Editor’s Note: Feeling like you need relief from the sweltering summer heat? Freeline Media critic Mike Fried is encouraging you to get some much needed chills by watching a classic horror movie that opened in the summer of 1968. Read on!
By MIKE FRIED
Rosemary’s Baby
4.5/5
So, Rosemary and Guy Woodhouse are looking for an apartment and they check out one in the Bramford, an old gothic building with a history (and which looks suspiciously like the Dakota). They decide to take it.
Big Mistake.
Rosemary and Guy make friends with the nice elderly couple next door, Minnie and Roman Castavet. Despite his initial reluctance and Rosemary’s initial enthusiasm, Guy enjoys their company and Rosemary grows suspicious. After a while Rosemary becomes pregnant. And then things get weird.
What makes this movie so relevant is that anyone who has lived in an apartment house has neighbors they become friends with, reluctantly, but who are seemingly nosy busybodies. When I first got married, there was an elderly woman who lived in the apartment next to me and she was constantly coming over looking for me to join her in a bourbon (or two or three). Ok, she didn’t have to twist my arm. And that’s where my bourbon fetish began.
But I digress.
What makes this movie work for me are the performances by Sidney Blackmer and — especially — Ruth Gordon, whose Oscar winning performance still enthralls nearly 60 years later, as Roman and Minnie. Minnie has no compunction about barging in with a friend of hers and sitting down to knit. She commands your attention in every scene she inhabits.
Mia Farrow, whom I usually do not like, gives her first best performance (her second was in Broadway Danny Rose) as Rosemary and is absolutely chilling in her fright; it is wholly believable. She’s the picture of innocence and as her pregnancy progresses her facade crumbles. While this is a horror film, it is more like psychological horror and a lot of that is due to Farrow’s performance. The movie could be called Rosemary’s Paranoia instead of Rosemary’s Baby.
What else works so well is the fact that nearly 90% of the movie takes place indoors, and a lot of that is in darkness or shade which increases the tension by upping the sense of claustrophobia. Roman Polanski’s direction, which has many long-take, unbroken shots, coupled with Dick Sylbert’s very New Yorkish production design, make this a wonderful exercise in horror. It’s their apartment and they’ve made it homey … but something is off. For me, part of that is apartment living. I’ve always preferred a house. But the Krzysztof Komeda score really heightens the tension and is as memorable as any of the classical music that Kubrick used in The Shining (as interpreted by Wendy Carlos). Absolutely chilling, especially the opening lullaby.
Polanski gets the best out of his actors and the supporting cast is tremendous. Whether it’s the doubting Maurice Evans as family friend Hutch or Ralph Bellamy as the suspicious obstetrician Dr. Sapirstein, or Charles Grodin as Rosemary’s first doctor … or anyone else in the Castavet Circle, everyone in the cast gives it their all, even Tony Curtis. Yes I said Tony Curtis, and if you don’t know who he is in the movie that is your problem. Also, Patsy Kelly sticking her tongue out at Rosemary is just a perfect touch.
The makeup that ensures Rosemary look as though she is losing weight as her pregnancy progresses gives the film an eerie patina.
Polanski’s script is the strongest thing about the movie. His adaptation of Ira Levin’s novel is extraordinary because he is faithful to the source material but he also takes care to take out the unnecessary material. For example, there are sections of the book where Rosemary talks to her siblings and these were excised — and rightly so, since they would have cut into the pacing. He was even quite specific on minutiae from the novel that it served him well. For example, the mustache that Grodin’s doctor has toward the end of the movie is unnecessary, but it is in the novel. The same with the different colored lids on suspicious custard that Minnie gives them to eat.
The weakest link is — and I can’t believe I’m saying this — John Cassavettes. Hey, don’t get me wrong, he’s fine as Guy (who names their kid, Guy, anyway?) and he turns in a terrific performance. His gradual move to the dark side is great to watch but every time I view this movie, I get the feeling that he just didn’t want to be there, as if he was looking for another directing project after the release of Faces.
Probably the most incredible thing about this movie is that it was produced by William Castle, he of the movie gimmick (see The Tingler). In a last gasp for respectability, Castle bought the movie rights to the novel and hoped to direct a prestige picture; however, producer Robert Evans was adamant that it be Polanski because of Castle’s B-movie reputation. Nevertheless, Castle did make a prestige picture even if he was only the producer, and he has a hell of a Hitchcock-type cameo.
It is just a terrific picture that works and rewards repeated viewings. The last 25 minutes are chilling.
WATCH IT!
Michael Fried has no formal training in movies, except having watched over 26,000+ movies — if not more — in his 60-plus years on this planet, starting with Goldfinger as his first cinema experience. He knows what he likes and he knows what he doesn’t like, and it’s quite often different from the conventional wisdom. He knows that the best franchise is Godzilla and he loves action movies and comedies. He has not been nominated for any awards except some boring insurance awards which has no applicability to movies (with the possible exceptions of Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity and John Cassavettes’ Big Trouble). He is part of a team that won the 1980 SUNY Albany Trivia content by correctly guessing the question, “Who played the president of Klopstockia in Million Dollar Legs?” So he has that going for him, which is nice.
Contact Mike at moviemike3@gmail.com
