Pros: Credit Polanski with his suspenseful plot structure, Great acting by Farrow and Gordon especially, Effective ensemble cast, Appropriate soundtrack and nice camerawork
Cons: Some of Cassavetes work seems a bit over the top obnoxious
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 have been the only clues that the story would take some bizarre twists and turns.
Some thirty years later, other external knowledge may give you even more creeps before the movie plays in your VCR or DVD player, as events have evolved. The Dakota Building is now more famous as the site where John Lennon was murdered, and 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, there is plenty of material within the film to rank it among the better horror films in history. Ironically, for a film that is classified as a horror film, there is almost no actual blood, gore, and scary stuff on the screen. 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.
Synopsis
Like Chinatown, Polanski holds back the big “secret” until the last part of the film 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. Of course 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. We hear strange chanting sounds through the wall, and soon we meet 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 they want to – at least far more than Rosemary wants to.
Rosemary gets pregnant on a night that she seems to be tripping on some kind of bad acid that must have dropped into her dessert. But this is no normal pregnancy. 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, so I won’t dispense any more of the plot here.
What works
Above all, we must credit Roman Polanski for his marvelous way of unfolding the narrative, and 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, and 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.
Like Citizen Kane we are given a “key” with the strange tanis root we first see in a necklace, and will come across it a number of times as the plot unfolds, making sense as we arrive at the final chilling scene. 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 the expert to appear in a crucial scene.
We must realize that Polanski is constructing his film in an age that could not rely on Industrial Light and Magic for special effects. Much of the horror we feel during certain scenes are created by film imagery on a different stock, by negative visual references to Catholicism, to disorienting hand held cameras, and to 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 as the nosy neighbor, who is 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 I realize that Polanski was looking for a hungry New York actor type to play Guy Woodhouse, I feel that Cassavetes is too harsh and unsympathetic in his role. The first time I saw it, early on I couldn’t understand why such a sweetheart like Rosemary would 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. 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. I remember being properly freaked out by Rosemary’s Baby when I first saw it in 1968. It also stayed with me for quite a while, and although it didn’t cause me any phobias like Psycho did, it did make me aware of weird cults. I enjoyed it enough to purchase a video in the 1990’s, which I just upgraded to a DVD last week. So, at a gut level, I know that I can recommend Rosemary’s Baby, and I know that I enjoy its craftsmanship.
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.
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