Julie Christie

Billy Liar’s New 4K Restoration

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“One of the great movies of the 1960s… In spite of its bitter edge, BILLY LIAR is pure Ambrosia.”
– A.O. Scott, The New York Times

“COURTENAY’S GREATEST PERFORMANCE… He balances testiness and frustration, levity and rage, and never soft-pedals his character’s more unsympathetic tendencies.”
–  Ryan Gilbey, New Statesman

“Quick-fire satire… Funny and unexpectedly poignant.”
– Dave Calhoun, Time Out (London)

“Christie’s entrance is one of the most beguiling things in ’60s cinema: a long fugue in which wanders gaily through the streets of a Northern town, swinging a large handbag. The sequence owes something to the nouvelle vague, and as that was a liberating movement, so is she a liberating spirit.”
– David Shipman, The Great Movie Stars

Listen: 50 Years of Don’t Look Now

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Ellen E Jones and Mark Kermode don their red raincoats to celebrate the 50th anniversary of haunting British thriller Don’t Look Now.

Donald Sutherland in Don’t Look Now

Originally released in 1973, Don’t Look Now is a spine-tingling psychodrama in which Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie play a married couple grieving the death of their young daughter in Venice. Adapted from a story by Daphne du Maurier and directed by Nicolas Roeg, the film manages to be an eerie occult chiller, a heart breaking meditation upon love and grief, and a shaggy dog story with a grisly sting in its tail.

Ellen speaks to Allan Scott, who co-wrote the screenplay for Don’t Look Now with his partner Chris Bryant, about his memories of the film, including its notorious sex scene, and about his long working relationship with Nicolas Roeg.

And Mark talks to two filmmakers for whom Don’t Look Now has been a touchstone. Writer, actor and director Alice Lowe reveals how the film, and an encounter with Nicolas Roeg, influenced her black comedy thriller Prevenge.

And the director of Another Round, Thomas Vinterberg discusses the impact Don’t Look Now has had on his work, and the new resonance he finds in the film following the tragic death of his own daughter.

Producer: Jane Long
A Prospect Street production for BBC Radio 4