The Year is One

ROSEMARY'S BABY (1968)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

If schlocky horror director William Castle ("House on Haunted Hill") had directed Ira Levin's bestseller "Rosemary's Baby," it would have had minor shock effects and some scare tactics. It might even have included a hovering demon baby and black carriage in the theater! Such is the style of Castle (who appears briefly in a phone booth scene) and the difference is lucidly demonstrated in Roman Polanski's adaptation and direction of this chilling, slow-paced horror film - a distinguished classic in a genre that has been cheapened in the ensuing years by gore and more schlock.

"Rosemary's Baby" begins in New York City where a couple, Guy and Rosemary Woodhouse (respectively played by the late John Cassevettes and Mia Farrow) rent a high-rise apartment at the Dakota. They are introduced to their new home by the superintendent (wonderfully played by Elisha Cook, Jr.). Things go wrong from the get-go. There is a dresser obscuring a closet, voices and chants are heard, various shadows are seen on walls, a young woman is found dead in the street, and so on. The dead woman, a runaway, had lived with the next-door neighbors, the Castavetts, who adopted her. The Woodhouse couple meet the next-door neighbors for dinner as a sign of respect, an affable old couple who dress in loud outfits, Roman and Minnie Castavett (Sidney Blackmer and Ruth Gordon). They are talkative, nosy people and have conflicting opinions about Catholicism and the Pope. As they talk over dinner, the wise Roman curiously remembers Guy's supporting role in the play "Luther": 'I was struck by a gesture you made. It had a wonderful sense of authenticity'. Roman also seems to have been a former businessman who has travelled all around the world. Minnie is simply nosy, and almost every time she appears, Beethoven's "Fur Elise" is playing in some tenant's piano.

While the film progresses, there is a growing feeling of something unnatural about to take place. Rosemary undergoes physical and emotional changes in her character, from cropping her hair in a "Vidal Sassoon" style to getting pregnant. Her pregnancy is handled by two different doctors: one is Dr. Hill (Charles Grodin), a "Charlie nobody" as Guy calls him, and there is the renown Dr. Saperstein (Ralph Bellamy) who prescribes herbal drinks and tanis root for Rosemary. Meanwhile, Rosemary's husband Guy grows distant while successfully landing numerous acting jobs, though he occasionally brings her flowers as a sign of love. Her good family friend, Hutch (Maurice Evans), discovers that her neighbors are in fact part of a coven of witches. That could explain the scratches on Rosemary's back and some of her weird dreams where she is raped by Satan! Slowly, Rosemary begins to believe that the Castavetts are after her unborn baby.

Polanski places a great deal of ambiguity in "Rosemary's Baby" making us feel as though Rosemary is simply paranoid and is imagining that there is a conspiracy, and that her husband is one of the conspirators. There is a sense of unease and unseen menace in the film thanks to Roman's claustrophobic direction and cinematographer William Fraker's disorienting compositions (my favorite being the hallway shot of Minnie making a phone call to Dr. Saperstein, showing that she is partially obscured by the entrance door to the bedroom so that we never see her face). Throughout the film, we are never sure if the supposed coven of witches mean well or if they intend to do harm - could they care a little too much about Rosemary? Is Guy's stoic demeanor a sign that something is wrong? Could Hutch's suspicious be erroneous? Or is Rosemary going crazy a la Catherine Deneuve's similar state of paranoia in Polanski's nightmarish "Repulsion"?

"Rosemary's Baby" was reviled by Catholic groups back in 1968, condemned for its view of Satanism (maybe the shot of the Time magazine cover with the "God is Dead" title did not help). Otherwise, it was critically well-received and placed Roman on the star director map leading to many more Hollywood offers. After more than forty years, "Rosemary's Baby" still retains its implicit power of genuine forces of evil unseen by Rosemary's eye, including the famous final sequence which still rattles the nerves. For its unnerving sense of doom and menace coupled with sharp doses of black humor, you can do no better than this baby. This is Polanski at his devilish best.