Rosemary's Baby Holds Up To The Present

Rating: 10/10 (26 October 2012)

In Roman Polanski's first American film that is adapted from Ira Levin's horror bestseller, a young wife comes to believe that her offspring is not of this world.The film,entitled Rosemar's Baby,features Mia Farrow, John Cassavetes, Ruth Gordon, Maurice Evans, Sidney Blackmer and Charles Grodin.Farrow plays a pregnant woman who fears that her husband may have made a pact with their eccentric neighbors, believing he may have promised them the child to be used as a human sacrifice in their occult rituals in exchange for success in his acting career.
Rosemary Woodhouse and her struggling actor husband, Guy move into the Bramford, an old New York City apartment building with an ominous reputation and only elderly residents. Neighbors Roman and Minnie Castevet soon come nosing around to welcome the Woodhouses to the building; despite Rosemary's reservations about their eccentricity and the weird noises that she keeps hearing, Guy starts spending time with the Castevets. Shortly after Guy lands a plum Broadway role, Minnie starts showing up with homemade chocolate mousse for Rosemary. When Rosemary becomes pregnant after a mousse-provoked nightmare of being raped by a beast, the Castevets take a special interest in her welfare. As the sickened Rosemary becomes increasingly isolated, she begins to suspect that the Castevets' circle is not what it seems. The diabolical truth is revealed only after Rosemary gives birth, and the baby is taken away from her.
This is a frightening tale of Satanism and pregnancy that is even more disturbing than it sounds thanks to convincing and committed performances by Mia Farrow and Ruth Gordon.In addition to that,Polanski's camera-work and Richard Sylbert's production design transform the realistic setting into a sinister projection of Rosemary's fears, chillingly locating supernatural horror in the familiar by leaving the most grotesque frights to the viewer's imagination. Having escaped the horrors of the Nazi Holocaust in Poland by the skin of his teeth, Mr. Polanski was well equipped psychologically to re- imagine what was, before Rosemary's Baby, a B-picture genre into an A- picture genre.And four decades later,his supremely mounted horror thriller holds up extremely well.