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The death of Donald Sutherland on the 20 June 2024, at the age of 88, rightfully led to an outpouring of obituary notices and tributes celebrating his long and distinguished career as an actor. In these articles his role in Don't Look Now of 1973 is often highlighted as a key film in his illustrious body of work. The previous year, 2023, marked the 50th anniversary of the cinematic release of Don't Look Now, with a restored version being issued for re-release. The film, based upon the 1971 short story by Daphne du Maurier, was adapted for the screen by Allan Scott and Chris Bryant, and directed by Nicholas Roeg. The film's legacy is such that it came in at equal 114th position in The Greatest Films of All Time critics' poll carried out by Sight and Sound in 2022 (BFI, 2025c)1. Furthermore, in the Directors' 100 Greatest Films of All Time poll of the same year, the film was placed in equal 46th place (BFI, 2025b)2, demonstrating the high regard other directors place upon the work. The succinctly accurate description of Don't Look Now on the BFI website states that: ‘Director Nicolas Roeg composes an uncanny masterpiece of colour (notably red) and fractured editing, expressing the characters’ psychology and experience to stunning effect. The sex and death scenes have seldom been matched' (BFI, 2025a, emphasis added). In terms of classification, it was ‘mainly on the basis of a strong sex scene’ (BBFC) that the film was given an X certificate (the equivalent of the current 18) in 1973, and it was not until a new version of the BBFC Guidelines was published in 2000 that it was finally passed, albeit sufficiently ‘borderline’, at 15, without cuts.
In both obituaries of Donald Sutherland and reviews of the film, the sex scene in Don't Look Now is usually highlighted for specific mention. For example, Peter Bradshaw's review in 2019 to mark the release of a restored version of the film states that ‘the sex is a kind of redemptive miracle, a scene that is moving in its frank