Sensational, yes, but sensationally well made...

Rating: 10/10 (10 June 2010)

Rosemary's Baby (1968)
Along with the Exorcist (1973), Rosemary's Baby helped shatter taboos in mainstream Hollywood. It builds around Rosemary's pregnancy in a New York City apartment building with nice but nosey neighbors, and Mia Farrow plays the growing paranoia and genuine fear perfectly. This is a psychological thriller told and filmed with naturalism (along with a few surreal dream and nightmare scenes), and editing with smart efficiency so there is no let up in our descent into horror. Director Roman Polanski also wrote the screenplay, and it's a classic construction.
Face it, the story, and the willingness of the movie makers to tell it like it is, is a mind blower. Yes, we've heard or imagined such things in jokes or in our own nightmares (heaven forbid). But never spelled out step by step and made reasonable, or likely. The cast around Farrow is really impeccable. Her husband (John Cassavetes, who knows something about how to make a movie himself) and the two neighbors (Ruth Gordon and Sidney Blackmer) are absolutely convincing in their innocent, lovable guises. Even when you start to be suspicious something is wrong, you don't realize just how wrong it can be.
Thankfully this isn't a Gothic horror film, laying into the macabre and occult aspects (it brushes against them just enough). Because it's really a psychological thriller. You might even expect Hitchcock to have liked the idea, but I suspect he would have shied away from the subject matter, at least the way Polanski had the fears develop into a real horror. It's only at the end that we see a different side to the story, going beyond our worries about Rosemary and her baby. And this is the sensational part of the movie that made everyone talk about it. And for me, it wasn't necessary. It wan't unnecessary, but it ends up tilting the whole flavor of the movie a bit into something campy and even silly, though everyone plays it with perfect realism.
But I think most people will just gasp and be impressed by the whole thing, including the end. It's not a fun film but it's fun to watch, a treat to really study how all the elements, including camera-work (walking down halls, peering through peepholes) add up to a peculiar, masterful, memorable gem.