"ROSEMARY'S BABY" JOYOUS OCCASION

          An actor's wife gradually comes to fear that a witches' coven in modern-day 1966 wants her unborn baby for unspeakable Satanic rites.
          Based on Ira Levin's novel, Rosemary's Baby (1968), fantastically directed by Roman Polanski, may well be the most faithful adaptation of a book to film on record. (Helps that Polanski wrote the script.)
          Featuring John Cassavetes as Rosemary's husband Guy Woodburn, the actor willing to do anything to become a big success. Cassavetes, a terrific actor, was unique in that he viewed his film roles as sort of necessary evils to finance what he considered more interesting projects for him to direct (often starring Gena Rowlands), which influenced Martin Scorsese and doubtless countless others.
          The film also boasts music by Christopher Komeda. Even just one piano note struck at the start of the movie conveys the stark mood of a story that sets olde-time horror in the middle of the modern world.
          Mia Farrow, perfectly cast as Rosemary, holds the picture together unforgettably from beginning to end combining charming innocence with a steely core.
         The film is produced by William Castle, known for B-movie horror flicks from ten years prior such as House On Haunted Hill (1959). That one stars Elisha Cook Jr., and in Rosemary's Baby he's the acting landlord who shows the young couple the apartment they will rent in a building with a long dark history, with tenants including two proper Victorian ladies called the Trench Sisters who killed and ate children.
          After the mysterious death of a young woman who was staying with kindly elderly neighbors, those very neighbors, the Castavets, show remarkable enthusiasm for developing a close friendship with the Woodhouses. Regarding the subject of Rosemary becoming pregnant, the Castavets seem particularly keen.
          It's one of the best Gothic stories ever written. And in Roman Polanski's hands, the movie becomes a masterpiece. His dream sequences may well be the best in film. Just in the way he does things. In a separate and random example of his filmmaking excellence, about midway through, when Rosemary spots a Nativity scene in a storefront window display, her hand at her mouth reflected in the window for us subtly foreshadows the horror awaiting her.
          An interesting theme running throughout Polanski's work is the extent and the depth of the horror all around, and how one deals with that. Isolated incidents of horror committed by outsiders on the fringe aren't so interesting to Polanski as the realization that horror is the water in which we all swim.


ROSEMARY'S BABY
Starring Mia Farrow,
John Cassavetes,
Ruth Gordon,
Sidney Blackmer,
Charles Grodin
Written and directed by Roman Polanski
Based on the novel by Ira Levin
Runtime 137 minutes


Stewart Kirby writes for
THE INDEPENDENT
and
TWO RIVERS TRIBUNE