Don't Look Now

There is no doubt that the ability of filmmakers to do better things in their movies over the years has improved. Some of this has been for the better and also in many ways I feel as though the technological developments have actually made writers and directors lazier. You don't have to be super innovative anymore these days because there is a technological and expensive way of accomplishing almost anything you want.

I was commenting the other day about how I met someone who had never seen Back to the Future and how alarmed I was about that. I then thought about it for a while a realized that there are likely some films that people older than I consider to be just as epic as Back to the Future but I just wasn't old enough or alive enough to participate in it.

Therefore I looked at a list of "top films of the 70's and downloaded a few of them.

One of them was called Don't Look Now and was touted as being a psychological horror film starring Donald Sutherland.

I don't need to get into the details about what this film is about because up to now, I can't really recommend that anyone watch this. It is exceptionally boring and not even filmed very well. It is quite clear that much of the dialogue has been overdubbed in post production and there are other instances where the actors and actresses get too close to a boom mic and overwhelm it. It's kind of embarrassing to see actually.

The film takes place on location in the waterways of Venice - it isn't a soundstage - so this is actually quite remarkable to me that they were able to seal off certain areas in order to film this. Things must have been very different back in 1973 because the overall budget for this entire film is just over $1 million.

I haven't yet gotten into the meat and potatoes of this movie yet and I switched if off after 35 minutes or so because the audio was getting on my nerves, it isn't the right kind of film to watch in bed, and because of a scene that I found very disturbing.

I don't know how typical this was in the 70's, but there is a love/sex scene between Donald Sutherland and his costar, Julie Christie that was so incredibly cringe that I had to fast forward. I figured they would have had tighter controls on nudity back in those puritan times but as it turns out this film was released in Europe where they were a bit more lenient as far as such things were concerned.

The problem I have with this is "Was Donald Sutherland ever really considered attractive?" I mean, he is fantastic actor, I'm not going to try to take that away from him. But a sex symbol? I can't imagine that ever being true. In this love scene, and I have intentionally not put any more images up here of it, we get full on views of Don's butt and also his pee-pee at times. Did anyone actually want to see that?

I understand that society's notion of attractiveness changes a lot over the years - there are some photos of me in my teens and 20's where I thought I was looking great but really just look ridiculous - but honestly, was Donald Sutherland ever considered to be sexy? I can't really imagine that being the case. he is a beanpole with no muscle definition. Is that what people were into back in the early 70's? I have a difficult time believing that is the case.

So if you want to see if you can stomach this scene I am sure you can find it somewhere. At the moment I don't recommend watching this film and I am just sticking with it because it was ranked in someone's top-20 list of the 70's decade.

So far that love scene has been the only frightening thing that has happened in the entire film. I'm going to finish the film, but I would imagine it is going to take me at least 3 sittings. Thus far it is painfully slow.