A friend knew I was seeing for the umpteenth time Rosemary's Baby Wednesday night. It was being screened at the Nick. He asked me what I thought of the picture after all of these viewings; he said he's never seen it.
The film is an interesting cultural curio, IMO. It was adapted for the screen and directed by a filmmaker cinephiles either get or don't. It's not so much that Roman Polanski is so eccentric -- he is somewhat -- it's that his infamy often gets in the way of his movies.
Some folks appreciate his vision -- Repulsion, Chinatown, Tess, The Pianist, etc. -- and work around all of the other stuff. But many people dismiss him as a serial pedophile and will think of him forever as the absent husband on the night the Manson family butchered his very pregnant wife Sharon Tate and the baby she was carrying. That is a lot to work around, for sure.
Rosemary's Baby was shot in the Dakota, the apartment house where John Lennon was living with Yoko Ono when he was shot and killed by Mark David Chapman. The building has a palpable creepiness and stuffiness that befits the story of two outsiders -- struggling actor Guy and homebody Rosemary -- trying to find their way in the warrens of New York. I think the film is less a story of witches and the supernatural and more about being subsumed by one's environment.
I have always liked the movie but do find Mia Farrow's character a bit more refined in her affect and diction than her Omaha roots would suggest. But that's a small matter. John Cassavetes as Guy is just himself. He's not an actor's actor, IMO, but is surely an actor's director. I would recommend to anyone his largely improvisational film Shadows and any of the pictures with his wife Gena Rowlands.
My final thought is, Ruth Gordon (Harold and Maude) is pure joy to watch.
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