Rosemary's Baby.

Dir: Roman Polanski
Starring: Mia Farrow, John Cassevetes, Ruth Gordon, Sidney Blackmer, Ralph Bellamy.
1968, colour, 131 mins.


Roman Polanski was always an oddity to me. My father rented The Two Jakes in the late nineties and I remember the cover saying it was the sequel to Chinatown. The next time we went to the video store I searched out the cover for it with its' amazing green-smoke-haired Faye Dunaway coming from Jack Nicholson's cigarette. The first film I saw of his was The Ninth Gate which is, in retrospect, an odd first choice however I didn't know it was his at the time let alone who he was and what he'd done. I didn't think much of it when I saw it because to be honest, it's not much of a film and I forgot it quickly. A few years later in 2005 my friend Ben told me I could select a thing or two from JB Hi-Fi for my birthday. I chose this dreadful stand up comedy box set and a Roman Polanski boxset containing Knife In The Water, Cul De Sac and Repulsion. Umbrella (Australia) now offer this same boxset however in a Amary case, the version I had was in an awesomely designed digipak. I sold it a few years later having never watched any of the three. As you can imagine, I regret that now.

When I first saw The Pianist a few months ago I wondered how I'd never spent time on Polanski or his films before. He is a master. No director has a perfect track record (except perhaps Paul Thomas Anderson but that's a pretty controversial statement) and Roman is no exception however his best films make you completely forget about his worst. Seeing Chinatown for the first time a few weeks ago made me fall in love with his visual style. I actually sought out seeing Rosemary's Baby before Chinatown (until I read Easy Riders, Raging Bulls & The Boy Stays In The Picture), trying to find it cheaply from JB or Borders but never having success. Finally I found it for $10 the other day at JB.

Farrow plays Rosemary who is married to Guy (John Cassevetes), a struggling actor in New York City. The film opens with them inspecting an apartment to purchase to begin a home life together and hopefully a family. The building has an odd history of tenants and even some of the current tenants are a little on the off side. They (reluctantly) make friends with an elderly couple in the building, Minnie and Roman Castevet who are well travelled and world weary bizzaros. While struggling to get a gig Guy decides he wants to take starting a family more seriously, much to Rosemary's delight. Unbeknownst to her though, Guy makes a deal with the devil for fame and luck with his career in exchange for his wife carrying a son for the prince of darkness, Satan himself.

The first thing that struck me about this film is that it has barely aged a day. The performances are so natural - with the exception of the intentionally theatrical final scene - and excellent that they stand so far apart from the expectation of a horror film, especially one of this era. Cassevetes and Farrow are well matched and neither fight for control of their scenes; understatement is the name of the game under Polanski's direction in this and everyone plays ball. I don't know how Roman pulled a cast with an amazing array of Golden Age actors and actresses together with one or two young faces, but it makes a great film even better. A special mention to Charles Grodin who caught me off guard in a later scene, his cynicism and bitter tone a prophecy of the majority of his future roles.

In Chinatown, the director set a warm and dreamy LA-in-the-summer mood with a visual style to match and he sets an appropriate tone here as well. There's nothing to jump out at you, nothing out of the ordinary in the muted colour palette painting New York City as not much of a character at all which is right in this scenario. It's only a backdrop. The location is of no consequence at all. Polanski shows no gore, nothing to make you go "eww". There are disturbing moments such as the 'dream' sequence in which Rosemary becomes inpregnated and the famous closing scene with Farrow's pitch-perfect reaction to her offspring. All throughout the horror built is contained within Rosemary's womb and mind. I suppose the problem with pulling off the same feat today is that it's mostly all been done before and to come up with a compelling more-than-paper-thin-setup, it seems, is getting harder and harder.

Watching Rosemary's Baby made me long for the same subtlety to be deployed in modern terror. It just doesn't happen enough anymore.


**** out of ****.