the film includes an extended sex scene with Julie Christie, I preferred the scene that preceded it, with Sutherland coming out of the shower. I read a few reviews from the films original release which discusses how shocking it was to see a male full frontal in the tense triller. The fontal is mostly cropped in the current release, but you see a 'bit' more in the original VHS release. Thanks to xyzpdq from Scenes From Male Skin, you can see a few seconds of the original release below in the gif below.
The HD clip below, features the shower scene and the beginning of the sexy scene. The sex scene goes on for several more minutes, mostly in cuts with other scenes. It is an intense love scene, but again, you see more of Donald in the scenes that precede it. I like Donald's longer, curly hair and I'm glad there's a film which documents the actor's long, lean and naked body. Sutherland was known for his roles as he should be. He also however, must have worked ha to maintain his lean physique throughout most of his career.
As for the film, 'haunting' was a great descriptor. Director Nicolas Roeg sets the tone in the films tragic opening scenes. The music, the use of red and the quick cuts pull you quickly in. I don't think it's a spoiler to share that the films beings with the death of a married couple's (Sutherland, Christie) daughter.
The remainder of the film is a tense thriller involving two elderly sisters, one of whom is psychic and brings a warning from beyond. I had to watch the ending a few times, and still not sure I fully understood what happened, but I was glued to screen for the entire length of the film. I love a psychological thriller, I think many film lovers do, and they don't make them nearly as often, or as good, as they used to.
But the heart of the film is the couple’s shared grief, and the tricks of the mind that it plays on them. The quick-cut editing blurs past, present, and future, with flashes of unsettling imagery: a bicycle running over a pane of glass, a blob of red paint enveloping a photograph of a church.
The film has an itchy grasp on the uncanny, much like other breakthrough thrillers of its day, among them “Rosemary’s Baby” and “The Exorcist.” But neither of those movies boasts a four-and-a-half-minute sex scene so jarringly real-looking that it was rumored to be unsimulated. (Sutherland has insisted that it was staged.)
The New Yorker
