With all the attention, controversy and press (both positive and negative) Roman Polanski has received of late due to the windfall success of his Holocaust drama The Pianist, I felt it was appropriate to revisit one of his greatest...and creepiest...filmmaking achievements.
Originally released in 1968 at the height of the "flower power/hippie" movement in the US, Rosemary's Baby undeniably contains an eerie subtext of vast social significance, and I'm going to explore some of that. So, I'm going to break from the norm a little for this review. First, I'm going to discuss the relative merits of Rosemary's Baby and discuss why it's such a wonderful and important horror film, and then I'm going to begin to dissect why it's such a generally important film (regardless of genre) in the context of social significance.
The underlying theme...just so you know...is that there just aren't too many horror films that generate true scares for me. It's a very short list, and it's one that includes Rosemary's Baby. Every scrap of celluloid just oozes fear, loathing, and most importantly, paranoia. Paranoia, that most common of themes in Polanski's films (e.g. Repulsion, The Tenant), doesn't just make a quick visit to the party. It arrives early, gets all liquored up, and sets up camp, never to be removed until the final, disquieting frames of the film have flickered, and not until that haunting, simple lullaby has been sung once more.
The synopsis...
Guy (John Cassavetes) and Rosemary (Mia Farrow) Woodhouse are a young, happenin' couple living in New York; Guy a struggling actor and Rosemary his devoted, naive housewife. Despite some financial woes, Guy and Rosemary plan on having a baby, and begin looking for an apartment that is better suited to their needs. They find a unit in the "Bramford" that seems almost too good to be true; it's friggin' huge, it's convenient to the theatres where Guy has sporadic roles, and it's theirs for a surprisingly low rent. The unit was, until very recently, occupied by a strange old woman named Mrs. Gardenia, who kept an odd herb garden in the apartment, and who apparently died after suddenly slipping into a strange illness. Furthermore, Guy and Rosemary's elderly friend (and current landlord) Edward "Hutch" Hutchins (Maurice Evans) warns the couple that the "Bram" has more than its share violence and creepy occurences in its long history, including housing the infamous "Trench Sisters" who conducted arcane experiments involving human babies, and other equally-notorious residents who may or may not have been involved in occult practices during the heyday of "spriritualism" around the turn of the century. Fascinated but undeterred, Guy and Rosemary move in to their huge new apartment. Before long, Rosemary meets another resident...a troubled young woman named Terry (Victoria Vetri). Terry explains that she has been living with an old couple...the Castavet's (who happen to live in the apartment that adjoins to Rosemary and Guy's)...who helped her through some truly rough times and act as surrogate parents for her. Touched by Terry's story, and craving companionship (since Guy is off auditioning quite frequently), Rosemary starts a friendship with Terry. Alas, the very next night, when Guy and Rosemary are on their way home from dinner, they notice a commotion outside their new building. Terry has committed suicide by jumping from the seventh-floor window of the Castavets' apartment. As the two stare in shock, their neighbors (and Terry's former "guardians") the gaudily-dressed but elegant Roman (Sidney Blackmer) and Minnie (Ruth Goron) Castavet stroll up. In a state of disbelief, Roman and Minnie listen to the police as he reads an excerpt from Terry's "suicide note". Saddened and compelled to "do the right thing", Rosemary mentions that Terry had nothing but nice things to say about the Castavet's. Shocked, and more than a little bit confused, Rosemary and Guy call it a night. The next morning, Minnie pays Rosemary a visit to thank Rosemary for her kind words, and to invite her and Guy to dinner that evening. Somewhat hesitantly, she agrees, and soon, Guy and Rosemary strike up a friendship with the elderly couple. In particular, Guy seems fascinated by the well-traveled Roman's stories and recollections. Rosemary starts to get a bit annoyed, as Guy starts spending a lot of time...too much time...over at the Castavet's place. But, it's pretty much business as usual, as the four become fast friends...the Castavet's becoming almost "surrogate grandparents" for the young couple. After a strange dream, wherein she is "raped" by a bestial figure, Rosemary discovers to her elation that she is finally pregnant! What's more, Guy is suddenly a "hot property" for stage and screen, and is offered lucrative roles left and right. Everything seems to be coming up roses for the young couple, and though Rosemary should be as happy as can be, there's something oddly amiss that she can't quite put her finger on. For starters, she's losing weight...like an alarming amount of weight, so much so that her friends start to worry about her health. Then there's Guy, who seems to grow more distant by the day. Plus, having Minnie hounding her every second of the day just makes matters worse. Then, because of some arcane references that Hutch makes (who promptly falls into an inexplicable coma), she starts to suspect that Roman and Minnie, other residents of the "Bram", her doctor (recommended to her by the Castavet's, of course), and even Guy are all part of some diabolical plot to take her baby for, shall we say, nefarious purposes. Is she, as everyone seems to suggest, just suffering from per-partum depression? Is she imagining the whole thing? Or, are her deepest, most sacred beliefs about to be challenged in the most horrible ways possible?
Indeed, Rosemary's beliefs are very much at the core of Rosemary's Baby...so much so that the film could have been subtitled "A Good Catholic Girl Has A Crisis Of Faith". Based on the novel of the same name by Ira Levin, Polanksi had the good sense to keep his screenplay as faithful to the source as possible. In fact, it's almost a page-for-page copy...something that only adds to the charm of the film. The book starts out, as has often been said, like a "soap opera". So does the movie. Alternately, you could say that the movie starts out like an old Doris Day romantic comedy, with Rosemary, Guy, and Mr. Nicklas (Elisha Cook, Jr.) touring the apartment and trading subtly witty barbs back and forth. In the book as in the movie, this light, casual interplay sets the tone for the first movement of the story, and helps add extra "oomph" to the latter parts of the story. Polanksi is free to explore the themes of isolation and questions of faith moreso than was Levin, and to great effect. Rosemary is, at heart, a good, midwestern girl (from Iowa, if I recall) who, much to the chagrin of her idealistic Roman Catholic family, first co-habitates with (out of wedlock) and then marries a Jew. Early in the film, when Roman and Minnie lightly quiz Rosemary regarding her faith in the Pope, "You aren't religious, are you my dear?", she can only try to hide her nervous disdain and reply, "Well, I was brought up a Catholic, but now, I don't know..." She's a girl who has more or less tried to abandon her religious upbringing, but damn it all if it doesn't nag her and follow her wherever she goes. Later in the story, when everything she knows (or thinks she knows) and everything she's been raised to believe is called into serious question, she makes a brief, half-hearted attempt to "reconnect" with her family (in a frenzied phone call to her sister), but even then, it's no use. In a symbolic, if not purely literal sense, she's given up on god, so god gives up on her. During the height of the book's popularity and shortly before principle photography began on the film, "Time" Magazine ran a cover story that boldly raised the question, "Is God Dead?" Well, in this story, not only is god dead, but he's been replaced by something rather different, and not altogether benevolent (an interesting footnote: at least one character in Rosemary's Baby can be seen reading or holding that very issue of "Time"). The ramifications are boundless and somewhat disturbing.
Rosemary's Baby also holds a deeper social significance. It arrived at a time when America was getting more than a bit fed-up with the whole "peace, love, and drugs" phenomenon (but just a bit before the official end of that era...the Manson Family murders of, among others, Roman Polanski's own wife Sharon Tate, in an odd bit of fate). Ira Levin's novel was rich with subtext, but it took Polanski's unique vision to weave that extra bit of subtext into an already rich tapestry of socially significant terror. Rosemary's Baby, intentionally or not, perfectly captured two particularly potent bits of zeitgeist; the fear of what children were becoming (because of involvement in the "hippie" movement) and the fear of mutation or deformity as sparked by the Thalidomide scare (for those of you who aren't "in the know", Thalidomide was a highly controversial and hugely popular drug designed to make pregnancy and childbirth less painful for the expectant mother, but which was found to have ghastly side effects on many, many foetusae..often in the form of flipper-like appendages, deformed skulls, and severe brain damage...hence the term "Thalidomide baby"). So, here we have Rosemary...a "typical" young American bride, who may or may not be about to give birth to a baby of highly questionable...if not diabolic...origin (read as "deformed" or "unnatural"). Middle America didn't know what to make of it, but they knew it scared the bejeezus out of them, so the film (and the novel before it) was wildly successful, making Polanski (who had been all but unknown to American audiences) an overnight sensation, which was in no small way responsible for the financial success and "position" that would make his wife Sharon such a tragic and representative target for the Manson Family a short time later. So, hindsight is twenty/twenty, as the saying goes, and with that hindsight, Rosemary's Baby became even more successful and even notorious than perhaps might have happened in a different country, or at a slightly different time. Rosemary represented the American "every-girl", who, in the mind of most audiences, might have made some highly questionable decisions (re living with a man out of wedlock, marrying a Jew, cutting her hair [symbolically] as an act of acceptance of the counterculture) but who was mostly undeserving of the horrors that befell her as a "result".
Beyond all of the symbolism and social significance (much of which has, admittedly, been projected onto the film over the years), Rosemary's Baby just plain works as a horror film. It's scary. It's unnerving. It's creepy. It's exceptionally well-made. On a long list of aspects that just "work", the performances are certainly near the top. Mia Farrow as Rosemary (in her first major role...she had previously appeared on the long-running soap opera Peyton Place) was absolutely perfect casting. She has the necessary waif-ish quality, and she slides from naive hausfrau to harrowed expectant mother to paranoia-stricken but strong-willed woman with startling ease. John Cassavetes is great as Guy...he exhibits the charm and wit that keep his character from being a totally villainous swine. Everyone else does an able job, but Ruth Gordon as Minnie Castevet just about steals the show. She starts out being the penultimate "nosy neighbor", mercilessly sticking her nose in everyone's business, but ends up being so much more. It's a nuanced, powerful performance, for which Gordon won a richly-deserved Best Supporting Actress Oscar. Likewise, Polanski's direction is assured, and he makes clever use of setting and framing to make the Bramford itself a character in its own right. Notice in many sequences how windows are strategically placed to act as "eyes", constantly watching Rosemary. It's as if the ancient apartment house is "spying" on her every move...and it's downright creepy and unsettling. Effective, too, is the score...particularly the opening and closing themes that echo a gentle but disturbing lullaby. This is the "real deal", folks...and it set the standard against which all subsequent "Satanic Menace" films are (and will always be) judged.
Paramount's release of Rosemary's Babyis fine, if not perfect. The transfer...anamorphic widescreen...faithfully reproduces the color and interplay of light and shadow that Polanski so carefully employed, with a minimum of grain and virtually no artifacts. The sound is straight-up mono for you audio purists out there...it's unremarkable, but it gets the job done nicely. There are only two extras of note included here, the first being a "retrospective" piece comprised of interviews with several key players involved in the production of Rosemary's Baby. The real gem here is a "making of" featurette that was made while the film itself was in production. There are several interesting aspects to this piece; first and foremost is that the piece was produced when this kind of featurette was exceedingly rare. It's as if everyone concerned was fully aware of how great and important a production they were involved with. Secondly, the piece features a startling and extremely sad shot that shows Sharon Tate visiting Polanski on-set, where they kiss and carry on like the sweet married couple they no-doubt were. It's a telling moment that is given deeper, more terrifying significance by the tragic events that would later tear the couple apart. And that's it...it would be a wonderful treat to hear a commentary from Polanski, or even Farrow, but alas, it wasn't meant to be, it seems. Perhaps a later edition will shed yet more light on this profoundly important and influential film. In the meantime, we're just going to have to let the film speak for itself...something that Rosemary's Baby does with true, uninhibited skill.
Rosemary's Baby is such a damned perfect horror film...so rich in cultural and religious significance...that it has taken its rightful place on the throne among the best the genre has ever had to offer. Therefore, it gets the unreserved Atrocities Cinema Essential Award. Do yourself a favor...if you haven't seen it yet, give Rosemary's Baby more than a passing shot. You'll be happy you did.
With all the attention, controversy and press (both positive and negative) Roman Polanski has received of late due to the windfall success of his Holocaust drama The Pianist, I felt it was appropriate to revisit one of his greatest...and creepiest...filmmaking achievements.
Originally released in 1968 at the height of the "flower power/hippie" movement in the US, Rosemary's Baby undeniably contains an eerie subtext of vast social significance, and I'm going to explore some of that. So, I'm going to break from the norm a little for this review. First, I'm going to discuss the relative merits of Rosemary's Baby and discuss why it's such a wonderful and important horror film, and then I'm going to begin to dissect why it's such a generally important film (regardless of genre) in the context of social significance.
The underlying theme...just so you know...is that there just aren't too many horror films that generate true scares for me. It's a very short list, and it's one that includes Rosemary's Baby. Every scrap of celluloid just oozes fear, loathing, and most importantly, paranoia. Paranoia, that most common of themes in Polanski's films (e.g. Repulsion, The Tenant), doesn't just make a quick visit to the party. It arrives early, gets all liquored up, and sets up camp, never to be removed until the final, disquieting frames of the film have flickered, and not until that haunting, simple lullaby has been sung once more.
