A young couple, Rosemary (Mia Farrow) and Guy Woodhouse (John Cassavetes) move into an old gloomy Manhattan apartment. They meet their friendly but kind of imposing, not to mention weird, new neighbors. At first everything seems to be fine but gradually Guy becomes a bit too fond of his new friends and the way he treats his wife begins to change. A woman Rosemary bumps into in the laundry room gives her a stinky neckless after they talk for a while. The woman ends up committing a suicide. Rosemary sees strange dreams. Then one day they learn that she is pregnant. Things keep getting darker and stranger.
There is something so gothic about this film; the tone, the music, the building, the colors; I can’t quite pinpoint but it is something that anybody who is familiar with Roman Polanski’s style, especially his early work, will know what I’m talking about. Although the film starts as a jolly sixties movie it smoothly turns into something else. The viewer is given clues and impressions constantly but never the absolute truth; he/she has to participate in a way to figure out what is going on in the story; are there only hallucinations or is there something evil and perhaps even supernatural that’s taking place? It’s slow but brilliant for a viewer who is not in too much of a hurry to appreciate a great piece of art.
This is Polanski’s first movie in United States. It is the second of his so called “Apartment Trilogy”; the others being “Repulsion” (1965) and “The Tenant” (1976). According to the interviews he gave throughout the years it was a shaky start. He was behind the schedule and didn’t know how that would be taken by the company executives; would his movie career in U.S. end before it even began? Lucky for him things turned out well and not only it turned out to be a hit but also had a groundbreaking effect. Yes there were horror movies made before but “Rosemary’s Baby” was very realistic in many ways; so much so that it was extremely disturbing although a younger film buff who has probably seen tens or even hundreds of movies that were influenced by this one and directors of which probably tried to raise the ante in terms of fright might not agree, if one would tried to judge it through the eyes of an ordinary movie goer or even a critic of its time he/she must admit that it must’ve been quiet a thriller.
Acting is brilliant; especially by Mia Farrow who apparently ended up breaking up her marriage with Frank Sinatra who was dead against her being in this movie. I’m a huge John Cassavetes fan; the man, even when he wasn’t doing much brought out some kind of an energy into every scene he was in; it’s almost as if he never acted, he just became the character; same goes for this one as well. But being a director himself apparently he hadn’t always seen eye to eye with Roman Polanski and they had some difficulties making this film.
The clothes and the way the building looks takes me back to my childhood; when I was 4 or 5 years old if you could believe it. I grew up in an old apartment building; the corridors were dark and the light buttons were so high that I couldn’t reach them. We lived on the 3rd floor. After playing outside with my friends when I needed to come home or just to visit the bathroom it was always a challenge. We didn’t have any elevator so I had to climb the stairs in the dark. There was a small window on the 2nd floor but that didn’t help much; if anything it made everything look even scarier. My only solutions were either wait until an adult or at least someone older, and taller, who would turn on the light or bite the bullet and run as fast as I could so I would be at our apartment door in no time. The latter sometimes ended up with me falling and hitting my forehead somewhere solid; luckily no blood was ever shed though.
G.R.Senn
