Destinerrance and the Trauma of Misreading

This chapter draws on Jacques Derrida's concept of destinerrance, the sense in which meaning is ‘destined to err and to wander’, as a way of understanding the unstable and ultimately horrific process of misreading sign and symbol in Don't Look Now (1973). John Baxter's misreading of the murderous woman as his lost daughter, but also his misreading of colour and image, of his wife, of the strange psychic women they meet, of himself and his place in the world, of the dangerous spaces he inhabits, and even of time itself, all contribute to the film's uncanny sense of his environment as simultaneously loaded with and empty of meaning. John might ‘feel’ that he is ‘a detective’, but ultimately, he is a failed one, since his misreading of the ‘clues’ he perceives lead to the perpetuation rather than the prevention of crime and trauma. It is in the space of these misreadings, of failing to see in time, that the film's horror, its capacity to scare, resides, since it insists on the suspension rather than the resolution of trauma. The film's misreadings, then, are ultimately instructive or didactic, but in moving away from the conservative restoration of order which is typical of the Gothic narrative, Don't Look Now's iteration of horror remains open.

Introduction

This introductory chapter situates Nicolas Roeg's Don't Look Now (1973) within the landscape of 1970s cinema in general, and 1970s horror cinema in particular. It also establishes the significance of specific kinds of cultural trauma in Don't Look Now as a horror film of that decade. Don't Look Now might be understood in the context of the history of Gothic narratives, exposing and satirising the tropes of that genre and the ways in which the film's characters read or misread those signs. Rather than fear deriving purely from the chase, the threat of a psychotic killer, an unfamiliar environment, or a betrayal of innocence, Don't Look Now's horror finds its source in being wrong, in making mistakes, in seeing or knowing too late. Indeed, whereas the slasher film of the 1970s creates the pleasure of horror in its repetition, in the audience's knowledge that death is to come but remains ‘in the dark’, as it were, only as to when and how it will arrive, Don't Look Now's horror is precisely the horror of not knowing, of not recognising a threat as such, but seeing it as familiar, domestic, and safe.

Don’t Look Now and the Cinema of Trauma

This concluding chapter suggests that the trauma in Don't Look Now (1973) is precisely to do with the horror of simultaneously seeing and failing to see, of looking now and looking too late. The horror of Don't Look Now resides in the trauma of failing to know and thus to respond in time, of failing to be responsible. At the film's conclusion, then, both character and audience align in this awful knowledge, the horror of their own failure to read the experience or the narrative correctly. All of this is to say that Don't Look Now has as much to say about trauma cinema as it does horror cinema. Indeed, Nicolas Roeg's film brings the two precisely into relation with one another; in doing so, the film makes a commentary on the cultural traumas of the late twentieth century, as well as the ways in which these function more particularly as anxiety—an anticipation of the return of trauma, rather than solely as its repetition.

Looking Again: The Critical Heritage

This chapter examines Don't Look Now (1973) in the context of Daphne Du Maurier's Gothic narratives, with particular emphasis on those which had previously been adapted to film, and Nicolas Roeg's earlier films, particularly those which deal with themes of trauma and violence. It proposes that Du Maurier and Roeg's works should be read within the context of mid- to late-twentieth-century British culture, considering them as particularly concerned to depict the cultural traumas of the period. Although there are some distinctive differences between the film and the story from which it is adapted, one must not forget that Don't Look Now is adapted from a literary text, and that this may have implications for the representations and adaptations of trauma in contemporary literature and film. The chapter then reviews the existing studies of the film and the story from which it is adapted. It interrogates Don't Look Now's critical heritage as both avoiding and approaching the ever-retreating position of the trauma-text: a simultaneous recognition and avowal of the film's horror and its anxieties.

Dereliction and the Trauma of Place

This chapter focuses on the settings of Don't Look Now (1973), looking at the ways in which these evoke the horror of different kinds of disruption. It particularly considers how horror invades the family, the heart of the home, but also how this is mirrored in the ruined and inhospitable spaces of Venice: the hotel is closing for the season, Laura causes damage in a restaurant, and John's restorations on the church are nowhere near completion. Horror, in this film, resides in the ordinary sites of the family, the home, and even the temporal refuge of the holiday. However, dereliction, in this film, also comes to figure Luce Irigaray's conceptualisation of the term as déréliction—a description of the way in which women are exiled from the patriarchal community. The chapter concludes, then, by considering Laura, Christine, the psychic sisters, and the monstrous dwarf in terms of their exile and the ways in which this disrupts and makes derelict the spaces which they inhabit.