Top 25 Greatest Halloween Films: #10 – 'Rosemary's Baby' (1968)

#10: Rosemary’s Baby (1968)

To 1966! The year one!

No special effects, no sensational scares, no tricks of any kind. Using little more than a perfectly calibrated tone, director Roman Polanski (who brilliantly adapted the script from Ira Levin’s novel) blends the psychological with the supernatural into a slow cooker of paranoia and ultimately stark terror, using only the recognizable elements of our everyday: Our loved ones, the eccentric and meddlesome neighbors next door, and that strange demonic chanting heard through the bedroom wall in the middle of the night.

Mia Farrow is Rosemary Woodhouse, a young, delicately beautiful everywoman very much in love with a husband she wants to please and the idea of eventually becoming a mother. The husband is Guy (a never better John Cassavetes), a struggling New York actor whose personal insecurities are only overshadowed by his ego and selfishness. The young, chic, upwardly mobile couple have just opened a fresh chapter of their life with a move into a Gothic-style apartment building (the Bramford) right in the heart of the city. Their elderly neighbors, especially the oddball and sickly sweet Minnie and Roman Castevet (Ruth Gordon and Sidney Blackmer), have welcomed them with open arms and Rosemary has lost herself in the joys of remodeling.

During a small, personal dinner party, Rosemary’s old family friend Hutch (Maurice Evans), tells the couple about the history of their new home (the real-life Dakota just off Central Park). Witches, covens, cannibalism; what seems like nothing more than the stuff of fascinating gossip among close friends over good food and drink — at least until the next dinner party. Rosemary and Guy reluctantly accept an invitation from the Castevets after a gruesome introduction over the dead body of their ward, a young, troubled woman the kindly old couple took off the streets who jumped several stories to her death.

For Guy at least, the evening with the codgers goes better than he expected. Roman’s a well-traveled man filled with fascinating stories and over dessert Minnie, Roman and Guy manage to further cement their bond by mocking the Pope, who’s in town for a visit. Rosemary’s no Bible-thumper but still she doesn’t share in their elitist derision and back in their own apartment she’s relieved to have finally escaped the evening. But Guy’s been won over and is so flushed with excitement over the whole experience he pronounces that it’s time to have a baby.

Polanski’s impeccable story construction really starts to kick in at this point. As will be the case throughout, we in the audience aren’t given any more information than Rosemary and what follows could easily qualify as a black comedy about endlessly annoying, passive-aggressive neighbors who exploit your inch of kindness by attempting to insinuate themselves into the full mile of every aspect of your life. Gordon (who won an Oscar) is hilariously grotesque as one of those people who pretend to be oblivious to their selfish aggression but are really playing a game of psychological chicken that you can never win because she’s forcing you to choose between putting up with her or being mean.

We all know and deal with these kinds of personal manipulations. They are the bane of our existence, the reason God invented hermits, Caller ID, restraining orders and baseball bats – and our recognizing and relating and sharing in Rosemary’s put upon, emotional aggravation is exactly what Polanski’s counting on. What stirs your guts with a spoon about Rosemary’s ordeal has nothing to do with Satan and everything to do with recognizable horror that comes with watching a young vulnerable woman slowly stripped of every single element having to do with her God-given right to live her own life. She’s lied to and manipulated, but what’s most infuriating is watching everyone around her prey on and maliciously abuse her natural unassuming good nature and optimism, most especially Guy, that bastard husband of hers (and one of the great unheralded screen villains of all time). Boiled down to its core, this is what “Rosemary’s Baby” is really about. The supernatural element is mere icing.

One of my favorite moments in all movies happens back at the dinner party with the Castevets when Roman (who’s obviously lying) reads Guy like a cheap novel and targets his vanity by pretending to have seen him in a play and being especially impressed with a certain gesture the young actor made on stage. Like catnip it works and just like that a grown man’s hooked by a shallow piece of validation, and for a bigger taste subsequently agrees to literally sell his own soul, his first born child, and his sweet young wife to the Devil. One of the great pleasures of “Rosemary’s Baby” is watching it again and again to look for the many clues Polanski drops that help to make sense of the film’s final and unforgettable moment. Much of the foreshadowing has nothing to do with plot points (though not a line of dialogue is wasted) and everything to do with performance, especially Cassavetes’, who simmers a sinister desperation much sooner than you might think.

For very good reason, “Rosemary’s Baby” is most famous for the shattering moment when Rosemary first gets a look at her newborn — the chilling “What have you done to its eyes!” moment. But that’s not where the story finally comes together; it’s what follows, the godawful moment when Rosemary’s own eyes soften with acceptance as she gazes into the crib. After nearly a year of controlling every moment and element of her life, Roman shoves the grasping old lady away from the crib and, as he did with Guy’s vanity, offers Rosemary what she most desperately wants: to be a mother and just a little bit of breathing room.

And she agrees.