Rosemary's Baby

Rosemary's Baby

Reviewed by Bruce Cantwell

"Are you aware that the Bramford had a rather unpleasant reputation around the turn of the century?" Hutch (Maurice Evans) asks his friends Guy (John Cassavettes) and Rosemary (Mia Farrow) Woodhouse.

"It's where the Trench sisters conducted their little dietary experiments. And Keith Kennedy held his parties. Adrian Marcato lived there too...The Trench sisters were two proper Victorian ladies - they cooked and ate several young children including a niece...Adrian Marcato practiced witchcraft. He made quite a splash in the 90s by announcing that he'd conjured up the living devil. Apparently, people believed him so they attacked and nearly killed him in the lobby of the Bramford...Later, the Keith Kennedy business began and by the 20s, the house was half empty...World War II filled the house up again...They called it Black Bramford...This house has a high incidence of unpleasant happenings. In '59, a dead infant was found wrapped in newspaper in the basement..."

Late in the film, as a strung out Rosemary Woodhouse babbles to her Doctor (Charles Grodin) about the strange goings on in her Gothic apartment building, he calmly pages through the books she has handed him: books with titles like, "All of Them Witches." Doctor Hill is totally patient and sympathetic. He doesn't believe that Rosemary's neighbors are witches. ROSEMARY doesn't believe in witches either. But according to Rosemary, her neighbors are BEHAVING like witches. Even in 1965, when the film is set, there were enough kooks in New York City for him to take that threat seriously.

Roman Polanski's psychological horror film retains its impact long after the gore packed thrill rides that followed it because it allows us to experience disturbing events from the point of view of a single character. Did she really hear the chants of a black mass going on next door or did she imagine it while drifting off to sleep? Is her neighbor Minnie Castavet (Ruth Gordon) trying to harm her with the herbal concoctions she prepares for her twice daily or are these pains she's feeling normal in every pregnancy? Did Terry (Victoria Vetri), the homeless girl lodging with the Castavets, commit suicide because of something they did to her or did her drug habit catch up with her?

"They picked me up off the sidewalk, literally...I was starving and on dope and doing a lot of other things. They're childless though. I'm like the daughter they never had. At first, I thought they wanted me for some kind of a sex thing but they turned out to be like real grandparents...I'd be dead now if it wasn't for them. That's an absolute fact. Dead or in jail."

It's natural enough for her to think that her husband Guy (John Cassavettes) is in on the plot, too. He seems to be more concerned about upsetting the esteemed obstetrician Abe Saperstein (Ralph Bellamy), whose services the Castavets helped procure for them, than his own wife's painful pregnancy. When she suggests seeing another doctor, of course, it's not unnatural for a struggling actor who just moved into an expensive apartment to have financial concerns about paying two obstetricians to deliver one baby.

Closely following Ira Levin's novel, Polanski further shakes the credibility of Rosemary's fears by casting a pair of eccentric elders, Roman (Sidney Blackmer) and Minnie (Ruth Gordon) Castavet, as her chief tormentors. Ruth Gordon's feisty old broad performance is hilarious as she ceaselessly pries into Rosemary's business: barging in with her half deaf, dowdy friend Laura-Louise (Patsy Kelly) for an improvised knitting circle, interrupting an intimate dinner to bring Guy and Rosemary a homemade mousse (she pronounces it "mouse"), and taking charge of her pregnancy like an over-zealous grandmother to be. She thoroughly deserved her Oscar.

For those who still have a hard time getting past the supernatural elements of the film, consider that Rosemary's Baby is under a worse curse than the Bramford.

"Are you aware that Rosemary's Baby has a rather unpleasant reputation? On August 9, 1969, a year after the film's release, Roman Polanski's pregnant wife underwent a tragedy worse than Rosemary's. Sharon Tate was murdered along with four others in Roman Polanski's home by a cult known as THE FAMILY led by Charles Manson. The group supposedly found inpiration or justification in the Beatles' WHITE ALBUM, particularly the song HELTER SKELTER. The man responsible for that song, John Lennon, was shot outside the Dakota, the building where Rosemary's Baby was filmed."