Water

Raindrops splash onto a pond's surface
A ball splashes into pond water
A step is made into a puddle
A failed rescue attempt of a drowned girl
Corpses in water
Many instances of glasses of water, and spilled glasses of water

• young daughter Christine throws her red and white ball into a pond, setting up a chain of deadly events
• she steps into a puddle; John spills his water - a foreshadowing of the drowning
• he splashes and plunges into the surface of the cold pond water to try and save Christine
• water symbolizes the drowning death of the daughter
• the criss-crossing Venice canals are for navigation, and also hold corpses
• Wendy's brooch is of a mermaid - a creature that lives in water
• later, John gives Laura a glass of water during their argument about whether Christine is dead or not
• by his bedside after his fall, Johnny has a glass of water
• a corpse is dragged out of the canal
• John fishes a child's naked doll from the water's edge in Venice
• John asks for a glass of water in the sisters' hotel room just before his final confrontation with the killer-dwarf

• at the same time as Christine steps into a puddle, and son Johnny breaks a pane of glass with his front bike tire and falls off his bike, the father spills his water glass in the study
• Johnny removes the broken glass from his bike tire, as a 'blood-like' drop of water, turning red, moves destructively across one of father John's slides
• pondside, Johnny also nervously twirls a broken piece of glass in his hand, drawing blood
• later, glass breaks on the table as Laura collapses in the restaurant
• in the church where John is working, a wooden plank smashes a glass screen on which pictures, transparencies, and photographs have been put
• John kicks out glass with his shoe as he convulses and dies

Doppelgangers (or Duplicates)

• as Christine stoops next to the pond to retrieve her red and white ball, her reflection is seen
• while viewing slides, John sees a seated figure of a red-hooded small person in a church pew
• he also makes a comment about the "good question" asked by his daughter about flat pond water: "Nothing is what it seems"
• Christine's red-figure is reflected in the pond water as she runs along the edge
• wife Laura states that she put John's duplicate slides in her tray
• the bloody red globule drop on the slide is the same shape as the drowned Christine in John's arms (and later, of Wendy's mermaid brooch, and the map of Venice behind the Police Inspector)
• later, John restores (or creates duplicate fakes) of a church mosaic and makes them indistinguishable from new ones (Laura: "I can't tell the difference between his repaired windows and the originals")
• one English sister Wendy, has a cinder in her eye and temporarily cannot see
• the two English sisters explain how they like to stare - they are similar duplicates (both can see, although only one is blind and psychic)
• a boy in a hospital in Venice plays with a ball similar to Christine's
• the walls of the headmaster's study (the wallpaper appears to be hung paintings)
• throughout the film, John misconstrues the murderous red-hooded dwarf as the spirit of his deceased daughter Christine
• John is mistaken for a Peeping Tom
• other duplicates include many mirrored images (e.g. the two English sisters in the restroom mirror, John and Laura in their hotel bathroom before love-making, etc.), more reflections in water or mirrors, photographs, and the police sketches of his wife's face

• young Johnny falls off his bike
• Christine's Action Man pull-string doll commands: "Action Man patrol - fall in"
• Christine falls into the pond
• John struggles and falls as he attempts to save her and carry Christine's body back to the house
• later, Laura falls in the restaurant and must be taken to a hospital
• son Johnny accidentally falls at boarding school during "fire practice" and bumps his forehead
• John almost loses his own life in a near-fall from a rickety scaffolding in a church
• the church's bishop mentions that his father was killed in a fall

• an oozing, blood-like red globule spreads malevolently from the red-garbed figure in the pew across the slide-picture of the interior of a Venetian church - to destroy it
• red flowers in the Baxter home
• other instances of the color red: the red raincoat of the daughter and the dwarf in the pew, the dominant color of John's multi-hued scarf, Johnny's bed blanket after his accident and a small red mark on his forehead, a Charlie Chaplin poster on a wall with red lettering, a pair of woolen red bobble-hats, red flowers in the hotel porter's back office, a red sweater hanging upside down on a clothesline across a Venetian canal, the bishop's red cap, the glass red-lined case in the bishop's study, the red candle on the bishop's bedroom mantelpiece; blood from the slashed neck of the murdered father, oozing down the wall
• the red flowers and red-capped Johnny on John's funeral barge

• a symbol of self-destructive obsession (Laura's illness, and John's bizarre visions)
• the swirling pattern of tiles in the church restoration's mosaic
• also reflected in the maze-like alleyways in Venice in which John and Laura often become lost
• and in the final sequence - the shape of the swirling foggy mist and the staircases that John ascends before his death
• omnipresent bridges in the film symbolize crossing over to the 'other side' (the afterlife), or being able to touch or connect (communicate), but are also barriers

• John misinterprets his daughter's play outside as harmless although it is deadly
• spoken Italian in the film is not subtitled for the film viewer
• there are Italian language barriers for John
• Heather communicates with the dead, not the living
• the call from the Headmaster about Johnny's fall is not clearly understood, so the Headmaster's wife completes the call
• arrangements for Laura's transport to the airport are in untranslated Italian
• John has difficulty speaking to two sunglasses-wearing Italian ladies in the pensione
• Laura is greeted at the airport by a misspelled sign: "Sig-ra Baster"
• directions during Laura's water-taxi trip from the airport are to the police station rather than to his hotel
• John miscommunicates to the red-garbed serial killer that he is a friend