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About This Quiz
Who's the figure in the red raincoat? Did the film's stars actually get busy for the cameras? This 1970s thriller offers many mysteries to explore. Examine them all with our quiz!
What year was Don't Look Now released?
1972
1973
The early 1970s were known in America for the beginning of a years-long oil crisis and a loss of faith in President Richard Nixon. None of this affected Don't Look Now, which was set in Europe.
1974
1975
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In which two countries is Don't Look Now set?
England and France
France and Germany
Greece and Italy
England and Italy
The movie opens with a tragic event in England, where John and Laura Baxter are living in a country house. The action then moves to Italy.
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Who are the film's two leads?
Julie Christie and Paul Newman
Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland
Not even some unfortunate 1970s hairstyling could cover up the sex appeal of these two. Christie wears ash-blonde layered curls, like many a Harlequin-novel cover model; Sutherland has an even more unfortunate curly toupee.
Vanessa Redgrave and Charlton Heston
Judi Dench and Alec Guinness
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Who directed Don't Look Now?
Peter Bogdanovich
Federico Fellini
Nicolas Roeg
Actor Sutherland enjoyed his collaborations with this director. So much so, in fact, that he named one of his sons Roeg. (Thanks, Dad!)
John Cassavetes
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What tragic event opens the movie?
their son is hit by a car
their daughter is fatally kicked by a horse
their daughter drowns in a pond
Their daughter and son are both playing outside while the Baxters are working in the house. The daughter is throwing and chasing a ball, which she apparently tries to retrieve from too far out in the pond -- we don't actually see that part.
Laura miscarries a baby
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What is the name of the Baxters' daughter?
Anna
Christine
The Baxters' daughter was named Christine and their son is named Johnny. He's much less important to the plot, so much so that you could be forgiven for thinking he was just a neighbor boy out in the field the day of the drowning, except that he yells "Dad!" when John appears.
Sarah
Tana
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What is Christine wearing in the opening scene?
denim overalls
green mud boots
a red raincoat
The opening minutes of the film are remarkable for the dread they amass just by repeatedly cutting to Christine running near the pond in her raincoat. Later, John Baxter will catch glimpses of a very similar coat in a faraway city.
a white dress
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What happens to the Baxter's son just before the drowning?
he falls from a tree
he steps on a pane of glass and cuts his foot
he runs over a pane of glass on his bike
Johnny is riding his bike in a field when he gets a flat tire. It's possible that this distracts him from seeing what his sister is doing until she's fallen into the pond.
he wanders off, pursuing a red-coated figure
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What does John see in a photo slide of a church interior?
a long-handled knife
a red-cloaked figure
a trickle of blood
both #2 and #3
First, Baxter sees the cloaked figure with its back turned to the camera. After he spills a glass of water on the slide viewer, a trickle of blood runs from the figure toward the altar. You might think he cut his hand on the glass he tipped over, but this isn't the case -- the glass does not break.
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After the drowning scene, the film cuts to a scene in which Italian city?
Florence
Modena
Rome
Venice
The film cuts abruptly from Laura Baxter screaming to the sound (and sight) of a drill at an archaeological site. Titles don't tell us how much time has passed since the death, but it's implied to have been a period of months, maybe a year.
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What is the relationship between the two older women in the restaurant?
friends
lovers
half-sisters
sisters
Blind Heather and her sighted sister Wendy are traveling in Italy. John first notices them in the restaurant, but it's Laura who has a significant encounter with them.
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Why does Laura follow Heather and Wendy into the bathroom?
to ask them why they were staring
because she has to use the bathroom herself
because she thinks she knows them from England
because Wendy has something in her eye
Laura realizes that Heather, being blind, won't be able to help her sister. Laura is being charitable in this scene.
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What is significant about Heather, other than her blindness?
she is dying
she is recovering from the death of a loved one
she is psychic
Blindness and "second sight" often go together in fiction. This goes back to the blind prophet Tiresias in Greek legend, who appears in The Odyssey.
she is very beautiful
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What does Heather tell Laura that she saw?
Christine sitting between John and Laura
Heather says that Christine is happy and laughing. Laura should be relieved by this, but instead she seems troubled and has to sit down on a chair in the powder room.
their son falling ill
John in a casket
Laura in a funeral dress
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What happens to Laura after she returns to her table?
she has a nosebleed
she faints
This scene is memorable -- Laura really crashes onto the side of the table. Then plates, glasses, and cutlery also crash to the floor, then oil pours from a bottle onto the carpet. It's hard to watch this scene without wincing, even though nothing really bad happens.
she is much lighter-hearted
she is moody and troubled
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Who do John and Laura meet after she is released from hospital?
an architecture professor
a friend from England
a bishop
Laura surprises John by kissing the bishop's ring, when she isn't even religious. When the bishop asks if she is Christian, Laura sheepishly tells him that, well, she's kind to animals and children.
the sisters
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The rather graphic sex scene is intercut with images of what?
John and Laura getting dressed afterward
While it's become common in horror films or thrillers to intercut a sex scene with glimpses of a fight or a death, director Roeg chose very everyday imagery to break up his sex scene. The intercutting also served a practical purpose: it allowed the editing-out of shots that censors deemed too graphic for an R rating.
a killer's victim being fished from a canal
Christine running along the pond
a relic being discovered at the old church
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What activity does Laura meet the sisters for?
a church service
sight-seeing
a seance
Nowadays, classic seances are considered somewhat corny. However, the underlying phenomenon hasn't gone away; it's just morphed into celebrity "cold readers" like John Edwards appearing on TV talk shows. Things change, but they don't change!
tea
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Who, other than Heather, has psychic abilities?
Laura
Johnny, the son
John
Heather tells Laura that John has the gift, after Laura tells her that John leapt up and went outside the afternoon Christine drowned. It comes to its tragic fruition later in the movie.
no one
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What warning do the sisters have for Laura?
that John is cheating on her
that John's life is in danger
As is common in movies, the wife is a believer while her husband is skeptical. John does get "scared" for Laura during the seance and goes looking for the sisters' hotel room. Why he's scared for her, he never says.
that Johnny's life is in danger
that she has early-stage cancer
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What item do we see in Laura's suitcase?
a guide to "chaos magic"
a rosary
Christine's red-and-white ball
The ball might be a sign of Laura's inability to let go of her daughter. This is frequently cited in reviews as an important aspect of her character.
the water-stained slide from the day of Christine's death
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An early-morning phone call informs the Baxters of what?
that their house in England caught fire
that their son was injured in an accident at his English boarding school
One of the rarely-commented-on aspects of Don't Look Now is how little concern the Baxters show for their surviving son until this point. Johnny witnessed his sister's death and was unable to save her, which must have been very traumatic, but the Baxters leave him in a boarding school and don't talk about him while in Italy.
that the old church was vandalized
that the psychic Heather has died
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Who departs for England to visit Johnny?
John
Laura
Laura is upset at the news, saying that the accident is what Heather was warning the Baxters about. Actually, it's not -- Heather's warning was specifically about John Baxter, saying they must leave Venice because he is in danger.
both
neither
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What accident befalls John Baxter?
he falls off a gondola
he nearly falls from a scaffold
John is left hanging on when a scaffold partially collapses as he's repairing a mosaic. Horror-movie fans will recognize the lightning-rod accident as being from The Omen (and it wasn't a near-miss).
a lightning rod falls from a roof, narrowly missing him
he's nearly hit by a motorbike
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What does John see while on a gondola that frightens him?
the figure in the red raincoat, again
Laura in black, on a funeral barge
John sees Laura standing with the two sisters, on a boat draped with funeral sprays of flowers. He is rattled because she was supposed to leave for England, and apparently didn't even notify him that she didn't get on the plane.
a body floating in the water
Christine on the far bank
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When John reports that his wife is missing, what does he tell the inspector about why he's frightened for her?
she's fallen under the sway of the two sisters
she is not well since Christine's death
there is a serial killer at large in Venice
all of the above
We get the sense that Laura's mental state and her attachment to the strange women are more pressing to John. But the police inspector is a brisk, rational man, so citing the killer at large is how John justifies his concern.
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What does the police inspector do after John leaves his office?
sticks the missing-persons report in his desk
goes over to the window and thinks a long time
picks up the phone and has John followed
This leads to a lengthy cat-and-mouse sequence around Venice, as John tries to locate the sisters while a policeman follows him. This foreshadows a more dangerous cat-and-mouse scene that'll come a short time later.
calls Heather and Wendy
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What happens when John calls England?
he confirms that Laura never arrived
he finds out Laura is there and all right
John immediately returns to the police to report a false alarm. Finding out that Heather has been held at the station for some time, he is very remorseful and walks her home.
he learns there was no accident with his son
he finds out Laura was in a car crash en route from the airport
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Heather goes into a fit or seizure on returning home. Coming out of it, what does she tell Wendy?
that Laura Baxter is back in Italy
to find John and bring him back
This begins an extended scene in which seemingly everyone runs around Venice. The red-raincoat figure ducks in and out of alleys, John pursues the figure, and Laura tries to find John.
that Laura is in danger
that everything will be all right now
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When John corners the raincoat-wearing figure in a building, what does he say?
"Christine?"
""It's okay... I won't hurt you. I'm a friend."
And that, of course, is when the figure turns around and proves not to be an innocent or frightened child, but a female dwarf. She then cuts John's neck with a knife. It's an unconvincing attack -- she barely taps his neck -- but John falls down, bleeding and fatally wounded.
"Who are you?"
"Why have you been following me?"
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Why is a female dwarf going around Venice killing people?
she was severely mistreated by her parents
she's angry at society after being raised in an institution
she is the accomplice of an unseen mastermind
we have no idea
Don't Look Now is a film that's definitely about the journey, not the destination. It's a highly-thought-of movie despite having a frankly head-scratching conclusion.
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Which aspect of Don't Look Now generated considerable controversy on its release?
the depiction of the death of a child
the relatively unexplained climax
the sex scene
Famously, a rumor circulated that Sutherland and Christie really had sex on camera (which Sutherland and a film producer have denied). The scene caused the movie to get an X rating in Great Britain, and was cut from the film in Ireland.
the use of a dwarf as a villain
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Julie Christie's involvement in the sex scene was, according to rumor, upsetting to her then-boyfriend. Who was he?
Warren Beatty
A lesser-known story about the lovemaking scene was that Warren Beatty tried to have it edited out of the film. Beatty, who had a reputation as a Hollywood playboy, apparently wasn't as open-minded about his girlfriends' activities, even on screen.
Robert Redford
Francis Ford Coppola
Paramount executive Robert Evans
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What was director Roeg's reason for including the lovemaking scene?
he wanted to shock puritanical UK and US critics
he wanted it to appeal to continental European audiences
he worried the movie had too many scenes of the Baxters arguing
The Baxters are by no means at each other's throats. John Baxter is skeptical and impatient with Laura's friendship with the psychic and her sister, but he clearly demonstrates concern for his wife's well-being, and she for his.
he didn't want to "waste" such good-looking actors
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Film critic Vincent Canby notably said that director Roeg got "a great performance from ______."
Sutherland
Christie
Hilary Mason (Heather)
Venice
Canby was one of several critics who found the watery, picturesque city to be key to the film's success. However, perhaps not everyone liked the setting, as Pauline Kael found a "distinct clamminess" about the movie.
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Who wrote the short story on which Don't Look Now was based?
Daphne Du Maurier
The source material might explain some aspects of the movie that don't seem typically 1970s. For example, it used to be more common for well-off parents to leave their children in boarding schools and travel, and seances were more popular in Du Maurier's day than in 1973.
Henry James
Alice James
Edith Wharton
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You Got:
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