Rosemary's Baby (1968)

 

Director Roman Polanski's Rosemary's Baby (1968) is noteworthy because it creates dread by peeling away the viewer's presumptions and defenses as they watch Rosemary (Mia Farrow) slowly compromised and subdued by those she trusts, including her husband (John Cassavetes), her kindly neighbors (Ruth Gordon and Sidney Blackmer) and her highly respected obstetrician (Ralph Bellamy).

While the film is sometimes categorized as a horror picture, it really isn't, at least in the conventional sense of horror. It contains little blood and no boos. The devil makes a crucial cameo appearance but he's mostly claws and glowing eyes. We are frightened for Rosemary and not by monsters under beds or in closets.

Polanski's more important work -- this film, Chinatown, The Pianist, Knife in the Water, Repulsion -- are character studies. Rosemary's Baby is carefully constructed to hide the real evidence of evildoing. It sets the fear squarely in Rosemary's mind. She is traumatized by the death of a new acquaintance and by troublesome early pregnancy pains. She cobbles together clues left by her one trusted friend (Maurice Evans), who mysteriously falls ill after urging Rosemary to be careful.

Even the fairly graphic (for 1968) satanic rape scene might be construed as a nightmare brought on by too much drink and rich food -- chocolate "mouse." Is Rosemary mad (pre-partum psychosis) or are there really witches living all around her? The last reel of the film lays it all out fairly plainly. Or does it?

The picture has particular relevance now -- at the beginning of the post-Roe era -- because it frightens and unnerves audiences to see a woman, who dearly wants to give birth, lose control over her uterus, carry to term a child of rape, and then succumb to the pleadings of others to care for it -- after all, she is the mother.