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Movie titles are made in image of the movie. Therefore, before seeing Jaws, you assume it’s a thriller (I’m thinking you picked it up in the Thriller section of your video store) about someone or something with a massive pair of jaws (that is, if you’re a complete idiot and have never heard of this movie, and completely disregard the gigantic shark on the video jacket). Therefore, one could assume that a thriller called Rosemary’s Baby would be about a killer, satanical baby (much like the one in Dead Alive). So imagine the average teenager’s (or mildly immature adult’s) surprise when they see that the movie is not a slasher movie, that only one death appears on-screen (and even then…), and that the baby is never shown. Unthinkable!

Rosemary and Guy Woodhouse (Mia Farrow and John Cassavetes) are the typical young couple; they don’t have much money (he’s a struggling theatre actor) but they have life ahead of them. They buy an apartment in New York and move in next to the Castavets, a strange but seemingly harmless couple. Guy and Roman (Sidney Blackmer) really hit it off, but Rosemary is creeped out by Minnie (Ruth Gordon). Minnie is always after Rosemary, always talking to her and always butting in. One evening, as Guy and Rosemary are having a romantic dinner (which they both hope will end up in bed, so that they can become pregnant), Minnie drops off some chocolate mousse. Guy likes it, but Rosemary thinks it tastes like chalk, so she chows down half of it and disposes of the rest. What ensues is a very disturbing scene in which Satan rapes Rosemary on a yacht. Soon enough, Rosemary is impregnated. As can be guessed after being raped by the devil, that kid won’t be right. Rosemary begins to suspect that her entourage is to blame for this.

Rosemary’s Baby is one of those thrillers that show absolutely nothing. I’m sure a lot of people (that I probably know in some form) are groaning. “We want stabbings!” you say. I’d be lying if I said that Rosemary’s Baby wasn’t scary, because it is. Somewhere, someone has decided to associate fear with violence (I’d blame Hitchcock, but his movies are too good to be blamed) and now modern society is paying the price with stuff like Dracula 2000 and Urban Legend. Violence can be scary if done right, but I’ve come to believe that movies who make us imagine the terror are much better (Blair Witch nonwithstanding). So indeed, Rosemary’s Baby is scary. You won’t jump out of your seat (except perhaps in the scene where Ruth Gordon comes very, very close to having a nude scene…yech!) but the film has the quality of creeping under your skin and playing ping-pong with your brain. The music is typical late 60’s stuff. It most sounds like someone throwing marbles in a soup can, but in most scenes it actually works very well, coordinating with the performances.
The movie is filmed almost exclusively in close-ups or cramped corners. In some films this proves to be distracting, but Rosemary’s Baby has a way of disguising this so that it isn’t blindingly obvious. Polanski’s movies are almost exclusively thrillers/horror (with The Fearless Vampire Killers being a notable exception) and are generally filmed in the same way. This is no exception.

Speaking of Polanski, I couldn’t help but be disturbed by this movie’s relation with his personal life. A scant year after the movie was released, Polanski’s wife, Sharon Tate (who appears unbilled in the movie, no less) was murdered in her Hollywood home by Satanic hippie Charles Manson. Tate was pregnant. There is no direct relation with this and the movie, but it just seems eerie to me. I mean, some of the first hypotheses (over a year before they found out the real motive of the crime, something about The Beatles) was that someone was indeed rewriting the movie in their own sick way. Tate’s stomach had been slashed open and the baby was exposed. Polanski later dedicated a movie, Tess, to his wife.

Mia Farrow is best known for being Woody Allen’s wife (and adoptive mother of Allen’s girlfriend… ugh) and for being hopelessly skinny. Farrow comes off very well as the suffering Rosemary. Her eyes alone express half of what she’s going through. John Cassavetes was probably a better director than actor, but he has given some incredible performances in his life. This is widely regarded as one of them, and I’d be hard-pressed to disagree if it wasn’t for the the last third of the movie. Technically, there’s nothing wrong with it. It’s just as tight and atmospheric as the rest of the film, except Cassavetes is a huge prick. He’s a huge, annoying prick and I wanted to poke his eyes out. I guess that’s a good thing. Ruth Gordon (Maude from Harold & Maude) is delightful in her Oscar-winning role. Gordon was as underrated an actress as she could possibly have been. Here she comes off as likeable but annoying but as always she is a delight to watch. Sidney Blackmer is pretty good in a role that required him to have piercing eyes. Honestly I don’t see much of his piercing eyes but Blackmer is good nonetheless. If you’re a cameo spotter look for Charles Grodin as Dr. Hill, Sharon Tate as one of Rosemary’s friends, cigar-chomping B-movie mogul William Castle as the guy who waits outside the phone booth and Tony Curtis as a voice on the phone.

Rosemary’s Baby is psychological horror and in the end it comes down to “you like it or you don’t”. I liked it. A lot. I can’t guarantee you will (if you enjoyed Prom Night II on anything but a b-movie level, you won’t) but it costs nothing (or about a buck, if you rent it) to try.

It's been 33 years, and no one has topped it. I mean, come on: The Astronaut's Wife, The Devil's Advocate... hardly A-list material. Classic.

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originally posted: 10/27/01 10:40:14
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