When I was 12 years old, for the summer holidays my parents hired a holiday cottage in the countryside for a couple of weeks. At night I used to sneak downstairs to watch films when they had gone to bed. I remember watching Rosemary's Baby late at night on BBC2, it must have been the first scary movie I ever watched. Needless to say, it petrified the living shit out of me. I couldn't sleep that night and even had to turn off the radio alarm clock next to my bed as the digits were throwing a strange green light around the room which looked like some kind of supernatural spirit. If any film gave me a love of late night cinema then it was this one.
Rosemary's Baby is still one of my favourite horror films. It's a beautiful movie to watch, shot in a dreamy soft focus haze with script, actors, makeup and musical score all manipulated by director Roman Polanski to create a sense of increasing fear and claustrophobia. It's beauty lies in the way it relies on psychological scares rather than on blood, guts and gore, of which there are very little. It really is a well crafted film, depicting a nightmarish take on one of the most natural and happy of situations - getting married, getting your own place and having kids.
Based on a novel by Ira Levin and adapted for the screen by Polanski, the story is simple but gripping. Young couple Guy and Rosemary Woodhouse move into The Bramford in New York, a Gothic apartment block with an unsavoury history of cannibalism and witchcraft. Guy is a struggling actor and Rosemary plays the dutiful wife, dreaming of kids and a happy life with her husband. Their neighbours are Roman and Minnie Castevet, a rather peculiar and sinister elderly couple who take an interest in the Woodehouses after their own young tenant commits suicide.
Guy begins to socialise with the Castevets whilst Rosemary prefers to stay at home. Guy's career simultaneously begins to take off and he and Rosemary try for children. On the designated night of conception Rosemary faints after eating some of Minnie's "chocolate mouse" and then suffers a bizarre delusional sequence where she is raped by the devil whilst the naked inhabitants of The Bramford (Minnie and Roman included) look on and chant in praise of Lucifer. In the morning it turns out that Guy had sex with her whilst she was passed out... and a few weeks later Rosemary discovers she is pregnant.
Polanski has a habit of setting his movies in claustrophobic environments - Repulsion, The Tenant and the soon to be released Carnage are all set in apartments whereas the main action of Cul de Sac takes place in a desolate lighthouse. He also delights in the unravelling of the psyche, especially the female one - Repulsion again, What? and parts of Chinatown and Bitter Moon being good examples.
In Rosemary's Baby, Guy and Rosemary's apartment seems to take on a life of it's own, in Rosemary's mind anyway. What starts as her ideal family home turns into a prison and the scene of her nightmares, quite literally in fact with one of the most realistic dream sequences committed to celluloid projected onto the wall and ceiling above her bed as she sleeps. Shot mostly from her point of view, we are never totally sure if the dream is really happening or whether it is all a figment of her imagination, much like the demonic plot that drives the story forward to it's perverse conclusion. As the uncertainties, pains and struggles of pregnancy continue, so increases Rosemary's paranoia and mistrust of all of those around her as her mind begins to fragment.
No scary movie is complete without a scary soundtrack and Polish jazz musician Krzysztof Komeda provides an excellent score to Rosemary's Baby with creepy clarinets and bassoons clamouring unexpectedly at shocking moments, mirroring the strange plot turns and unsettling camera angles that Polanski uses to heighten our sense of dread. This all serves to wind the tensions and suspense tightly, much in the manner of classic Hitchcock, and when the release and revelations come they are shocking and leave behind a distinctly bitter aftertaste.
Central to the success of the movie are excellent performances from Mia Farrow as Rosemary and John Cassavetes as Guy. Farrow brings a fragile innocence to the main role. Her sparkling blue eyes are so full of love and happiness at the beginning of the film, yet as the movie progresses they change drastically, widening in horror as her worst nightmares become reality. Cassavetes is the perfect choice for the self centred Guy, a little bit sleazy and totally caught up in his own pursuit of fame and fortune. Star of the show though is Ruth Gordon in an Oscar winning turn as nosey neighbour Minnie. Intrusive, fussy and oddly birdlike in her makeup and appearance she provides a disquieting presence with her home-made drinks, cakes and pendants that she pushes on the pregnant Rosemary. Also worth a mention is Sidney Blackmer as the equally alien looking Roman Castevet and Hollywood stalwart Ralph Bellamy as high society gyno Abe Sapirstein respectively.
The tragic aftermath to the release of Rosemary's Baby, the murder of Polanski's pregnant wife Sharon Tate by the Manson family the following year, is well documented. The bizarre events of her death left a shadow over Polanski's subsequent career with many of his films dealing with personal disasters, psychological breakdowns and the grotesque. The movie itself has left a large legacy on cinema as a whole. It's immediate influence can be seen in a wide range of 70s demon-shockers such as The Omen and The Exorcist, as well as in studies of the female mind such as Robert Altman's Images and French art house horror flick Possession. Most recently it was Darren Aranofsky's brilliant Black Swan that drew largely on the themes, mood and suspense generated by Polanski in Rosemary's Baby.
Rosemary's Baby is a must see film for horror aficionados and for those with a penchant for all things that concern the occult and witchcraft. It will keep you thinking and wondering long after the last bars of the strange lullaby theme tune have played and the TV screen fades to black. Anyone for Tannis?
The Black Bramford
When I was twelve my aunt gave me "Rosemary's Baby" as a birthday present. Loved the book with a passion, but the movie did not quite make the cut compared to the book in my opinion.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you about Mia Farrow and her eyes though. And it was totally eerie in the movie the music that played in that end scene.