In the following essay excerpt, Shallcross reviews the quality of the film adaptation of du Maurier's "Don't Look Now."

Although Daphne du Maurier has written many selections of short stories, many with supernatural and occult themes, none has grabbed the attention so successfully as 'Don't Look Now'. Throughout her career, she wrote about places rather than about people—and this particular story about supernatural or occult forces that led to a violent death in Venice conjured up wonderfully sinister visions of out-of-season Venice, that most mysterious of waterlocked Italian cities, with its canals, crumbling buildings and eerily deserted hotels full of shrouded furniture.

Daphne always preferred to stay in places out of season, so that she could absorb the atmosphere, and she used the insights she gained in her writing. Abroad, she was a different person, almost gregarious, and far more interested in eating out and...