“Dreamlike” is a term that is usually used to describe a film that bases it construction focusing more on atmosphere then plot. Films that use this technique range from the reflective (Terrence Malick’s “The Thin Red Line”), the chaotic (Terry Gilliam’s “Brazil”), and the nightmarish (Most of the films of David Lynch). Currently, Christopher Nolan’s “Inception” is redefining the heist movie with its literal interpretation of the term, and it does it so well that it will take multiple viewings to push it into your cerebellum. But as Nolan’s film reveals, not all dreams are created equal.

Often mishmashes of plot and idea, dreamlike cinema is the rarest form of filmatic mind fuck. One that scares the crap out of the Hollywood hit machine.  It exists not to entertain, but to annoy. To make you literally review every frame of film over and over to try and extract the meaning of each abstract image. This is cinema at its most pure. Stories can, and usually do, go anywhere, characters are strange and untrustworthy, and the world as we know it is turned upside down.

Nicholas Roeg’s “Don’t Look Now” falls directly into this category of dreamlike cinema, as could be said of most of Roeg’s films. His use of editing to insert images purposely to unsettle and disorient the viewer don’t gel into a totally cohesive narrative, rather thrust the viewer into a systematic feeling of dread that echoes throughout the films entire 110 minute running time. This style, combined with expertly underplayed performances by Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie, make this film one of the greatest purely cinematic horror films ever made.

Sutherland and Christie play John and Laura Baxter, whose daughter Laura, has recently died in a tragic drowning accident which has left the couple broken with grief. Living in Venice in the winter months while John restores a church, the couple happen across two English sisters (Hilary Mason & Clelia Matania) one of whom is blind and claims to have the gift of second sight. Claiming to have received contact from the Christie’s daughter from beyond the grave, Laura is drawn to the sisters, despite John’s claims of fraud. And through their meeting Laura comes to find a comfort as her grief slowly lifts. But John’s suspicions and Laura’s obsession with the sisters lead to a series of coincidences that all culminate to a chilling end where nothing is what it seems.

With “Don’t Look Now” Roeg shows a clear mastery of his craft. His editing and cinematography (each shot brilliantly composed by Anthony Richmond) start slowly like a fog of imagery within the films opening tragedy. Images so powerful they reappear in the film like little pin pricks in your eyes. Roeg begins to piece them together slowly at first, but then strangles the audience with shot after shot ratcheting up tension until the viewer can no longer bear it. The use of Venice Italy in its winter season  as the film’s location brilliantly adds layers to the films cold and alien construction and tragic themes of loss by filming the city in stark grays and an almost total lack of color and beauty for which the city is famous for. Roeg’s Venice is a dreary, drowned city where the language and culture are used as a tool of increasingly unsettling paranoid dread that fuses together in the films nightmarish last 20 minutes. A flawless execution of style over substance.

Sutherland is simply amazing here.  He wears his character’s grief under his skin like a wounded soldier. A sober, adult performance, of a rational man trying to make sense of an irrational situation.  It’s the lack of dialogue that makes the performance so great. And Sutherland plays his emotions so perfectly that you completely buy into his characters actions. Christie is equally up to the task of the less skeptical Laura, whose coming to terms with the death of her child is a stark contrast to Sutherland’s dark performance. Christie, like Sutherland, plays every emotion beautifully. Especially in her early scenes with the sisters. Together they make one of the most convincing married couples that I have seen in a film.

This film is simply one of the best examples of dreamlike cinema in this and any other genre. The acting, editing, and shot construction all fit together to form a cinematic nightmare that demands further viewings. It affected me deeply on both a conscious and unconscious level. It is an example of what makes this genre great, and I know that I, for one, will never forget it.