Director Nicolas Roeg’s movie, about a couple mourning the death of their young daughter, came first in a survey of 150 actors, critics and filmmakers, including Mike Leigh and Sam Mendes.
Don’t Look Now features a sex scene between Christie and Sutherland spliced with shots of the pair getting dressed afterwards, a sequence which Roeg credits with giving the film a timeless appeal.
He says, “Sex, whether you like it or not, is the prime force of life. There is no other reason to be here. I think people secretly connected to Don’t Look Now. Maybe that’s why, after all this time, people see the film more clearly.”
Second in the rundown, compiled by Time Out magazine, was the 1949 film noir The Third Man, while Distant Voices, Still Lives, starring the late Pete Postlethwaite, came third, followed by Ken Loach’s Kes. Danny Boyle’s 1996 drama Trainspotting was the only movie from the past 15 years to feature in the rundown, at 10.
