When the gondolas are in mourning

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Movie
German title When the gondolas are in mourning
Original title Don't look now
Country of production Italy ,
United Kingdom
original language English , Italian
Publishing year 1973
length 105 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Nicolas Roeg
script Allan Scott
Chris Bryant
production Peter Katz
music Pino Donaggio
camera Anthony B. Richmond
cut Graeme Clifford
occupation

When the gondolas carry mourning (original title: Don't Look Now ) is a British-Italian horror film by British director Nicolas Roeg from 1973. The film set in Venice is based on a story by Daphne du Maurier . It premiered in the United Kingdom on October 16, 1973; the German premiere took place on August 29, 1974.

action

The restorer John Baxter and his wife Laura live in the countryside in England. While playing, her little daughter Christine, who is wearing a red raincoat, drowns in a pond in the garden. At this point John is in the house and is looking at slides of a church that he will soon restore in Venice . When a glass falls over and its contents spill onto one of the slides, a red trail of color forms on it and runs over the entire picture. This lets a hunch rise in John, who was already irritated by the atmosphere; he rushes out to the pond but is too late to save his daughter's life.

The couple later traveled to Venice, where John was in charge of the restoration of the Church of San Nicolò dei Mendicoli, and the son stayed at a boarding school in England. In a restaurant they get to know the sisters Wendy and Heather. Heather is blind and claims to have second sight. That's why she has a connection with the soul of the deceased daughter of the couple and can report that she is around Laura and happy. This helps Laura grieve over the loss of the child. Heather suspects that John also has the gift of foresight . While Laura continues to seek contact with the women, John is skeptical of them and rejects parapsychology . When Laura visits the two sisters, Heather falls into a trance . From this state of affairs, she predicts a disaster should John continue to be in Venice.

When the Baxter's son has an accident at boarding school, Laura travels to see him the next morning. On the same day in Venice, John sees Laura in mourning clothes on the canal, accompanied by the sisters, driving past on a funeral gondola. He then begins to look for his wife in Venice, who should actually be on her way to England. Worried by an unsolved series of murders in Venice and suspected that the two women had kidnapped Laura, he finally went to the police. Although they don't take him too seriously at first - rather he makes himself suspicious of the unsolved murders - the two sisters are brought to the police station for questioning. Finally, John's mistake is cleared up by a phone call with Laura. She is in England and doing well. On the way to the hotel he sees a small figure in a short red coat by a canal. He follows this figure through the confused alleys while Laura, who has already returned to Venice, follows a vision of the horrified Heather, who sees John in great danger, runs again into the darkness and looks for her husband.

Finally, John manages to catch up with the figure in the red cloak in an abandoned palazzo in Venice. She turns, shows her face - it is actually a dwarfish old woman - and severed John's carotid artery with a single blow of a cleaver. While John is bleeding to death, he sees images and sounds from the past, present and future pouring in on him. In the agony he realizes that he had a premonition of his own approaching death.

theme

Werner Faulstich interprets the theme of the film as follows: “The central theme of the film is 'seeing', namely seeing another dimension that transcends the visible world. The title Don't Look Now plays with this twofold meaning of seeing. When the gondolas carry mourning it is also a religious film "and further:" Her [Laura's] final, self-confident, self-founding smile is explained by the fact that she knows that daughter and husband are dead, but in a different dimension, as it were behind the glass pane, live on. "

reception

When it was released, the film caused controversy: it was suspected that the sex scene with Christie and Sutherland had not been played. The scene was not originally included in the script. With her, director Roeg created a counterweight to the previous argument between the couple. It is atypical how the act and the subsequent tightening were assembled into one another . The scene in question was cut several times to give the film an R ( Restricted - Children Under 17 Require Accompanying Parent or Adult Guardian ) rating in the United States .

Twenty-five years later, Steven Soderbergh referred to this scene in his feature film Out of Sight . Eight years later, the 21st James Bond film Casino Royale alluded to the scene in which John chases his supposed daughter, who is dressed in a red raincoat, through Venice. See Martin McDonagh's film Bruges ... and die? contains numerous allusions to When the gondolas are in mourning , because the 2008 film drama by McDonagh is set against the backdrop of the medieval city center of Bruges in Belgium, which is not unlike the Italian lagoon city of Venice with its historic buildings, canals and cobblestone streets. In addition, the Bruges film plot includes see ... and die? the fictional filming of a remake of When the Gondolas Bear Mourning as a secondary line to the main storyline. In addition, a short person appears in the English-American film in this context, played by the actor Jordan Prentice .

In the survey carried out every ten years by the British film magazine Sight & Sound for the best films of all time, When the Gondolas Bear Mourning came 91st among directors and 137th among film critics in 2012.

background

Actor Donald Sutherland took on the role of the main character John Baxter because he liked the theme of psychic perceptions dealt with in the film. Recurring motifs in the film are water, rain, the color red, breaking glass and night fog. Part of the filming took place in the Catholic Church of San Nicolò dei Mendicoli , which was being renovated with donations at the time, in the Italian lagoon city of Venice . However, the opening scenes, in which the little girl Christine drowns in a pond, were filmed in front of and in a country house in Hertfordshire , England, a few days before Christmas Eve . The shooting in Venice took place after Christmas in the winter months and lasted six and a half weeks, which is very short in terms of time for shooting a feature film of this size. The shooting was difficult because all the film equipment had to be shipped through the canals in Venice, as cameraman Anthony B. Richmond explains in the documentary A Look Back , which is included in the bonus material of the bluRay disc When the Gondolas Bear Mourning from 2013. Regarding the locations within the city of Venice, director Nicolas Roeg describes in the documentary: “There is a special acoustics in the streets. You hear someone coming, they turn, but you think you will meet them in a moment. But that one is gone. He is neither behind nor in front of you. You come around the corner and nobody is there. This is fantastic. It's an amazing labyrinth of sounds. ” In a scene at the beginning of the film, husband John Baxter , played by actor Donald Sutherland, says to his wife Laura , played by Julie Christie :“ Nothing is what it seems ”(in the original:“ Nothing is what it seems "). According to an interpretation offered by director Nicolas Roeg, this sentence is symptomatic of the entire film, as a basic statement of content. In the relevant opening scene, the couple talked about, using the example of Lake Ontario , why a frozen pond is shallow and even when the earth is round at the same time. The mysterious is omnipresent in the plot.

In another scene in the middle of the film, restorer John Baxter falls from a scaffold suspended from ropes at a height of 15 meters in the Venetian Church. Lead actor Donald Sutherland performed this stunt personally, although Sutherland was afraid of heights, by hanging from a safety rope that ran through the sleeve of his brown jacket. When John Baxter climbs the ladder to the scaffolding, for a brief moment the face of a laughing old woman can be seen in a glaring spotlight. Towards the end of the film, his wife Laura Baxter rushes over and looks for the hotel room of the two older sisters with clairvoyant abilities. In this scene, Laura wears a broad smile on her face that is inappropriate for the threatening situation. In addition, a gentle smile plays on her lips again later when the black-clad widow Laura drives through the canals of Venice with the coffin of her dead husband on a funeral gondola. With this fake smile, director Nicolas Roeg wants to express Laura Baxter's anticipation to be spiritually reunited with her two beloved family members, namely her drowned daughter Christine and her stabbed husband John Baxter, beyond death. This impression is reinforced at the scene where Laura stretches her arms through the bars of a black gate and in the German dubbing “ John! John! “Shouts, while her husband walks towards the red dwarf figure in a corner. In the English-language original, however, Laura calls out “ Darlings! “What to do with my dear ones! can translate, but in the German translation was lost ( lost in translation ).

Pino Donaggio was responsible for composing the film music , whose career as a film music composer began with When the Gondolas Bear Mourning and who then wrote the music for the Stephen King film Carrie - Des Satan's youngest daughter by director Brian De Palma in 1976 . In order to musically reproduce the childlike innocence of the girl Christine who is drowning in the pond, Donaggio, who is himself a Venetian, composed a decidedly awkward-sounding piano melody. In a video interview that includes the bluRay disc of the feature film in bonus material, composer Pino Donaggio explains: “ A large part of the film was shot at night. That's why the Venetians didn't particularly like the film. City councils in particular were concerned that the film would put off tourists. Venice can scare you when you are alone and hear noises. In the themes I wanted to combine the music with fear. […] Venice was shown in a completely new way. It's a new, different Venice. “With dissonant high strings of strings, musician Donaggio imitated the Venetian fog. Some of the scenes in which the dwarfish figure in the red cloak runs through the ancient streets were underlaid by composer Pino Donaggio with electronically beeping synthesizer tones in order to underline the peculiarity and otherness of this creature musically.

Awards

British Film Awards 1974

Edgar Allan Poe Award 1974

  • nominated:
    • Best movie

Golden Scroll 1975

  • nominated:
    • Best horror film

The British Film Institute voted When the Gondolas Bear Mourning in 1999 the eighth best British film of all time .

literature

  • Daphne du Maurier: Don't Look Now. In: Daphne du Maurier: Not After Midnight. Collection of short stories. Gollancz, London 1971
    • German edition: Don't turn around. In: Daphne du Maurier: A borderline case. Narratives . Book guild Gutenberg, Frankfurt am Main, Olten, Vienna 1982, ISBN 3-7632-2729-6
  • Andreas Blödorn: Color reference system. Semiotization and referentialization of 'seeing' and 'recognizing' using the example of Nicolas Roeg's Don't Look Now (1973). In: Zeitschrift für Semiotik 30. 3–4 (2008), pp. 321–353
  • Steven Jay Schneider: When the gondolas bear mourning. Don't Look Now (1973). In: Steven Jay Schneider (Ed.): 1001 films. Edition Olms, Zurich 2004, ISBN 3-283-00497-8 , p. 574

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Steven Jay Schneider (Ed.): 1001 films. Edition Olms, Zurich 2004, p. 574.
  2. ^ Werner Faulstich: Basic course in film analysis. Fink, Munich 2002, pp. 173-174.
  3. ↑ Don't Look Now. In: The Greatest Films Poll. BFI, accessed on July 27, 2015 (English).
  4. ↑ Video interview with actor Donald Sutherland , 24 minutes, included in the bonus material of the bluRay disc When the gondolas bear mourning , 2013, Arthaus - Special Films , Leipzig, + Studiocanal GmbH , Berlin
  5. ↑ Video interview with cameraman Anthony B. Richmond in the documentary Looking Back , 20 minutes, included as a featurette in the bonus material of the bluRay disc When the gondolas bear mourning , 2013, Arthaus - Special Films , Leipzig, + Studiocanal GmbH , Berlin. The featurette was shot by director David Gregory in 2002, Blue Underground Ltd.
  6. ↑ Video interview with director Nicolas Roeg in the documentary Looking Back , 20 minutes, included as a featurette in the bonus material of the bluRay disc When the gondolas bear mourning , 2013, Arthaus - Special Films , Leipzig, + Studiocanal GmbH , Berlin. The featurette was shot by director David Gregory in 2002, Blue Underground Ltd.
  7. ↑ Video interview with film music composer Pino Donaggio , 18 minutes, included in the bonus material of the bluRay disc When the gondolas bear mourning , 2013, Arthaus - Special Films , Leipzig, + Studiocanal GmbH , Berlin. The interview was filmed by director David Gregory, 2006, Blue Underground Ltd.