The story goes that studio heads at Paramount wanted William Castle, a veteran director, to helm the film but Evans wanted Roman Polanski—bad. He knew that the young Polish director, who had made Repulsion, Knife in the Water, and The Fearless Vampire Killers had just worked with Marty Ransohoff, someone whom Evans says, “whatever he liked, I hated, and vice versa. When I heard Marty ranting all over town about what a no-talent Polanski was, I knew Roman was the man for me.”
It was the first time in his career that Polanski adapted a book instead of writing an original story, and his screenplay would be nominated for an Academy Award. It helped, of course, that the source material came from Ira Levin.
The film is set in New York in 1965, Rosemary Woodhouse (Mia Farrow) and her struggling actor husband Guy (John Cassavetes) move into a new apartment. Polanski shot on location at The Dakota, the Central Park West building outside which John Lennon was killed. Rosemary is naive, gentle, with a Catholic background (The name Rosemary comes from the Virgin Mary and her bathrobe which was flooded from the rose bush). They are happy.
The film lulls into this false sense of security by deliberately playing against viewers expectations.
The elderly couple Castevets, Roman (Sidney Blackmer) and Minnie (Ruth Gordon) have long occupied the adjoining apartment. One of the great jokes of the film is that the Castevets are almost literally the “neighbors from hell,” though at first Rosemary thinks their main vice is simply extreme nosiness. (3)
Another occupant, Terry (credited as Angela Dorian, but yes, indeed, she is Victoria Vetri), a laundry room acquaintance of Rosemary, lives with their neighbors, the Castevets. Later Terri commits suicide for what seems no reason at all. These elderly, cheerfully eccentric neighbors Minnie (Ruth Gordon) and Roman Castevet (Sidney Blackmer) introduce themselves immediately after Terry’s death, Minnie peeking in Rosemary’s apartment door to get a look at their renovations. Obligated to a dinner out of sympathy, Rosemary and Guy visit the stuffy apartment next door for some of Minnie’s bad cooking and Roman’s stories about world travel. A discussion ensues about religion and the Pope, and Roman remarks, “You don’t need to have respect for him because he pretends that he’s holy.” Guy agrees. Rosemary, who was raised Catholic, feels uncomfortable talking about it. After the dinner, Minnie becomes meddlesome, poking her nose in their affairs. And though Rosemary wants nothing more to do with them, Guy keeps visiting for more of Roman’s stories. (3)
The eccentric neighbors secretly and, as it seems, very easily succeed in gaining an ambitious Rosemary husband Guy, they promise him success and in return seek "only" for his wife to worship Satan. Finding out how the actor who was supposed to get the lead in a show was suddenly blinded, and Guy was invited to replace him, is enough to convince him in the power of the wise clan.
Guy’s sudden desire to have a child takes Rosemary happily by surprise. But as her painful pregnancy progresses, and Guy’s fortunes rise, she detects the outlines of a Faustian pact involving Guy, the Castevets, and her current, duplicitous obstetrician—“all of them witches.” (1)
The longer this goes on, the more isolated Rosemary becomes. She’s not a prisoner in her apartment, but she seems like one, with her bouncing bundle of joy turned to tiny jailer inside. Guy roams freely, and so do the Castavets, who seem to be everywhere. But Rosemary is basically housebound, left alone in the domestic realm with her thoughts, her fears, her pains, and the sounds she hears through the walls. It’s a recipe for disaster.
In an essay included with the Criterion release of Rosemary’s Baby, Ira Levin explained the origin of his novel. “Having observed that the most suspenseful part of a horror story is before, not after, the horror appears,” Levin wrote, “I was struck one day by the thought … that a fetus could be an effective horror if the reader knew it was growing into something malignly different from the baby expected. Nine whole months of anticipation, with the horror inside the heroine!” (4)
This movie is effective because it’s such a slow build. The scary stuff begins as a series of very small, strange occurrences that begin to add up over time until finally something truly scary happens. The turning point in the movie is, of course, the hallucinatory sequence culminating in Rosemary copulating with the devil to bear his seed. But, once that happens, it’s another long time before anything actually fear-inducing happens. Instead the movie favors the slow escalation of tension and dread. We know something bad is going to happen, we just aren’t sure when.(5)
COLORS
(source: Ruthless Culture, Jonathan McCalmont)
The first thing one notices about Rosemary’s Baby is the use of colour. When we encounter Rosemary (Mia Farrow) and Guy (John Cassavetes) they are clad respectively in yellow and blue.
Polanski’s use of blue and yellow that when we first encounter the color red its harshness is shocking, even more shocking than the fact that this red comes from the blood of an apparent suicide victim.
Similarly, when the Woodhouses’ neighbours, the Satanic Minnie and Roman Castevet (Ruth Gordon and Sidney Blackmer) appear their outfits immediately clash with the tasteful blues and yellows of the Woodhouses. These older people clearly come from a different world.
As the film goes on, the color red pops up again and again, each time signifying the trace of black magic. For example, in the roses that Guy gives Rosemary after he suspiciously lands a leading role, in the outfit Rosemary wears before the ritual, in the blood daubed on her naked body prior to having sex with the devil and in her dress when, months into the pregnancy, she looks so pale and emaciated that her female friends lock Guy out of the kitchen.
TRIVIA
* Before the engagement of Mia Farrow, the first option for the role of Rosemary was Sheron Tate, wife of Roman Polanski. She refused, but still acted in the party scene. Fourteen months after the film's release, Tate, in the eighth month of pregnancy, was sacrificed through the ritual of Charles Manson. She was stabbed 16 times and with her blood they wrote "pig" on the wall of the house.
* And it was on the set of this film that Mia Farrow received divorce papers from then-husband Frank Sinatra.
* There is a popular rumor that Church of Satan founder Anton LaVey gave technical advice and portrayed Satan in the impregnation scene. This is false - LaVey had no involvement with the film.
BEHIND THE SCENES PHOTOS
Producer William Castle, Mia Farrow, Robert Evans
EXTERNAL LINKS
Paranoia and Control: Explaining the True Horrors of Rosemary's Baby
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8U_z4RPdKi4
Roman Polanski on "Rosemary's Baby" - Conversations Inside The Criterion Collection
(1) 2 Gilić, Nikica. Filmski leksikon: Roman Polanski. URL: http://film.lzmk.hr/clanak.aspx?id=1413
(2) Criterion Collection, www.criterion.com/current/posts/2535-rosemary-s-baby-it-s-alive
(3)Deep Focus Review, Rosemary's Baby
(4) The Terror Inside: 'Rosemary's Baby', Musings
(5) Nerdist, Rosemary's Baby