my_daroga | Film review: Rosemary’s Baby (1968)

I don’t watch a lot of the kind of movie typically deemed “horror,” mostly because slasher stuff doesn’t gross me out enough to scare me. What’s hidden, however, could very well exist without my knowing it, and is that much scarier. I think that’s why Rosemary’s Baby holds up so well nearly 30 years later; it’s about anxiety and marriage and urban life and childbirth, not about freaks with chainsaws.

The strength of this film is that it asks you to believe one thing—that a cabal of Satanists could impregnate a woman with the son of the Devil—and leaves everything else really really normal. The problem for me with Exorcist-style films (right now I’m recalling with horror of a different kind the recent The Exorcism of Emily Rose) is that they pose what looks like a similar situation but requires constant suspension of disbelief. Here, we have one single act, and some suspicious behavior, and Rosemary’s fear and anxiety are our own.

Of course, it’s to Roman Polanski’s credit that he is a good director to begin with and can carry such a concept in a film with naturalistic dialogue, pedestrian settings and some unusual transitions from scene to scene. It recalls that old debate over genre-films—can “horror” or “scifi” be also “good,” or does a good film by definition transcend genre (leaving those nether-regions to be populated by the B-pictures)?

The actors, also, do a fantastic job. Mia Farrow has to propel everything pretty much on her own, and she succeeds in portraying an intelligent (though tiny) woman who, for whatever reason, is underutilized in the life she’s living. Rosemary needs something to do. The film is just as much about her struggle with unfulfillment and boredom as her painful pregnancy. And isn’t her pregnancy as much about the plight of the married woman who discovers just what her “job” entails as about the devilchild?

If it sounds like I’m making this film out to be just a meditation on the horrors of childbirth from a masculine point of view, I don’t think it’s that simple. But the significance of a conspiracy of older, powerful people holding sway over the lives of the younger and markedly more feminine can’t be denied. Which is why I think the film could have done away with the coda in which she meets the baby—not because I don’t like seeing her reaction, but because the commentary by the cabal is unnecessarily direct. “He has his father’s eyes,” is funny, sure, but there’s no need for a rousing cry of “Hail Satan!” It’s the ambiguity that cements this film in something like real life—hasn’t everyone felt insecure about what they’re bringing into this world?—and an ending more in keeping with that would have satisfied me better.

Up until the end of the film, Rosemary’s Baby plays on the very real horrors of the repressed urban housewife and anyone else who’s been in a remotely similar situation. It creates real dread with no manipulative fuss and some very creative dream sequences. A lot of horror doesn’t age well, because it’s tied to either immediate concerns that fade or are scientifically discounted (atomic power) or to the special effects that are constantly getting better (gore-fest films). It’s doubtful that Rosemary’s Baby will cause unintentional snickers from an audience thirty years from now.

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I'm not so sure about the "repressed housewife" part. But it's very common to lie awake at night during pregnancy and think that you're engendering a monster. And Rosemary *is.*

That's why the ending is so chilling. I agree that the "Hail Satan!" is overkill. But there are two things about this ending worth thinking about.

The scene where Rosemary sees her son parallels the scene where she engenders him. At first it hurts, and she's terrified. But the sex seems to go on an unnaturally long time, and she seems to come to enjoy it.

Similarly, Rosemary isn't going to stab the devil-baby in its cradle; instead she starts to rock him. And bond with him. There are all kinds of very subtle and emotionally true feelings flying around here - that perhaps it's worse to be bonded to a monster / devil's child than to reject him.

I absolutely agree that the end, with her "ambiguous" reaction to the child, is essential. However, I'd have liked the film as a whole to embrace a similar attitude of ambiguity--one which is maintained throughout the rest of the film.

As to the "repressed housewife" bit, if you're objecting to my reading of Rosemary (rather than disavowing that as a personal point of identification for you), then I would say that this was clear to me from Ro's obvious skills that were not being used and her overbearing boredom at claustrophobia of being in that apartment. It seemed clear to me that if you wanted to look at it from a "hysterical female" point of view, Rosemary did not have enough to occupy her. Which leads to either her susceptibility to the suggestion that she's carrying the devil's child or her susceptibility to being used in that manner--whichever way you want to see it.

Oh no, no personal identification. ; ) I saw the film back in the spring so I had "two views" so to speak - my first viewing as a teenager, and more recent. Personally, I didn't particularly pick up on any cues in the film that her personal circumstance ("housewife") made her particularly susceptible to the demonic plan.

I can see where a NYC apartment would look claustrophobic (although that was a very large and spacious one.) Pregnancy is claustrophobic for a lot of women, because there's no way to "get away" from the overwhelming body changes.

It's an interesting thought experiment, though - would Rosemary have felt or acted differently had she been, let's say, a young lawyer or bank officer in Manhattan? She still would have blindly trusted her doctor, still would have felt physically vulnerable, still would have been introverted and a bit awkward (that I just assumed was her baseline personality.) She would have still had a crappy relationship with her husband ... because he *did* sell her out for success. So IMO the story could have worked either way, with Rosemary in a "traditional" role or in a "career" role.

Personally, I didn't particularly pick up on any cues in the film that her personal circumstance ("housewife") made her particularly susceptible to the demonic plan.

I was mainly thinking about the isolation. If she had something to do--not necessarily a job, but something to keep her busy--she may have been more likely to figure out something was wrong earlier. She's uninformed about pregnancy, cut off even from her female friends.

can see where a NYC apartment would look claustrophobic (although that was a very large and spacious one).

Oh, it's a brilliant apartment, and probably as big as my house is. But it's filmed in such a way, and so much of the film takes place in it, that it feels to me to be confining her.

So IMO the story could have worked either way, with Rosemary in a "traditional" role or in a "career" role.

True. It could have. But the fact that the film took the isolated unworking woman tack seems to me significant in its very choice. Couldn't that choice indicate that the film is saying something about that lifestyle?

I'm not at all saying that career > family. Not at all. What I am saying is that Rosemary is shown as not having much of a function. She's industrious at fixing up the apartment, she exhibits some native intelligence, but she's not involved in any kind of "work" (doesn't have to be a job, even) that involves her. I don't even mean to make this a narrative argument; that is, I'm not necessarily arguing that "this is what led to that," although it's possible. I'm just saying, doesn't her situation seem like a statement to some effect?

I agree that Polanski may have been using the motif of Rosemary-as-housewife as a symbol for female helplessness. It never occurred to me, but thinking over the film, I think that's possible.

One of the dominant themes in the film is what happens when you don't trust your instincts. You can tell in the beginning of the film that Rosemary and Guy don't have the best of relationships. He's distant, domineering, manipulative - even before he teams up with Minnie and Roman. And there are so many steps along the way where she *feels* something is wrong, but doesn't go with it because of what she's "supposed" to think or do. (Like that business with the recurring pain.)

Other things that isolate Rosemary: she is a Midwesterner (Minnesota, I believe - but don't remember exactly.) Some of her difficulty is dealing with NYC, which can be a bit brutal place to live. When she's out on the street she has this deer-in-the-headlights look that you really do see on the faces of "out of towners." I don't know how long they were supposed to have lived in Manhattan, but you can tell she hasn't gotten the rhythm down.

Some of it also is the conspiracy between the two doctors. She lets herself get manipulated to leave Dr. Hill's practice, but when she returns to Hill for help, he simply assumes she's a hysterical woman and calls both her husband and Sapirstein.

Yes, the medical conspiracy was disturbing. You'd think... well, I guess with Charles Grodin you can't be too careful.

You're right about the midwest transplant thing, I had forgotten that. I thought it was south of Minnesota, but it doesn't really matter--she's definitely coded as "out of towner" when she is outside--and that may be what's keeping her in.

Very true about the instincts and lack of following. Everyone else *must* know better, right? And she doesn't ever seem to call Guy on his BS, even when he repeatedly tells her he'll be better, she puts some (at least) of the blame on herself. Her young-people party is too little, too late, I think.

I LOVE that film! I saw it when I was quite young and wondered if it was the sort of film I would not like when I was older. However, when I saw it again, I liked it even more because as a "woman of a child-bearing age" it had even more of an impact on me.

I showed it to my film-buff boyfriend who got incredibly creeped out.

Mia Farrow is fantastic, all pixie fragility, until she is to forced to recognise her child and the situation she is in.

I found the duplicity of the neighbours, the old folk, much scarier than her husband's.

as a "woman of a child-bearing age" it had even more of an impact on me.

Oh yes. And in my case, as a woman who's never had the desire to have children it's even more disturbing!

Film review: Rosemary’s Baby (1968)

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