| |
|
 Rosemary's Baby
(1968)
Director:
Roman Polanski
Stars: Mia Farrow, John Cassavetes, Ruth Gordon, Sidney Blackmer, Maurice Evans
Release Company:
Paramount
MPAA Rating: R
|
|
|
Roman Polanski, Rolling Stone no. 340, April 1981
Photographic Print
Allen, Julian
Buy at AllPosters.com
 
|
Rosemary's Baby begins innocently enough as a simple lullaby plays over the pink credits while the camera pans over the New York City skyline, finally panning downward on the Dakota Building on Manhattan's west side (named the Branford Building in the film). Back in 1968, only the gothic appearance and the knowledge that this story was based on Ira Levin's best selling book dealing with a Satanic cult would clue a viewer in that the story would take some bizarre twists and turns.
Some thirty years later, other external knowledge may give you even more of the creeps, as events have evolved. The Dakota Building is now more famous as the site where John Lennon was murdered. Director Roman Polanski has had a tragic history since the film was made with his famous wife being murdered by the Manson cult the following year and with his later conviction of having sexual relations with a minor.
While these incidents may lend to the mystique of Rosemary's Baby, plenty of material within the film help make it one of the better horror films in history. Ironically, for a film that is classified as horror, there is almost no actual blood, gore, or scary stuff onscreen. And that's the magic of Polanski's film, for the real terror is created in your mind.
Polanski actually wanted to make a film about skiing, and was tricked into directing Rosemary's Baby by producer Robert Evans who had been impressed with Polanski's work in The Fearless Vampire Killers. Evans tempted Polanski with doing a ski picture, but had him read the script for Rosemary's Baby, and the rest is history.
As in Chinatown, Polanski holds back the big secret until the last reel as he adds layers of suspicion and suspense continually. We begin with a young couple, a working class actor named Guy Woodhouse (John Cassavetes) and his wife Rosemary (Mia Farrow), in search of a Manhattan apartment. Naturally, they end up in the gothic one we see in the opening scene and are doing normal young couple things, like making love on the wooden floor before the furniture arrives.
There are a few clues that there may be dangers lurking at the old apartment building. An old friend, Hutch (Maurice Evans), tells the Woodhouses about a cannibalistic set of Trench sisters who once inhabited the place and about a prominent witch named Adrian Marcato who was murdered in the courtyard. And what about that heavy cabinet that the previous 80-year-old tenant had moved to block the vacuum closet?
The neighbors seem a bit bizarre too: strange chanting sounds come through the wall, and the outgoing and nosy Minnie Castevet (Ruth Gordon) and her husband Roman (Sidney Blackmer), who has countless favorite cities— "You name a place; I've been there." Immediately, the Woodhouses see far more of their eccentric neighbors than desired—at least far more than Rosemary wants to.
Rosemary gets pregnant on a night that she seems to be tripping on bad acid that may have dropped into her dessert. But this is no normal gestation period. Rosemary loses weight, cuts her hair to accentuate her paleness, and endures excruciating pain early in the pregnancy. Not only is the pregnancy bizarre but her husband seems more protective of the doctor than he is of his wife, and soon Rosemary suspects that there's a cult meeting in the apartment building that will sacrifice her baby like a modern day version of the Trent sisters. To reveal much more wouldn't be fair to readers who haven't seen this film yet.
Above all, credit Roman Polanski for his marvelous way of unfolding the narrative. The visualization of Levin's novel is all his doing. Polanski structures this film much like Hitchcock would by creating a continual sense of tension, causing the audience to pay close attention to each scene, for nothing is wasted. Unlike Hitch, Polanski does his own screenwriting here, and does a reasonable job.
Similar to Citizen Kane's "Rosebud", the audience is given a key with the strange tanis root first seen in a necklace—the unusual fungus will reappear during the plot. Polanski adds a touch of realism to some key scenes as he hired an expert consultant from the Church of Satan in exchange for allowing him to appear in a crucial scene.
Polanski constructed his film in an age that did not rely on Industrial Light and Magic for special effects. Much of the horror is created by film imagery on a different stock, by negative visual references to Catholicism, by disorienting hand-held cameras, and with a soundtrack that transforms the innocent lullaby to a haunting and shrieking abstractions. "This is not a dream! This is really happening!" Rosemary screams at one point. But is it, really?
Farrow carries this movie extremely well. She is a sympathetic character, and allows us inside her world so that we feel as she does all the way until that horrified look she gives us at the end. Those few seconds of sheer horror are now indelibly inscribed in my mind and are evoked whenever I hear her name or see her face.
Receiving a great deal of accolades is the incomparable Ruth Gordon, who won an Academy Award for supporting actress, always bringing Rosemary one of her desserts or tanis root milk mixes while playing adoptive mother to her unwilling daughter. Polanski has gathered an excellent ensemble cast for this film. A couple of special actors to look for—an uncredited Sharon Tate in the house party scene, and Tony Curtis' voice on the telephone as the actor who lost his sight.
While Polanski was looking for a hungry New York actor type to play Guy Woodhouse, Cassavetes comes across too harshly and remains unsympathetic in his role. Why would such a sweetheart like Rosemary marry such an unlovable creep? But perhaps the script is at fault here, as it focuses more on advancing its relentless final denouement than it does on developing a realistic husband and wife scenario (other than the initial brief lovemaking on the wooden floors of the unfurnished apartment). They do attempt to cover this up with references to him being so obsessed with his career and not paying attention to Rosemary, yet each time the script has him run over to the neighbors to share their secrets. This just struck me as a bit too much.
That's my only quibble with this movie though, and I do admire its craftsmanship. I remember being properly freaked out by Rosemary's Baby when I first saw it in 1968, and the film stayed with me for quite a while. Although Polanski's film didn't cause me any temporary phobias like Psycho (fear of showering in motel rooms), it did make me aware of weird cults. I enjoyed it enough to purchase a video in the 1990s, which I just upgraded to a DVD recently. So, at a gut level, I can recommend Rosemary's Baby. Horror fans shouldn't expect a high amount of on screen gross out material because the horror primarily happens within. Often that's the best kind. Happy dreams!
|
|
|
|
