Dir. Roman Polanski (1968)
A pregnant woman begins to believe that there is a Satanic conspiracy involving her unborn child.
Full disclosure: I am not even slightly a fan of this movie, or at least I wasn't the first couple of times I watched it. I haven't seen it in years, so I figured it would be worth revisiting during the 60's portion of our Decades Week. Don't get me wrong, I've always understood the importance of the film and it's technical impressiveness: despite his, shall we call them, social indiscretions, Roman Polanski is an incredibly talented director, and Rosemary's Baby is one of the more imitated films in horror history. My recollection of the film, however, was several moments of brilliance that dotted an incredibly boring landscape of dated cinema. After revisiting, I feel largely the same, though I have a renewed appreciation of just how terrible the central character of the film actually is.
Rosemary (Mia Farrow) and her actor husband Guy (John Cassavetes) have just moved into a new apartment in New York City. Guy is between roles, and Rosemary is doing her best to keep the place up while he searches for his big break. The couple want to have a child now that they have a nice place to call their own, and when Rosemary becomes pregnant after a terrifying vision that she was raped by the Devil, she begins to suspect that maybe her dream wasn't a dream at all. Surrounded by nefarious neighbors, a crime-ridden city, and a husband whose career aspirations threaten to overwhelm her own personal desires, Rosemary is faced with the terrifying possibility that she is to become the mother of the Antichrist and help bring about the end of the world.
It's an exercise in paranoia, and also a pretty clear reminder that it's not paranoia if they really are out to get you. More than that, Rosemary's Baby is a discussion of agency and choice, an irony that doesn't escape me given the film's director. Despite the film's insistence on discussing these things, it's largely irrelevant to the plot: Rosemary wants to have a baby, just (assumedly) not with Satan. She goes along with whatever people ask of her, completely ignoring what she thinks in favor of the whims of others. In this case, is it really about choice at all? Isn't agreeing to "go along" in and of itself a choice? It's a philosophical question, but the larger one that the movie makes its audience ask is, who the hell cares?
The weird thing about the film is that every single character is a fucking asshole except for dear, sweet Rosemary, who comes across as a total pushover and a timid, annoying sucker. It's one thing to see someone who is bullied by others, taking the behavior on the chin because they're powerless. It's another to watch a character bashed and insulted throughout the entirety of a film when they just don't seem to give a shit. Perhaps that was indicative of the way that women were treated in this period, but she's the only character that seems to suffer from an insufferable need to be a chump. Also, her haircut is ugly as hell and she looks terrible, so in this case, her tormentors are absolutely correct.
Rosemary's Baby is basically the opposite of The Exorcist. Rather than discussing religion through the lens of perhaps its greatest test, Rosemary's Baby discusses the lack of religion and the potential that it's all true anyway. For there to be a Devil, there must be a God, and so on and so forth. Rosemary's religious upbringing is of no use when the world is conspiring against her, especially with its conspiracies are backed by the Devil himself. The film certainly has a lot to say on the matter, but it greatly struggles in making its audience stick around long enough to listen. And I do mean long enough: at close to two and a half hours in length, it's at least 45 minutes too long.
All negativity aside, Rosemary's Baby is important. The tense moments are handled very well, speaking to Polanski's directorial prowess. The score is excellent, echoed throughout nearly all of horror history. Farrow's performance is very good, despite her character's obnoxious habits, and Cassevetes is fantastic in his role as the abusive husband. The ending is absolutely iconic, and legitimately very scary. It's predictable, but only from a modern sensibility where we've seen this story dozens of times before, but Polanski's use of skewed camera angles and a congregation of characters that we've seen throughout the film makes it seriously dismaying. It's just not enough to save the movie as a whole, even if it tries its damnedest during the better scenes.
Who this movie is for: Classic horror movie fans, "Religious" horror lovers, Boring movie fanatics
Bottom line: Rosemary's Baby is just not an entertaining movie. The imagery is iconic, sure, and the story is one that's been imitated so many times its impossible to deny the importance. It's dreadfully boring, however, and almost twice as long as it should be. Rosemary as a character is terrible and irritating, every single person in the film is wholly unlikeable, and it's just an absolute drag to watch. It's a movie that every horror fan should watch once, for its historical importance if nothing else, and it definitely has some great scenes of paranoid horror that are worth exploring. Unfortunately, it's a short story's worth of entertainment in a dictionary-long film. There's just not enough here to carry almost two and a half hours.