Dreams Are What Le Cinema Is For: Rosemary's Baby- 1968

ROSEMARY'S BABY 1968lecinemadreams.blogspot.com/2011/09/rosemarys-baby-1968.html

“Cinematically speaking, if stressful social times trigger in our culture the need for escapism as a copingmechanism, then such conditions must equally inspire the necessity of what can be best described as a shroudedemotional outlet: an avenue, concealed to the psyche, through which the fears and uncertainties of the times can besafely vented. In this manner the horror film has always been socially revealing.” - Quote from a book on cinemahorror whose author I can no longer recall

Rosemary's Baby: Child of the 60s:Rosemary’s Baby was released in June of 1968. And as social climates go, one couldn't find a year more defined bystress, fear, and uncertainty than America in 1968* (*America 2016 was unimaginable at the time of this posting).This was the year that saw: Richard Nixon elected to office of President; the assassination of two American symbolsof hope (Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy); U.S. involvement in the war in Vietnam escalate; and big citiesand college campuses across the nation wracked by violent civil rights protests and heated anti-war demonstrations.Observed Los Angeles Times journalist Bettuane Levine: “It was a very bad year. Strikes, sit - ins and bloody riotsdotted the land, as various groups sought their share of the pie. The result was a country in crisis, our cities intatters, our dislocated lives punctuated by assassination, Cold War threats, nuclear terrors, and a general feelingthat nothing would ever be the same again.”

Real-life Time Magazine cover, dated April 1, 1966, poses the unasked questionthat Rosemary's Baby's powerfully ambiguous ending inspires.

For anyone endeavoring to make a horror film in the '60s, a seemingly insurmountable hurdle lie in determiningwhat could possibly frighten an audience which, on a nightly basis, had beamed into their homes the real-life terrors

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of war. Audiences who, through photo magazines like Life and Look, regularly confronted graphic evidence of anation growing increasingly chaotic. What fictional creature could compete with the real-life horror that was modernAmerica?

Enter, Rosemary's Baby. Ira Levin's cannily plotted modern horror story about present-day witchcraft took classicgothic conventions and re-imagined them through the prism of an emerging new world view. A world in whichcastles, bats, cobwebs, and creaky doorways were no longer considered viable mechanisms of fear. A world whichhad moved beyond superstition and myth to worship at the altar of science and logic. Rosemary's Baby proposedthat even in a world in which God and religion were deemed obsolete, there remained things which never died, andprimitive evils which no amount of civilization and modernization could eradicate.

Mia Farrow as Rosemary Woodhouse

John Cassavetes as Guy Woodhouse

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Ruth Gordon as Minnie Castevet

Sidney Blackmer as Roman Castevet

Roman Polanski's uncommonly faithful film adaptation took Ira Levin's narrative one step further. Polanski threadedthe tale of a young bride's mounting certainty that a coven of witches has evil designs on her unborn child, withcultural subtext (is the dawning of the year "One" [1966] and the birth of the Antichrist on earth the true explanationfor the world's escalating terrors?), and ambiguity. Polanski initially filmed, and later deleted, several scenes thatdistinctly confirmed Guy's involvement with the coven. An avowed atheist, Polanski wanted to make a filmabout witchcraft and Satanism that would play just as well as a psychological thriller about a pregnant womansuffering a paranoid breakdown. No matter how it's viewed, in Polanski's deft hands, Rosemary’s Baby proves tobe an overwhelmingly persuasive allegory of social apprehension and the durability of evil.

What a diabolically clever plot: The living Devil born in a Manhattan apartment building (The notorious Bramford,portrayed externally in the film by the notorious Dakota, site of the tragic 1980 shooting death of John Lennon) to alapsed Catholic, a woman of wavering faith, used merely as a vessel. This act signaling the end of God's hegemonyand the beginning of a new, Satanic world order. Historically, this would place the birth of Satan on earth as occuringin 1966, the very year when things began to go violently "wrong" with society on a global scale. No wonder sixtiesaudiences responded to the imaginary "order" this fantasy imposed on the chaos surrounding them.

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Under the piercing scrutiny of Roman Castevet, Rosemary's friend, Hutch(Maurice Evans) grows suspicious when shown Rosemary's Tannis Root charm.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILMRosemary's Baby truly excels in its dramatization of the banality of evil. Though played for darkly comic effect, it'sreally rather jarring that the monsters in this contemporary horror film are harmless-looking little old ladies and men.Just the kind of colorless, ordinary people we as a society are so quick to dismiss. Imagine this film playing out inthe "Don't trust anyone over 30" climate of the '60s, and you get a taste of just how subversively eerie Rosemary'sBaby seemed when it hit the screens. Audiences accustomed to horror films as B-movie double-feature fare weredisquieted when this major motion picture (which was intentionally shot to look as though it were a Doris Daycomedy) with an art-house director and an A-list cast dared to make a horror film that took itself seriously enough tobe truly frightening.

First Betrayal: Polanski has Cassavetes shield his face from the audience thefirst time Guy lies to Rosemary

In Rosemary's Baby, Polanski depicts a world morally turned on its axis, and in keeping so much of itshorrors unseen or unsubstantiated, orchestrates a slow, nightmarish transformation of all that is perceived as safeand familiar in our culture into that which is dangerous and sinister. As a cleverly constructed parable of 60s unease,Rosemary's Baby captured the imagination of the country (It was one of the top money-makers of the year) byproviding some much-needed cathartic release.

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The security and sanctity of marriage as an illusion.

Expectant mothers, in their vulnerability, make for deeply unsettling targets ofdanger.

Can patriarchal figures of authority (Ralph Bellamy as Dr.Sapirstein) betray us?

PERFORMANCESWhen trying to come up with words to adequately express my admiration for Mia Farrow's performance asRosemary, my vocabulary proves grossly inadequate. From the moment she appears onscreen she exhibits avulnerable credibility that anchors the film in an emotional reality necessary to make the horror fantasy work. She'sno genre heroine moved about like a chess piece for the sake of furthering the plot. At every instant the actions ofFarrow's Rosemary are rooted in something psychologically authentic. It ranks with Faye Dunaway in Bonnie and

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Clyde and Jane Fonda in They Shoot Horses, Don't They? as one of the best performances by an Americanactress in the '60s.

THE STUFF OF FANTASYAs he proved with his psychosexual thriller, Repulsion (1965) Roman Polanski is expert at conveying, in cinematicterms, the fluid, distorted quality of dreams and the reality-altering effects of paranoia. He handles Rosemary'sBaby's pivotal "nightmare" sequence with virtuoso skill.

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They didn't refer to this as the "nightmare sequence" for nothing. At age 11, this scene nearly traumatized me.

THE STUFF OF DREAMSRosemary's Baby wasn't the first film I ever saw, it just feels that way. At 11 years old, it was the first film to evermake an indelible impression upon me. I never forgot it. Part of this was due to the fact that it was absolutely THEmost frightening film I had ever seen and was responsible for innumerable bad dreams and a reluctance to enterdark rooms for months thereafter; but mostly it was because Rosemary's Baby was, and is, a small masterpiece.

The scene that made me jump the first time I saw the film (and still makes myblood run cold!)

A horror film that plays fast and loose with the conventions of the genre, blending elements of the psychologicalthriller and paranoid social drama. Beautifully shot, well-written, superbly acted, and above all, smart as a whip. Atno time during Rosemary's Baby do you ever lose the feeling that you are in the hands of a man who knows exactlywhat he's doing and eliciting from you precisely the response he wants you to have.It is a film of solid assurance in every aspect.

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Rosemary's Baby is the Citizen Kane of horror films. To this day, some 40-plus years after its release, I find it one ofthe most remarkable and consistently satisfying films I've ever seen.AUTOGRAPH FILES:On August 14, 1967, a week before production began onRosemary's Baby, legendary hairstylist Vidal Sassoon wasflown to Hollywood to give Mia Farrow's already short haircut a"trim" as a publicity stunt. I had the opportunity to interview Mr.Sassoon in 2003. An incredibly nice and gracious man.Copyright © Ken AndersonAbout Ken AndersonLA-based writer and lifelong film enthusiast. You can readmore of his essays on films of the ’60s & ‘70s at Dreams AreWhat Le Cinema Is For

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My sister (my family are the only ones to call me Kenny)got John Cassavetes to autograph this receipt when she

saw him at a restaurant on Fairfax Avenue in LosAngeles in 1979. She knew I would get a kick out of it and

I did, indeed.

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"It's Vidal Sassoon. It's very in."The $5000 haircut

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