Rosemary's Baby

 I must have seen Roman Polanski's Rosemary's Baby at a drive-in movie theater around 1970 or 1971.  (The movie based on a big bestseller by Ira Levin was released in 1968).  I recall a single shot from the film, a languorous tilt down into the sepulchral cradle in which Rosemary's baby is apparently resting -- the shot dissolves before the infant can be seen, melting into an image of labyrinthine dormers, pointy roofs and the gloomy chimneys of the Dakota apartments.  That image must have made a deep impression on me because I have remembered it for more than 50 years -- the rest of the film, like that shot, had dissolved in my imagination without leaving a trace. 

Rosemary's Baby is very well-scripted, brilliantly acted, and, rather, slow.  It isn't frightening in any way.  Contemporary audiences have been damaged, and their attention span eroded, by the popular cinema spearheaded by Steven Spielberg, thrill a minute movies with bravura set pieces every fifteen minutes and periodic explosions of gore.  Rosemary's Baby is leisurely paced, brooding and ominous, but not particularly horrible -- in fact, viewed in a certain light, the picture has aspects of campy comedy.  It's a serious endeavor as witness the superb acting that Polanski wrests from his cast, an ensemble mostly comprised of very experienced and accomplished Hollywood and Broadway character actors. Hollywood now attempts to gross you out or thrill you every few minutes -- Polanski develops his effects over the entire running time of the movie; it's all of a piece and, ultimately, quite disturbing, but, nonetheless, a civilized entertainment.  

A young couple move into a sinister haunted house of a cooperative, the Dakota although called the "Bramford" in the film.  Their next door neighbors are a much older couple, portrayed as wacky eccentrics, although, in fact, they turn out to be the leaders of a coven of Satanists.  There's an inexplicable suicide -- a happy-go-lucky former drug addict (now in recovery) hurls herself out of a seventh story window.  She is a protegee of the Satanist couple who are, at first, presented like sit-com comic relief.  Ruth Gordon plays the neighbor, Minnie Castevets (she won an Oscar for the role) and she is probably the best thing in the movie, although all the performances are very good.  She seems to be a good-natured, officious ding-bat (to use Archie Bunker's locution) and, although there are sinister aspects to her character she retains that aspect up to the end of the movie -- she is obviously upset when Rosemary drops a knife that mars the hardwood surface of one of her floors and, while the coven are admiring the infant Satan, she serves the heroine a steaming cup -- "what's in it?" Rosemary demands; "it's just Lipton tea," the old woman replies.  Dressed like a flower-child, Minnie is weirdly helpful and accommodating but, of course, this is part of the coven's plot to have Rosemary impregnated by the devil and, then, bear his spawn.  Minnie's husband, Roman, is played by an accomplished Broadway actor with a deep mellifluous voice, a performer named Sydney Blackmer, and he's a suave, courtly old gent who happens to be a sort of traveling agent for the devil.  The coven, in general, are comprised of professional people and their dour wives; they're nondescript appearance and, generally, inoffensive manners are similar to the rather bourgeois satanists in the great Val Lewton horror film, The Seventh Victim -- this is a group of devil-worshipers who also have the mildly irritating aspect of overly intrusive and bitchy next door neighbors.  Evil is, indeed, wholly banal as portrayed in Polanski's film.  Mostly, the picture is about acting -- John Cassavetes is also very effective as a struggling theatrical actor who has done a few commercials and is willing to make a Faustian bargain to advance his career -- his rival goes blind after being cast in a role for which Cassavetes' character, Guy, was vying.  Of course, it's sorcery and Rosemary's baby is the quid pro quo.  Cassavetes is sinister in a darkly handsome manner -- like many actors, he is obviously highly self-centered and ruthless with respect to his thespian ambitions.  Mia Farrow plays Rosemary.  She is also excellent.  She embodies three aspects of the character's pregnancy:  anxiety as to the conception of her child (as a result of a rape by the devil), haggard misery during the first trimester while she endures terrible pain (Polanski, who knows about these things, cuts off her hair and films her like a gaunt concentration camp inmate), and, at last, a frenzy of vigorous paranoia at the climax of the film in which she tries to save her unborn child from the coven's clutches.  This section of the movie is very effective -- Rosemary is surrounded by a conspiracy of witches and those who are not part of the cabal interpret her pleas for help as evidence of mental illness.  The picture resembles Polanski's 1965 horror movie, Repulsion, in which Catherine Deneuve descends into murderous insanity -- Polanski uses the same devices and ambiguity to keep his audience guessing whether Rosemary and her pregnancy are, in fact, at the center of a vast, lethal conspiracy or whether she has simply lost her mind.  The movie is at its best when it is most suggestive -- for instance, many of the aspects of the cabal are not really spelled-out, the motives of the Satanists are generally left obscure, and we never see the devil baby.  As with Val Lewton, whose spirit inhabits this movie, things that are unsaid or unseen are scarier in their implications than anything that is baldly and directly depicted.  This is a very good movie, but too slow for modern audiences -- you have to attend to the implications of the action and dialogue and the film's focus is on the fine performances that it showcases.  There's no gore, no jump-scares, no bloody confrontations.  The horror is metaphysical in nature, anxiety about sex and reproduction and how our bodies trick us into doing things that we would never rationally attempt.  There's a cameo by Tony Curtis, but he never appears before the camera -- he plays the part of Cassavetes' acting rival who goes blind, a voice on the phone speaking with Mia Farrow.  (Apparently, the actress recognized the voice but couldn't quite place it when the scene was shot-- hence, her bemused appearance and demeanor.)