Don't Look Now

     Cinematographer-turned-director Nicolas Roeg's greatest contribution to film history was to introduce new psychological nuances to the exploration of parallel editing that has continued since the silent era. In the opening sequence of Don't Look Now (1973), he develops a number of motifs (such as the red coat, water, and ink stain) that will circulate across the film. He also inserts several images whose significance can only be deciphered much later in the film. In retrospect, these appear to be subjective flash-forwards, giving psychological resonance to the film's cyclical structure.
     Building upon the work of Roeg (and also of directors such as Ingmar Bergman, Andrei Tarkovsky, and Alain Resnais), Ramsay interrupts even relatively straightforward narrative sequences with brief mnemonic flashes. This transforms sequences like the one below, with its overt nod to the Odessa Steps sequence of Battleship Potemkin (Sergei Eisenstein, 1925), into a type of jarring, subjective montage that draws the viewer into the fractured psyche of the protagonist.
    By combining this with a series of stark ellipses, Ramsay pushes the approach and its implications even further in the final sequence of You Were Never Really Here (2017). The Bressonian sound of the gas pump at the end of the sequence makes the inferred violence that preceded it even more nightmarish.