Product: Rosemary's Baby (El Bebe de Rosemary) [ NON-USA FORMAT, NTSC, Reg.4 Import - Latin America ] (1968)
Rating: 5.0
STUPENDOUS, UNFORGETTABLE
If only young hotshot directors would study this classic before undertaking their next studio-financed "shocker," our culture might be richer for it. Polanski's first film shot in America (on stages in LA and locales in NYC) continues to amuse and upset the bejesus out of me 30 years later. I watch it at least twice a year and always find a new dark chortle somewhere, usually in Ruth Gordon's Academy Award winning performane as the next door neighbor from Hell... literally. Yeah, drink yah tanis root, Rosemary.Ira Levin's little gothic pop novel was good enough source material, but Polanksi brought more layers with his own phenomenological study of dreams/reality, and his knack for absurdism (no doubt cultivated from surviving his awful, murderous childhood), along with his panache for choosing a great production designer to drape everything in cheerful yellows against browns and blacks (a psychotic color combo if there ever was one). His pal and jazzman Kszytof Komeda weaves a beguiling score in and out of the spooky, goofy proceedings with a recurring lullaby and some 60s avant-garde jazz riffs. All of this is served up with great performances from Ruth Gordon, Cassavettes (in a spoof of the worst kind of Hollywood backstabber imaginable: a greedy actor), Mia Farrow, and Sydney Blackmer.As modern horror films of intelligence and sublime since 1960 comedy go, the viewing doesn't get much better than "Rosemary's Baby" (well, it's tied with "Don't Look Now" perhaps). It's a 'dangerous' film on many levels, and is open to many, many readings, both horrific and acerbic.La-la-la-la...la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-laaaa