Editing Don't Look Now (section)

=== Inspirations ===
''Don't Look Now'' is particularly indebted to [[Alfred Hitchcock]], exhibiting several characteristics of the director's work.<ref name="Morrison (2006)"/> The aural [[match cut]] following Christine's death from Laura's scream to the screech of a drill is reminiscent of a cut in ''[[The 39 Steps (1935 film)|The 39 Steps]]'', when a woman's scream cuts to the whistle of a steam train.{{sfn|Sanderson|1996|pp=14–15}} 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.{{sfn|Sanderson|1996|p=30}} The film also takes a [[Hitchcockian]] approach to its [[mise en scène]], by manifesting its protagonist's psychology in plot developments: in taking their trip to Venice the Baxters have run away from personal tragedy, and are often physically depicted as running to and from things during their stay in Venice; the labyrinthine geography of Venice causes John to lose his bearings, and he often becomes separated from Laura and is repeatedly shown to be looking for her—both physical realisations of what is going on in his head.{{sfn|Sanderson|1996|pp=25–27}}

Nicolas Roeg had employed the fractured editing style of ''Don't Look Now'' on his previous films, ''[[Performance (film)|Performance]]'' and ''[[Walkabout (film)|Walkabout]]'', but it was originated by editor [[Antony Gibbs]] on ''[[Petulia]]''. Roeg served as the cinematographer on ''Petulia'', which incidentally also starred Julie Christie, and Gibbs went on to edit ''Performance'' and ''Walkabout'' for Roeg.<ref name="Sinyard"/> Roeg's use of colour—especially red—can be traced back to earlier work: both ''Performance'' and ''Walkabout'' feature scenes where the whole screen turns red, similar in nature to the scene during Christine's drowning when the spilt water on the church slide causes a reaction that makes it—along with the whole screen—turn completely red.{{sfn|Sanderson|1996|pp=31–32}} The mysterious red-coated figure and its association with death has a direct parallel with an earlier film Roeg worked on as cinematographer, ''[[The Masque of the Red Death (1964 film)|The Masque of the Red Death]]'', which depicted a red clad [[Personifications of death|Grim Reaper]] character.<ref name="Sinyard"/> The fleeting glimpses of the mysterious red-coated figure possibly draw on [[Marcel Proust|Proust]]: in ''[[In Search of Lost Time|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.<ref name="Bradshaw (2011)"/>

Besides Proust, other possible literary influences include [[Jorge Luis Borges|Borges]] and [[Friedrich Nietzsche|Nietzsche]]; [[Pauline Kael]] in her review comments that "Roeg comes closer to getting Borges on the screen than those who have tried it directly",<ref name="Kael (1973)"/> while Mark Sanderson in his [[British Film Institute|BFI]] Modern Classics essay on the film, finds parallels with Nietzsche's ''[[Beyond Good and Evil]]''.{{sfn|Sanderson|1996|pp=61–62}} The film's setting and production status has also drawn comparisons with ''[[giallo]]'' films, due to its structure, cinematic language and focus on the psychological makeup of its protagonists sharing many characteristics with the Italian subgenre, although Anya Stanley has noted that it lacks the [[Exploitation film|exploitational]] portrayal of violence and sexuality typically associated with the form.<ref name="Stanley (2019)" /> 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".{{sfn|Shipka|2011|p=110}}