Rosemary's Baby

Rosemary's Baby was originally proposed as a project to Alfred Hitchcock. He turned it down, and instead it fell to the up-and-coming Polish director Roman Polanski. It's hard to imagine what the master of suspense would have made out of this tale of devil worship and Catholic guilt, even though there is some Hitchockian psychology and mystery at work. As it was however, it proved to be right up the young Polanski's street, taking his career to new heights, and spawning a run of occult horrors in the late 60s and early 70s, of which this is still one of the few greats.

Polanski had already established himself as a director most comfortable with the confinement of interiors in films like Repulsion (1965). Here he draws us right into the claustrophobic feel of the upstairs apartment, often placing the camera in a room adjacent to the action, with the characters viewed through a doorway. The camera movement is mostly restricted to pans. It rarely tracks or dollys, as if it were trapped in a corner. Even in the exterior scenes the sky is often sandwiched or blotted out altogether between the buildings rising on either side. The actors often appear uncomfortably close to the camera, but not in individual close-up shots. Instead, they come in that close as they move around the set and the camera pans back and forth. Not only does this add to the cramped, awkward atmosphere, but this constantly changing distancing of actors within a single shots makes the audience feel as if they are actually standing there.

Rosemary's Baby may come across as very slow to some viewers. 140 minutes certainly is a long time in the horror genre. There do also appear to be a lot of unnecessary details in the dialogue – we get to find out far more about Rosemary's background than is normal for a character in cinema. But for one thing, Polanski was not interested in making a shock-and-gore horror – Rosemary's Baby is all about the eerie atmosphere, the tension and the mystery. He holds our attention by regularly dropping in clues that something sinister is afoot. Furthermore, all the detail and depth has its significance in the finished product – like the references to Rosemary's Catholic upbringing or the background of the Castavets.

Polanski has never overused flashy techniques – no fast editing, zooms or unusual angles that make for a very obvious directorial style. But there is always great complexity and meaning in the look of things – the set design, lighting, costume and so on. One of my favourite touches is Mia Farrow's extremely short Vidal Sassoon hairdo that she has done halfway through the film. With her bony features and pale skin she more and more begins to resemble a skeleton, especially under the carefully placed lighting in the scene after the party when she realises the pain has gone. It's simple yet significant ideas like that which make Polanski one of the best directors of his era.

There's some great casting in this picture. Careful choice of character actors makes for some quirky supporting roles. Mia Farrow and John Cassavetes are perfect in the lead roles. The musical score – that haunting opening melody, or the atonal violin squeaks – all add to the atmosphere.

Rosemary's Baby is a real landmark in horror. It helped keep the genre alive by pushing the occult - something fairly taboo, and not fully explored in cinema since the days of silents - to the fore. Also the restrained atmospheric horror was doubtless influential, particularly on Kubrick when he came to make The Shining. It inspired a lot, but was rarely bettered.

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.

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.

"Rosemary's Baby" is one of the best horror films ever made. This isn't because it's going to scare the pants off you with a series of sensational jolts. This isn't the shallow, gimmicky kind of horror movie we mostly get these days, and it isn't the traditional old-fashioned horror film of an earlier era. This is a movie that came out during a period of transition in Hollywood. The old production codes were breaking down and films could suddenly be more true to life in the way they showed how people really lived, acted and talked. 1968s "Rosemary's Baby" is a more sophisticated, less elegant thriller of the kind that Alfred Hitchcock patented, but it displays much more class and intelligence than the horror movies that would come out in its wake. Popular '70s films such as "The Exorcist" and "The Omen" are the prodigy of "Rosemary's Baby," but offer far less nuance and much greater vulgarity. What we get here is a more naturalistic depiction of modern life, but without the crassness that would soon explode into American cinema.

Most of the credit for what makes "Rosemary's Baby" such a successful film goes to Roman Polanski. Polanski is a master at conveying to an audience not just a sense of the uncanny but a vivid depiction of it. His earlier films like "Knife in the Water," "Repulsion" and "Dance of the Vampires," display the talents that would come to such a controlled mastery in "Rosemary's Baby."

Polanski very faithfully adapts Ira Levin's novel to the screen so that the viewer is, just as the reader was, free to interpret the eerie events of the story as either reality or a depiction of an isolated woman's decent into madness. At the same time the picture can be taken as a black joke on the human male's fears of the changes a woman goes through during pregnancy, both physically and emotionally. But Polanski seems most interested in presenting a normal world, in this case Manhattan in the mid 1960s, and then through subtle cinematic techniques get an audience to actually believe that the hysterical, fantastic ravings of the heroine could be true. It is this tour de force exercise in suspension of disbelief that makes the film a classic. The horror films that have come since have had to ratchet up the shock effects in order to thrill more desensitized audiences, but this deliberately paced film reminds us of how much better it is to leave things to the imagination of the viewer. That is where films really come alive and remain so.

The Paramount DVD presents an excellent print of the movie that looks as if it were shot yesterday, along with extras that include new interviews with Polanski, executive producer Bob Evans and production designer Richard Sylbert, and a featurette from the time of the film's original release that really works as a good time capsule.

Every bit of acclaim that Rosemary's Baby has earned is totally deserved. The Dakota, located at 72nd and Central Park West, is the perfect setting for the demonic events; all that rich Gothic detail in the heart of Manhattan provides the perfect atmosphere, serving as a dark fairy-tale world of its own within the modern setting. Roman Polanski knows this and utilizes it brilliantly, opening the film with stunning aerial shots of the skyline and focusing in on the ornate castle amongst the skyscrapers and tenements.

The acting is fantastic, particularly Mia Farrow, who is the only person I can envision as Rosemary. Her fine-boned fragility makes her the ideal target for terror. She goes from obliviousness to suspicion to fear to near madness without showing a seam, and we as the audience are with her all the way. And Mia is given a run for her money by the delightful Ruth Gordon, a comical yet sinister presence popping in on a deliberate schedule with pale green drinks and sandpapery advice. She's scary because we know her--a batty old broad with a seemingly sweet nature beneath her caustic surface. That such a person could possibly be a vessel of evil is a thoroughly unnerving concept.

Unnerving is the proper adjective for the entire movie. Unnerving, eerie, and penetratingly frightening in a very subtle manner. The subtlety is key, since a more explicit treatment would've spoiled everything. As the tension heightens, we feel what Rosemary feels: Curiosity, then vague suspicion, then paralyzing terror at the final revelation. At all times, the movie retains its dignity, from the opening and closing shots of the building to the flourishing title script to the beautiful music. Even on TV, this picture can chill you to the bone. The best big-budget horror movie of all time.