LAURA BAXTER: "If the world's round, why is a frozen pond flat ?"
JOHN BAXTER: "Nothing is what it seems".

Don't Look Now

In a jewel-encrusted directorial career, Don't Look Now is one of the largest rocks.

After finishing Walkabout and seeing a relatively mixed initial reaction to it, Roeg was to have embarked on Deadly Honeymoon in America from a screenplay by one of the '70s' greatest unsung talents, W.D. Richter (try finding his marvellous film Slither - with James Caan - and you'll try in vain).

Days from production launch, it was cancelled, and for all it later reached the screen under other hands (don't hurry to see the mediocre results), remains a tantalizing unmade Roegian step into the US cosmopoly.

The aftermath turned up an adaptation (finally by Allan Scott, who would collaborate again with Roeg on Castaway, The Witches and Cold Heaven in the 1980s) of a macabre Daphne du Maurier short story. It's last line (a shame to give away if this is your first viewing) had Roeg wanting to applaud.

John & Laura Baxter (Sutherland & Christie) adjourn to Venice, following the accidental drowning of their daughter in their garden pond. John's grief is offset by church restoration, Laura's by meeting two elderly women, one of whose clairvoyant messages bring comfort.

John, meanwhile, has premonitions, which lead to a shocking and memorable denouement.

A cursory synopsis can't do justice to the various levels Don't Look Now works on, which make repeated viewings a rewarding experience.

A meditation on grief, perception and film-making, Don't Look Now also boasts a mesmerizing depiction of Venice - that "city in aspic" - and career-best performances from Sutherland and from Christie, whom Roeg had already photographed unforgettably in Fahrenheit 451, Far From the Madding Crowd and Petulia.

From a relatively low-key outset - often seen in a cinema double-bill with Robin Hardy's The Wicker Man - Don't Look Now has become a modern classic, frequently making critics' 'Best of' polls (most recently #8 in the Sight & Sound Top 100).

More importantly, the very film language of this "good yarn" (as the director calls it) has proved influential to modern film-makers, and offered countless source-images for the advertising world since. Whole sequences - not just the 'celebrated' love scene between Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie - remain as eloquent a use of celluloid as you could ever wish to see.

Whether first or hundredth viewing, its mosaic structure (look out for them - John Baxter is even trying to re-store one himself) will have images creeping back to surprise you when you least expect it …