Director: Roman Polanski
Screenplay: Roman Polanski, based on the novel Rosemary's Baby by Ira Levin
Starring: Mia Farrow, John Cassavetes, Ruth Gordon, Sidney Blackmer, Maurice Evans, Ralph Bellamy
Running Time: 131 minutes
Genre: Horror
New York City, 1965: Rosemary Woodhouse (Farrow) and her ambitious actor husband Guy (Cassavetes) move into a spacious apartment in a classy building, which has a dark history of murder, witchcraft and cannibalism. Shortly after moving in, the Woodhouse's meet their eccentric elderly neighbours, the Castevets. When Rosemary falls pregnant, she becomes increasingly suspicious of the Castevets, and convinced that she is being targeted by a Satanic conspiracy, of which her neighbours, friends, and even her husband are part.
This is possibly one of the most influential horror films ever made. At the time, horror tended to be gruesome drive-in fare, or classier Gothic productions based on Edgar Allan Poe stories, or about Dracula, Frankenstein and other classic monsters. In this film horror is brought bang up to date and into the heart of Manhattan, it's also aimed squarely at an older audience, Rosemary and Guy are young, but they are certainly not teenagers, and the film deals with pregnancy and middle-class ennui. It also takes it's time, in a period where horror films rarely lasted much over an hour an a half, this has a generous running time of two hours plus. It also doesn't look like a horror film, with the opening shots floating over New York City, with the opening credits appearing in pink copperplate lettering to the strangely eerie lullaby, the discussions about pop culture and news events, the evil Satanists worrying about stains on the carpet and having most of the film take place in broad daylight, this is more like a comedy-drama about a disaffected young woman. The most memorable horror moments come in the genuinely disturbing surreal nightmare sequences, where Rosemary is attacked by a demonic creature, the morning after, in another deeply problematic scene Guy cheerfully informs her that he had had sex with her while she was passed out, he casually brushes off Rosemary's shock and distress at this.
The film is a very faithful adaptation of Ira Levin's book, in fact pretty much everything that is in the film is in the book. The main difference is that at the end, the film still leaves it ambiguous as to whether anything supernatural is happening at all. In fact the entire film could be read as it all being in Rosemary's mind. This was because writer / director Roman Polanski had a strong aversion to the supernatural. The horror in the film becomes more due to urban isolation and paranoia, a favourtie theme of Polanski's. Rosemary is alternately abandoned or patronised by her selfish husband, she doesn't have a job, apparently, and spends most of her time rattling around on her own.
The film boasts some fine performances, particularly Mia Farrow, sporting an iconic hairstyle, combining frailty with steel.
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