Story...to film (SPOILERS)
I was posting in another thread how I hadn't read the short novel DON'T LOOK NOW (1973) is based on. Reading the below (from Encyclopedia.com) (which I don't even know is a respected source or not) I was surprised it was published in 1970! I always think of the author's works as being so much older than that!
But anyway, here's some plot and character and thematic breakdown of the book from that site, if anyone's interested:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
FROM http://www.encyclopedia.com/education/news-wires-white-papers-and-books/dont-look-now#B
BACKGROUND: When Daphne du Maurier wrote the short story “Don’t Look Now,” sometimes referred to as a novella for its length, she was firmly established as a popular writer. However, as Nina Auerbach notes in British Writers, though du Maurier was an immediate success when she first started publishing in the 1930s, she was also immediately “dismissed by the cultural establishment as too readable to be literary.” Her work was criticized as being mere romantic escapism, but this opinion never seemed to dim du Maurier’s efforts, considering she wrote until her last days.
“Don’t Look Now,” published in 1970, is a tale of the supernatural involving a British couple vacationing in Venice to escape the pain of their young daughter’s recent death. An encounter with two sisters at a cafe, and the blind one’s claim that she can “see” the deceased child sitting with her parents, launches a series of events that ends violently. The story was made into a suspense movie a few years after it was published and has remained one of du Maurier’s best-known tales.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Author Biography
Daphne du Maurier was born in London on May 13, 1907, the daughter of renowned actor Gerald du Maurier and granddaughter of artist and author George du Maurier. The author of seventeen novels and numerous short stories—many of which have been made into movies and television shows—du Maurier was also a playwright, essayist, and respected biographer. Millions of readers have made her one of the most beloved, but critically ignored, authors of the twentieth century.
Du Maurier and her family lived in a comfortable world insulated from hardships. Most of du Maurier’s youth was spent sailing, traveling with her friends, and writing stories, which a well-connected uncle shepherded into publication. Many see her charmed and relatively easy life as one of the reasons why du Maurier’s writing is much more conventional than that of her contemporaries who were busy experimenting with avant-garde techniques such as stream-of-consciousness and who were writing on war and poverty.
In 1931, du Maurier published, to critical acclaim, her first novel, The Loving Spirit, a romantic family tale. The novel so impressed thirty-five-year-old Major Frederick Browning that he sailed a small boat past the du Maurier country home in an effort to meet the young author. Browning and du Maurier married in 1932, and in 1946 du Maurier became Lady Browning when her husband was knighted. She and Browning had three children and a comfortable life, but all was not straightforward in du Maurier’s personal life; she was widely known to have had a number of affairs, both heterosexual and lesbian.
Rebecca, her most famous and well-considered novel, was published in 1938 and received Britain’s National Book Award. In 1940, Rebecca was made into a movie, which won the Academy Award for Best Motion Picture. Other du Maurier novels and stories have been made into films, including “Don’t Look Now,” originally published in 1970, and “The Birds.”
Du Maurier continued writing nearly to the end of her life. In 1971, a collection of her horror stories, including “The Birds” and “Don’t Look Now,” was published as Don’t Look Now (released in Britain as Not After Midnight). She died in Par, Cornwall, England, on April 19,1989. According to Nina Auerbach in British Writers, the cause of death was “stubborn self-starvation.”
(CONT'D)