Rosemary's Baby

When people talk about perfect films I don't actually know what they mean. Perfect for whom? Perfect compared to what? I think that perfection is in the brain and heart of the beholder. "Rosemary's baby" is a perfect film to me. Scary in a way that makes you breathless. You're thinking and feeling throughout the film. One of the many sides of Polanski's genius is to suggest. And what he suggest is so monstrous that we don't want to believe it, but we do. The characters are so perfectly drawn that there is no cheating involved. John Cassavettes's superb study in selfishness and egomaniacal frustration is so real that comes to no surprise that he could do what he does to advance his career, but we are surprised, we're horrified. The spectacular Ruth Gordon and Sidney Blackmer are not Deborah Kerr and David Niven, are they? So that they turn out to be what they turn out to be is totally believable, but Polanski presents it in such a light of normality that you can't believe it. Mia Farrow's predicament is as classic as the boy who cried wolf tale and yet, as told by Roman Polanski in the wonderful face of Mia Farrow, is as if we're hearing it, seeing it and living it for the first time. Every silence, every voice in the distance, every door opening. Your heart is always in your throat. There is something there that accelerates a constant state of dread. Very few movies have been able to take me to that place, most of them by Roman Polanski, what about "The Tenant" or "Repulsion"? Other movies that come to mind: David Lynch's "Eraserhead" and Martin Donovan's "Apartment Zero" But "Rosemary's baby" stands alone as a terrifying masterpiece.

Rosemary, in Mia Farrow's performance, is so immediately recognizable that everything that happens to her, happens to us. Her explanation to Dr Hill (Charles Grodin) about the absurdity she's at the center of, is so brilliantly written that she becomes more than just one of us, she becomes us in all the depth of our unspoken fears. To see this film in 2007 is really amazing. Perfection! And that for our benefit. Polanski is not one of those directors who concocts camera tricks to feed his own ego. Everything is at the service of the story. John Cassavettes is a scarily convincing weakling with an ambition bigger than his talent. Ruth Gordon got, what I, in my modest opinion, consider one of the most deserving Oscars in the history of the Oscars. Her performance is beyond superb. Okay, I'm running out of superlatives but let me finish with one more...Roman Polanski is the greatest.

It starts off like one of those 1950's Doris Day movies. Young, idealistic Rosemary (Mia Farrow) and new hubby Guy (John Cassavetes) move into a Manhattan apartment building called the "Bramford". Throughout most of the film we, as viewers, see and hear what innocent Rosemary sees and hears. There's a veneer of normalcy at the Bramford that belies what's really going on, behind our backs. It's the script's POV, therefore, that makes this film so chilling.

At the Bramford, which has quite a colorful history, you can hear through the walls. And, as Rosemary and we viewers soon find out, strange people lurk in other parts of the building. The strangest of all are Roman and Minnie Castevet (Sidney Blackmer and Ruth Gordon), superficially cordial, but a bit too inquisitive. Roman is retired. His wife, Minnie, wears tons of makeup and pawnshop jewelry, and gushes with praise for herbal cures, especially something called tannis-root. And Minnie's friend Laura-Louise (Patsy Kelly) wears thick glasses that make her eyes seem to bulge, and she talks with a strangely deep voice.

"Rosemary's Baby" is one of the great thrillers of all time. Given the underlying subject matter, can you imagine how this film must have come across to viewers in 1968? The strength of the film is the script, which through its plot and dialogue implies and suggests. Not until near the end do we, like Rosemary, find out the presumed truth. Suspense increases toward the end as Rosemary ventures into the inner sanctum of the Bramford.

The film's acting is great, and reinforces the strong script. I particularly liked Ruth Gordon, with her delightfully eccentric behavior and mannerisms. Production design and especially costumes are lavish and colorful. Clothes and hairstyles, as you would expect, are very 1960ish. Visual effects are minimal, and are used to enhance the story, not be the story.

Given the film's POV, the story is rather subjective. Its interpretation is based on Rosemary's perceptions, images, and fears. One could explain that Rosemary suffers from delusions. Or, alternately, one could explain that what happens is real. It's all in the interpretation. Either way, it's a great movie. It holds up well, forty years later, a tribute to its writer and director, Roman Polanski.

This is how horror films need to be made. Aside from The House of the Devil (a beautiful throwback to this period of the genre) there aren't any films that can so perfectly create this kind of a chilling atmosphere that keeps your skin tingling from start to finish. From the haunting echo of Mia Farrow's voice eerily leading us in, Rosemary's Baby immediately absorbs you into it's world and never lets you out. That's the perfect word for this; absorbing. Roman Polanski is one of cinema's finest directors and what makes him stand as such is how perfectly he can create an atmosphere. Even in his few failures he crafts a unique and full atmosphere that is expertly made for the film he's creating. He's one of the few directors who always know what he's doing and always creates a complete vision that never wavers. That's on display in spades in Rosemary's Baby, a film that drives mystery, supernatural paranoia and the fears of any pregnant woman into the heart of the viewer. With the help of a revelatory performance in terror from Farrow, Polanski creates a truly perfect film.

Why aren't the horror directors of today as careful with their scripts as Polanski was? Not that this is really horror. Horror as we know it came into being with the slasher flicks of the late 1970s and early 1980s; "Rosemary's Baby" is rather the kind of thing that the term "dark fantasy" was coined to describe, by people of taste who noticed that the word "horror" promised audiences something distinctly unpleasant and nasty.

The film's construction is marvellous. Things start slow - one beat, so to speak, to a bar - and gradually pick up speed so that by the end we are nervously tapping out semiquavers with our feet. Polanski also understands the gentle art of hint-dropping. Many events are filed away as tiny puzzles to be solved later, and they ARE solved later; others we don't attach any particular significance to at the time Polanski invites us to re-interpret in retrospect, AND chooses the right moment to let us do so. And then, at the end, AFTER we've worked everything out, he presents us with a surprise - a delightful, gratuitous twist which nothing had prepared us for, which we couldn't have guessed, yet which doesn't cancel out the story as we'd understood it. (Alas, many people know what this surprise is in advance. I, for one. Yet this foreknowledge did nothing to spoil my enjoyment: a sure sign of superb construction.)

All in all, a film that tempts you to rank it with the best ever made - which is more, but not much more, than it deserves - simply because it's perfect. Everything went right. Rosemary is a wonderfully sympathetic heroine, powerless without being passive, largely ignorant of what's going on around her without being at all stupid, and Mia Farrow makes you care deeply about her. The cinematography is pellucid; the art direction is subtly right; there's also a fine, odd yet tuneful, musical score. I can't believe I waited so long to see this.