'In Venice... a shocking red December') is a 1973 English-language thriller film directed by Nicolas Roeg, adapted from the 1971 short story by Daphne du Maurier.

[7] In Daphne du Maurier's novella it is Laura that wears a red coat, but in the film the colour is used to establish an association between Christine and the elusive figure that John keeps catching glimpses of.

Laura comments in a letter to their son that she can't tell the difference between the restored church windows and the "real thing", and later in the film John attempts to make a seamless match between recently manufactured tiles and the old ones in repairing an ancient mosaic.

[7] Roeg describes the basic premise of the story as principally being that in life "nothing is what it seems",[5] and even decided to have Donald Sutherland's character utter the line—a scene which required fifteen takes.

[16] This is best exemplified by the blind psychic woman, Heather, who communicates with the dead, but it is presented in other ways: the language barriers are purposefully enhanced by the decision to not include subtitles translating the Italian dialogue into English, so the viewer experiences the same confusion as John.

[4][8] After John is attacked by his assailant in the climactic moments, the preceding events depicted during the course of the film are recalled through flashback, which may be perceived as his life flashing before his eyes.

[21] When John reports Laura's disappearance to the Italian police he inadvertently becomes a suspect in the murder case they are investigating—an innocent man being wrongly accused and pursued by the authorities is a common Hitchcock trait.

[17] Nicolas Roeg had employed the fractured editing style of Don't Look Now on his previous films, Performance and Walkabout, but it was originated by editor Antony Gibbs on Petulia.

[23] The fleeting glimpses of the mysterious red-coated figure possibly draw on Proust: in Remembrance of Things Past, while in Venice, the narrator catches sight of a red gown in the distance which brings back painful memories of his lost love.

[26] In this regard, Danny Shipka has noted that Don't Look Now bears similarities to Aldo Lado's 1972 giallo Who Saw Her Die?, in which an estranged couple (portrayed by George Lazenby and Anita Strindberg) investigate the drowning death of their daughter.

In his view, Aldo "eliminat[es] a lot of the extreme gore and sex [associated with gialli], but still manages to create an aura of uneasiness with his Venetian locales just as Roeg did a year later".

[28][29] The script based on the short story by Daphne du Maurier was offered to Nicolas Roeg by scriptwriter Allan Scott, who had co-written the screenplay with Chris Bryant,[30] while Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland were cast in the principal roles.

Although real-life couple Natalie Wood and Robert Wagner were suggested for the parts of Laura and John Baxter, Roeg was eager to cast Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland from the very start.

Leslie Flint, a direct voice medium based in Notting Hill, invited them to attend a session which he was holding for some American parapsychologists, who were coming over to observe him.

[32] The drowning scene and house exteriors were filmed in Hertfordshire at the home of actor David Tree, who also plays the headmaster at the son's boarding school.

[33][34] Filming the scene in which John nearly falls to his death while restoring the mosaic in San Nicolò church was also beset by problems, and resulted in Donald Sutherland's life being put in danger.

The scene entailed some of the scaffolding collapsing leaving John dangling by a rope, but the stuntman refused to perform the stunt because the insurance was not in order.

Donaggio conceded that the more low-key theme worked better in the sequence and ditched the high strings orchestral piece, reworking it for the funeral scene at the end of the film.

Donaggio became a regular composer for Brian De Palma, and credits Nicolas Roeg with giving him his first lesson in writing film scores, and expressed a desire to work with him again.

In his book Infamous Players: A Tale of Movies, the Mob, (and Sex), Bart says he was on set on the day the scene was filmed and could clearly see Sutherland's penis "moving in and out of" Christie.

The StudioCanal release was accompanied by several new extras: a featurette about the restoration process featuring cinematographer Anthony Richmond; "Pass the Warning: Taking A Look Back at Nic Roeg's Masterpiece", a documentary featuring Brad Bird, Andrew Haigh and Danny Boyle discussing Nicolas Roeg's body of work and visual style; "A Kaleidoscope of Meaning: Color in Don't Look Now", in which Anthony Richmond, David Cronenberg and Sarah Street discuss the use of colour in Don't Look Now.

[40] Jay Cocks for Time, wrote that "Don't Look Now is such a rich, complex and subtle experience that it demands more than one viewing",[62] while Variety commented that the film's visual flourishes made it "much more than merely a well-made psycho-horror thriller".

In the view of Tom Milne of Monthly Film Bulletin, Roeg's combined work on Performance, Walkabout and Don't Look Now put him "right up at the top as film-maker".

[4] George Melly similarly wrote in The Observer that Roeg had joined "that handful of names whose appearance at the end of the credit titles automatically creates a sense of anticipation".

"[62] Roger Ebert in his review for the Chicago Sun-Times commented that Roeg is "a genius at filling his frame with threatening forms and compositions",[46] while Pauline Kael labelled him "chillingly chic" in hers.

[25] Even Vincent Canby, whose opinion of the film was negative overall, praised Roeg for being able to "maintain a sense of menace long after the screenplay has any right to expect it".

[62] Canby considered the "sincerity of the actors" to be one of the better aspects of the film,[64] while Kael found Christie especially suited to the part, observing she has the "anxious face of a modern tragic muse".

"[64] Variety also found much to admire about the editing, writing that it is "careful and painstaking (the classically brilliant and erotic love-making scene is merely one of several examples) and plays a vital role in setting the film's mood".

[104] Paranormal investigator, Danny Robins, presenter of the radio series Uncanny, is a huge admirer, describing it as "a really beautiful, amazingly shot, artistic movie, and yet, it still manages to be really bloody scary".

[105] Roeg frequently drew upon the world of pop music for his work, casting Mick Jagger in Performance, David Bowie in The Man Who Fell to Earth and Art Garfunkel in Bad Timing, and in turn his films have served as inspiration for musicians.