Rosemary's Baby (1968) - IMDb IMDb There was an error trying to load your rating for this title. Some parts of this page won't work property. Please reload or try later. X Beta I'm Watching This! Keep track of everything you watch; tell your friends. Error A young couple move into an apartment, only to be surrounded by peculiar neighbors and occurrences. When the wife becomes mysteriously pregnant, paranoia over the safety of her unborn child begins to control her life. Director: User Lists Related lists from IMDb users a list of 25 titles created 30 Jan 2011 a list of 36 titles created 16 Apr 2014 a list of 24 titles created 24 May 2015 a list of 47 titles created 28 May 2015 a list of 32 titles created 11 months ago Search for " Rosemary's Baby " on Amazon.com Connect with IMDb Want to share IMDb's rating on your own site? Use the HTML below. You must be a registered user to use the IMDb rating plugin. Won 1 Oscar. Another 9 wins & 12 nominations.

See more awards » Videos When a teenage girl is possessed by a mysterious entity, her mother seeks the help of two priests to save her daughter. Director: William Friedkin Mysterious deaths surround an American ambassador. Could the child that he is raising actually be the Antichrist? The Devil's own son? Director: Richard Donner Carrie White, a shy, friendless teenage girl who is sheltered by her domineering, religious mother, unleashes her telekinetic powers after being humiliated by her classmates at her senior prom. Director: Brian De Palma A sex-repulsed woman who disapproves of her sister's boyfriend sinks into depression and has horrific visions of rape and violence. Director: Roman Polanski Fifteen years after murdering his sister on Halloween night 1963, Michael Myers escapes from a mental hospital and returns to the small town of Haddonfield to kill again. Director: John Carpenter A bureaucrat rents a Paris apartment where he finds himself drawn into a rabbit hole of dangerous paranoia. Director: Roman Polanski Two siblings visit their grandfather's grave in Texas along with three of their friends and are attacked by a family of cannibalistic psychopaths.

Director: Tobe Hooper A wealthy San Francisco socialite pursues a potential boyfriend to a small Northern California town that slowly takes a turn for the bizarre when birds of all kinds suddenly begin to attack people. Director: Alfred Hitchcock 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 7.5/10 X Several people are hunted by a cruel serial killer who kills his victims in their dreams. While the survivors are trying to find the reason for being chosen, the murderer won't lose any chance to kill them as soon as they fall asleep. Director: Wes Craven Oskar, an overlooked and bullied boy, finds love and revenge through Eli, a beautiful but peculiar girl. Director: Tomas Alfredson A family's home is haunted by a host of ghosts. Director: Tobe Hooper A private detective hired to expose an adulterer finds himself caught up in a web of deceit, corruption and murder. Director: Roman Polanski Edit Storyline Rosemary and Guy Woodhouse move into an apartment in an opulent but gothic building in Manhattan. Their landlord Edward "Hutch" Hutchins attempts to dissuade them from doing so: the building has an unsavory history.

They discover that their neighbors are a very friendly elderly couple named Roman and Minnie Castevet, and Guy begins to spend a great deal of time with them. Strange things begin to happen: a young woman Rosemary meets in the laundry commits suicide, Rosemary has strange dreams and hears strange noises and Guy becomes remote and distant. Then Rosemary falls pregnant and begins to suspect that her neighbors have special plans for her child. Written by Goth <brooks@odie.ee.wits.ac.za> 12 June 1968 (USA) See more » Also Known As: El bebé de Rosemary See more » Filming Locations: Did You Know? Trivia Rosemary's Baby is closely associated with The Omen and The Exorcist. But whereas those movies both became big franchises, with many sequels and prequels and remakes between them, Rosemary's Baby only had one TV movie sequel which was a bomb and fizzled out, getting terrible ratings and reviews and never to be shown again, shutting down any ideas of a franchise. See more » Goofs At Rosemary's party, Guy steps from behind the bartender to accept a drink in a closeup shot.

In the following mid-range shot, from a different angle, he is shown in the background stepping up again to take a glass from the bartender. See more » Quotes (USA) – See all my reviews "Rosemary's Baby" is one of the best horror films ever made. This isn't because it's going to scare the pants off you with a series of sensational jolts. This isn't the shallow, gimmicky kind of horror movie we mostly get these days, and it isn't the traditional old-fashioned horror film of an earlier era. This is a movie that came out during a period of transition in Hollywood. The old production codes were breaking down and films could suddenly be more true to life in the way they showed how people really lived, acted and talked. 1968s "Rosemary's Baby" is a more sophisticated, less elegant thriller of the kind that Alfred Hitchcock patented, but it displays much more class and intelligence than the horror movies that would come out in its wake. Popular '70s films such as "The Exorcist" and "The Omen" are the prodigy of "Rosemary's Baby," but offer far less nuance and much greater vulgarity.

What we get here is a more naturalistic depiction of modern life, but without the crassness that would soon explode into American cinema. Most of the credit for what makes "Rosemary's Baby" such a successful film goes to Roman Polanski. Polanski is a master at conveying to an audience not just a sense of the uncanny but a vivid depiction of it. His earlier films like "Knife in the Water," "Repulsion" and "Dance of the Vampires," display the talents that would come to such a controlled mastery in "Rosemary's Baby." Polanski very faithfully adapts Ira Levin's novel to the screen so that the viewer is, just as the reader was, free to interpret the eerie events of the story as either reality or a depiction of an isolated woman's decent into madness. At the same time the picture can be taken as a black joke on the human male's fears of the changes a woman goes through during pregnancy, both physically and emotionally.

But Polanski seems most interested in presenting a normal world, in this case Manhattan in the mid 1960s, and then through subtle cinematic techniques get an audience to actually believe that the hysterical, fantastic ravings of the heroine could be true. It is this tour de force exercise in suspension of disbelief that makes the film a classic. The horror films that have come since have had to ratchet up the shock effects in order to thrill more desensitized audiences, but this deliberately paced film reminds us of how much better it is to leave things to the imagination of the viewer. That is where films really come alive and remain so. The Paramount DVD presents an excellent print of the movie that looks as if it were shot yesterday, along with extras that include new interviews with Polanski, executive producer Bob Evans and production designer Richard Sylbert, and a featurette from the time of the film's original release that really works as a good time capsule. 80 of 101 people found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you?

Yes Rosemary’s Baby (1968) – Directed by Roman Polanski Rosemary’s Baby (1968) – Directed by Roman Polanski Paranoid 60s Thriller With Mia Farrow, John Cassavetes, and Ruth Gordon September 17 2011 Categorized Under: Movie Reviews No Commented (1968) Directed by: Roman Polanski Starring: Mia Farrow, John Cassavetes, Ruth Gordon, Sidney Blackmer, Maurice Evans, Ralph Bellamy, Victoria Vetri, Patsy Kelly, Elisha Cook Jr., Emmaline Henry, Charles Grodin, Hanna Landy, Phil Leeds, D’Urville Martin, Hope Summers 1/2 (out of 4) Like the cradle? I bought it at Hot Topic! Warning: spoilers ahead. Based on the best selling novel by Ira Levin , the Roman Polanski-directed Rosemary’s Baby is a deliberate slow-burn, an efficient clockwork of paranoia. It successfully depicts the intrusion of the supernatural into the real world, and until the ending revelations, its dangers are lurking just out of visual range, at the edge, in shadows.

Thanks to Polanski’s sure direction and Mia Farrow’s effective performance, you wonder sometimes whether the character of Rosemary really is just going through the “pre-partum crazies”, at least until the literal ending that turns her world (well, The world) upside down (then again, maybe it’s not so literal – maybe everyone is just crazy). Three 6's in a row! I'm on fire! Rosemary (Farrow) and her aspiring actor husband Guy (John Cassavetes) move into a gothic-style apartment house named the Bramford and settle into a place where the previous tenant was a strange elderly woman (who blocked the entrance to her hallway closet with a large dresser). The neighbors next door are an eccentric older couple named Minnie (Ruth Gordon) and Roman Castevet (Sidney Blackmer). Roman is 79 years old and insists that he has been all over the world; Minnie is nosy and a bit overbearing. However, the pair seem nice and harmless enough, and Rosemary simply attributes their behavior to loneliness.

There are disturbing stories about the Bramford – former residents eating children and another attacked by a mob for being a devil worshipper – but do you know how difficult it is getting a place like this in the city? Rosemary briefly meets Terry (Victoria Vetri), a woman close to her age that was adopted by the Castevets off the street. But before long, poor Terry throws herself out the window. Soon after that, Guy starts spending an awfully lot of time over at Minnie and Roman’s apartment. Anyway, Rosemary badly wants children, and she gets her chance when she eats some of Minnie’s bad mousse, passes out, and has a surreal nightmare about being raped by a beast while her hubby and the rest of the Bramford’s tenants witness the act in the nude. The rest of Rosemary’s Baby is a skillful buildup of suspense, as Rosemary slowly (perhaps too slowly) realizes that there may be a coven of witches next door planning horrible things against her and her baby. The Castevets take quite an interest in Rosemary, and with Guy now their new best friend, convince her to change doctors (Dr. Hill is a nobody – Dr.

Sapirstein (Ralph Bellamy) is a high society obstetrician who will give you a special discount!) and forgo taking manufactured pills so that Minnie can make strange concoctions made up of special “roots and herbs” in her private nursery. Rosemary reluctantly accepts this new diet, which includes lots of “tannis root”, which she eventually learns has diabolical origins, but by then it’s too late. (As much as we come to care about Mia Farrow’s character, her innocent and trusting nature eventually becomes a bit frustrating, but of course I’m looking at it from a 21st century perspective, not from a 1960s one). But that brings up another interesting talking point, with the 1960s being such a tumultuous time in 20th Century American history, where the social conformity of the 50s was turned on its head. Like other horror films of the 60s – I’m thinking specifically of Night of the Living Dead and Psycho – the concept of family is twisted and the fabric of society unraveled.

The parents of our young couple are noticeably absent (were they ever around?), and poor early victim Terry had no family either (just a brother in the Navy). In a sense, Rosemary’s Baby can be considered reactionary, since the void caused by disappearing family members (and Rosemary straying from the Catholic church) is filled by a coven of Satanists. The anti-Christ is born at the end of the film, but Rosemary still feels obligated to be a mom to it – the mothering instinct being triumphant over all. (And forget about marital cohesion – the trust that is supposed to be present between Rosemary and Guy is completely destroyed by Guy’s unending desire for fame and fortune.) Another party at Polanski's place. That the film is an exercise in paranoia and anxiety is a given, and this aspect of Rosemary’s Baby has been discussed a number of times (see also: Night of the Living Dead). But I think it may have something to say about pregnancy itself and how mothers-to-be come to terms with harboring a (foreign) life form in their womb for 9 months.

Conditions like neurasthenia and prepartum depression are covered – I think this film may connect with mothers on a deeper level than it did with me. Although, I don’t recommend viewing by expectant moms – not because of gore (there isn’t any except for a brief shot of Terry’s death) but because of the unsettling ideas the film brings forth. Rosemary’s Baby is carefully constructed, psychologically disturbing but not without humor – my favorite scene is when Rosemary panics, runs to Dr. Hill, and spills forth her suspicions in such a manner that anyone within earshot would consider her insane. The poor girl is a little bit too naive for my tastes, but then again what other type of person would be so vulnerable to the plans of a cult of Satanists? A small part of me also wishes we got a look at the baby, even though I understand why Polanski chose not to show us. In the end, it’s not really about the baby anyway, but the corruption of the family and the intrusion of the sinister into everyday life.

Rosemary’s Baby is Polanski’s first American film and the second in his “paranoia” trilogy, which also includes Repulsion ‎Rosemary's Baby (1968) directed by Roman Polanski • Reviews, film + cast • Letterboxd 26 Roman Polanski's first American feature is a masterwork of outstanding direction, polished screenplay & stellar performances that may lean towards the supernatural in small doses but what truly makes it an enduring masterpiece of its genre is the seamless manner in which it employs the psychological elements of horror into its premise by creating a chilling sense of dread, paranoia & suspense over the course of its runtime. Based on the novel of the same name, the story of Rosemary's Baby takes place in the year of 1966 and concerns a young couple; struggling actor Guy Woodhouse & his lovely wife Rosemary, who move into a notorious apartment building in New York and are gleefully greeted by their elderly but eccentric neighbours. The… 21 First watch of Hoop-Tober 2.0 . Rosemary and Guy, a young couple planning to have three children in the foreseeable future, move into a new apartment, infamous for its history of housing some of New York’s most frightening horrors.

As soon as Rosemary gets pregnant she begins to increasingly suspect her nosy neighbours to plan to inflict harm upon her unborn baby. Telling you more about the plot would be a sin! I went into this without knowing anything about it, except for the critical acclaim, and was surprised big time again and again by the twisty plot and the haunting atmosphere that kicks in directly after one very, very peculiar scene. The premise, once fully unfolded, of Rosemary’s Baby is… Not Quite Hoop-Tober : Day 27 I'm really at a loss for words to describe how much I love Rosemary's Baby. I always hate when writers say that because it feels supremely disingenuous, but I genuinely don't know how to properly express my appreciation for this wonderful film. I could harp on the standard beats I usually go through: its cinematography is dizzying in its precision, Rosemary's character and Mia Farrow's performance are daunting in both their depth and complexity, and the way it presents fear of faith (in yourself and those around you) is as haunting as it is mesmerizing. But this isn't really what makes the movie great.

Sure, I could read it as an exploration of the horrors… 13 It's 95 degrees outside; people are dying of the heat. But somewhere a baby is crying. Dressed in a white gown and blue robes, Rosemary recalls the Virgin Mary, as she walks through the linen-closet-cum-gates-of-hell to meet her child for the first time, knife poised in hand. We all know who this baby is - that baby with the red eyes who she finally, gently, rocks in its pitch black bassinet with a subverted cross mobile. Polanski leads us to this creepy, disturbing and - let's be honest - rather hilarious resolution with skill and subtlety, and so we, too, accept it, just as Rosemary accepts her "off"spring. This is a story of love gone bad, of the classic swarthy… Time Out says 5 out of 5 stars The movie has a fearsome reputation, so let’s go in through the side door. Ignore that creepy la-la-la music over the opening credits, along with the ominous facade of the Dakota—it’s only an apartment building, a touch more Gothic than most.

Rosemary (Mia Farrow) and Guy (John Cassavetes) eat dinner out of takeout cartons, sitting on the floor of their furniture-free space. You hear the traffic outside, an airplane flies by, the couple have Wednesday sex; nothing could be more mundane. They talk about typical young-married stuff: jobs, money, haircuts. A nosy next-door neighbor, Minnie (Ruth Gordon), isn’t anything out of the norm either. We’re not quite in a documentary—Roman Polanski is too careful with his camera—but it might as well be one, or a drama, a contemporary slice of cosmopolitan anxiety set on the same wing as the Draper residence. Modern is exactly what Rosemary’s Baby is, and why it’s still so major, the supernatural elements seeping in via the cracks. Could all of our heroine’s nerves be just a bad dream? Suddenly, she’s pregnant, and in come the doctors, including a bearded, close-to-parody obstetrician cutting off her guff and recommending a daily milkshake. The brilliance here—a fair amount of it due to novelist Ira Levin, also of The Stepford Wives—is diversion: Who actually expects the devil in the details?

Hollywood trembled after this film came out—they couldn’t go back to Transylvania anymore. Fear was all around us, and the better thrillers have kept it there. Follow Joshua Rothkopf on Twitter: @joshrothkopf Posted: Isaac Mizrahi's Favorite Film? The "Funny" Rosemary's Baby Video | InStyle.com BY: Jennifer Merritt Rosemary's Baby, the 1968 film starring Mia Farrow and directed by Roman Polanski, is iconic in many ways, the fashion and beauty depicted at the time chief among them. "I went to see this movie, and I remember that, visually, it was so arresting, so fabulous to look at," Isaac Mizrahi says of the picture, about a young woman in New York who gets unknowingly impregnated by the devil.

The designer is just one of the tastemakers sharing their favorite movies with InStyle and Fandango for a glam edition of the ticket retailer's web series, " I Love Movies ." RELATED: Olivia Palermo's Favorite Movie Involves a Very Stylish Socialite In the film, Farrow can be seen in every chic clothing item from the late '60s, including a plaid, maxi-style kilt and a Peter Pan-collared mini dress. (It's also where the actress first showed off her now-iconic pixie—which she cut herself , the world recently learned.) "I love the accessibility of these crazy little things," Mizrahi says. "You wore these tiny little babydolls with tights and Mary Janes if you were a 30-year-old woman...[The characters] were eccentric, they were strange, but somehow everybody in New York at that time just looked like that." Everett Collection\Mondadori Portfolio And, he says, it's a sensibility that's lost on today's sartorial set. "When you think about how we've evolved stylistically, we don't have a sense of humor anymore, and I mourn that," he says.

"People are not allowed to be as kooky as they were in the '60s and '70s." RELATED: The Truth Behind Mia Farrow's Iconic Pixie For more from Mizrahi, including why he maintains Rosemary's Baby isn't a horror movie, watch the video above, and check back here weekly to watch style setters like InStyle's own Ariel Foxman, Empire costume designer Paolo Nieddu, and more talk about the movies they love. SHOW TRANSCRIPT Hi, my name is Isaac Mizrahi and my favorite movie is Rosemary's Baby. I think that all good movies are based on a kind of emotional connection that you make with a Story and I went to see this movie and I remember that visually it was arresting, so fabulous to look at. Which is what made me love it automatically. Just the period of it, the perfection of the 1960's. Then suddenly you're dealing with this kind of subject matter of Rosemary being raped by the devil and carrying his child, but it's funny. And I think that's where it really kind of broke back barriers.

I can't think of many funny horror movies before Rosemary's Baby and I still maintain that it's not necessarily in the genre of horror, it's just It's in the genre of masterpiece. I look at it as my education about that period in that part of the world. You know? There's a wonderful scene where she's listening to a record, and she's wearing a black cashmere turtleneck and this wonderful kind of maxi plaid kilt to the ground. But I just love the accessibility of these crazy little things. You know, you wore these, like, Tiny little baby dolls with like tights and mary janes if you were like a 30 year old woman and there's lots of natty looking suits and neat little dresses with big hair. They were eccentric. They were strange, but somehow everybody in New York at that time just looked like that. And when you think about the way we've evolved stylistically and how We don't have the kind of sense of humor any more. And I mourn that, I mourn that a lot, how people are not allowed to be as kooky as they were in the 1960s and 70s.

The other thing I've gotten out of this movie in terms of who I am as a fashion designer is the idea of casting. Any time I have a dress that I need to show It takes me forever to figure out who is gonna wear it because the model just brings the thing to life in the same way that Mia Farrow brought these words to life in the script and the role. I think a model brings a dress to life and if it's not brought to life in the right way it's stillborn. The thing about this movie that holds true in my life, more than any particular part of it, like the physical part of it or the emotional content, is the rigor with which Roman Polanski made the movie. Every second of it, every inch of it, right? You can't find fault with it. It's flawless. And that's kind of how I like to think of what I do. I like to think that it is also flawless. My name is Issac Mizrahi and I love movies. That's a wrap. [MUSIC] Rosemary's Baby (1968) - Trailer - YouTube Rosemary's Baby (1968) - Trailer Want to watch this again later?

Sign in to add this video to a playlist. Need to report the video? Sign in to report inappropriate content. Rating is available when the video has been rented. This feature is not available right now. Please try again later. Published on Nov 25, 2012 Directed by Roman Polanski "A young couple move into a new apartment, only to be surrounded by peculiar neighbors and occurrences. When the wife becomes mysteriously pregnant, paranoia over the safety of her unborn child begins controlling her life." (by imdb.com) Rosemary's Baby (1968) Pages: ( 1 ) ( 2 ) ( 3 ) ( 4 ) Background Rosemary's Baby (1968) is Polish director Roman Polanski's first American feature film and his second, scary horror film - following his first disturbing film in English titled Repulsion (1965) - about a mentally-unstable, sexually-terrified woman (Catherine Deneuve) left alone in her apartment.

Three Polanski films served as a trilogy (of sorts) about the horrors of apartment-dwelling: Repulsion (1965), Rosemary's Baby (1968), and The Tenant (1976). Polanski served as the scriptwriter and based the darkly atmospheric film upon Ira Levin's best-selling novel of the same name. [Levin also wrote another horror tale about voyeurism in a Manhattan apartment building that inspired the film Sliver (1993), starring Sharon Stone, and he wrote a terrifying sequel to the original film titled Son of Rosemary (1997), but it has not been made into a film yet.] The film was produced by Paramount Studios and veteran, low-budget horror film maker William Castle, best known for gimmicky, cheesy films such as Mr. Sardonicus (1961), Homicidal (1961), House on Haunted Hill (1958), Macabre (1958), and The Tingler (1959).

The creepy, eerie gothic film is about a young newlywed couple who move into a large, rambling old apartment building in Central Park West, and begin a loving, post-honeymoon period. They become friendly with the eccentric next-door neighbors, an overly-solicitous and intrusive elderly couple (members of a coven), and soon the husband's acting career turns promising. But after a nightmarish dream of making love to a Beast, the paranoid, haunted, and hysterical woman believes herself impregnated so that her baby can be used in the New Yorkers' evil cult rituals. [Polanski deliberately presented the film with enough ambiguity so that the viewer is never quite certain whether Rosemary's experiences are truly supernatural or just fabricated, imaginative hallucinations.] The creepy film ends with the devil's flesh-and-blood baby being cared for by the mother! The incredible irony of the film was that the plot would be similarly played out a year later - Polanski's pregnant actress/wife Sharon Tate would be terrorized and murdered by the strange cult of Charles Manson followers in her Benedict Canyon home.

The big-budget horror film received two Academy Award nominations: one for Polanski's Best Adapted Screenplay, and Ruth Gordon won the Best Supporting Actress award for her performance as one of the well-meaning, 'normal' NYC neighbors. Quite a few of the smaller supporting roles were played by venerable actors, such as Ralph Bellamy (as Rosemary's Dr. Abraham Sapirstein), Sidney Blackmer (as Roman Castevet), Elisha Cook, Jr. (as apartment manager Mr. Nicklas), and Tony Curtis (phone voice). It has been said that the film, concerned with the presence of evil surrounding us in the alienated, every-day, mundane city environment, inspired and was partly imitated by one of the greatest horror films of all time - The Exorcist (1973) , and numerous other films about demonic children and impregnation including It's Alive (1974), the TV movie The Stranger Within (1974), The Omen (1976) and Demon Seed (1977).

This critically-acclaimed and commercially successful film was followed by an inferior, made-for-TV movie sequel in 1976 entitled Look What's Happened to Rosemary's Baby, aka Rosemary's Baby II, with Ruth Gordon reprising her role as Minnie Castevet. The Story The mood of the film is first established by a long, leisurely (almost predatory), panning and gliding shot from right to left across the urban landscape of New York City (including portions of Manhattan and Central Park), accompanied by a female voice [uncredited Mia Farrow] monotonously singing a sad lullaby tune with the words: "la-la-la-la-..." Suddenly during the credits (with letters scripted in bright pink), the camera moves downward, changes direction, and tracks backward over the protrusions and arched windows atop Victorian apartment building rooftops. [The camera settles on the entrance-way to the famous Dakota on Manhattan's Upper West Side, where John Lennon was assassinated.

The apartment building serves as another horror film character, with its dark hallways and creepy environment.] From a bird's-eye-view, the camera watches two tiny figures enter an archway - the West 72nd Street entrance to the apartments, where they are ushered into 'the Bramford' by Mr. Nicklas (Elisha Cook, Jr.). The young, newly-married 60's couple is apartment-hunting: an unemployed, struggling actor Guy Woodhouse (Oscar-nominated director and actor John Cassavetes) his frail, waifish wife Rosemary (22 year old Mia Farrow), later identified as from Omaha, Nebraska - the Midwest To Mr. Nicklas' question: "Are you a doctor?", Guy answers affirmatively, while Rosemary establishes details of her husband's real profession and his previous acting credits in two plays -- both significant: "He was in Luther and Nobody Loves an Albatross and a lot of television plays and commercials." [Guy is struggling and feeling unrecognized as an actor, similar to the role an albatross plays.] She also divulges that they "plan" to have children.

After riding up the elevator into the gloomy yet elegant and spacious Central Park West building, they see signs of wear and tear - chipped floor tiles and unpainted plaster on the wall in the hallway of the 7th floor. The camera glides along with them as they are shown the now-vacant, gothic apartment (7E) of the elderly, 89 year-old Mrs. Gardenia who passed away a few days earlier: "She'd been in a coma for weeks...She was very old and passed away without ever waking. I'd be grateful to go that way myself when the time comes." There are signs of the deceased tenant's gardening interest in herbs, and cryptic writings of hers read: "I can no longer associate myself... (unfinished)." Oddly enough, black curtains hang by the living room's window and a tall, heavy wooden secretary blocks a closet in the hall. After the tour, Rosemary convinces her husband that they should lease the large, fashionable apartment although it is expensive.

During a dinner invitation with their friend Edward "Hutch" Hutchins (Maurice Evans), he warns them of the apartment building's notorious, sordid and unsavory reputation for witchcraft and cannibalism over 50 years earlier -- (and provides some of the film's foreshadowing of what a prospective mother would fear - underlined): Are you aware that the Bramford had a rather unpleasant reputation around the turn of the century? It's where the Trench sisters conducted their little dietary experiments. And Keith Kennedy held his parties. Adrian Marcato lived there too...The Trench sisters were two proper Victorian ladies - they cooked and ate several young children including a niece...Adrian Marcato practiced witchcraft. He made quite a splash in the 90s by announcing that he'd conjured up the living devil. Apparently, people believed him so they attacked and nearly killed him in the lobby of the Bramford...Later, the Keith Kennedy business began and by the 20s, the house was half empty...World War II filled the house up again...They called it Black Bramford...This house has a high incidence of unpleasant happenings.

In '59, a dead infant was found wrapped in newspaper in the basement... Rosemary and Guy begin moving into the apartment and unpacking a few of their possessions. Through the wall, they hear their neighbor speaking to her husband Roman: "Bring me out some root beer when you come." While eating take-out in one of the nearly-vacant rooms one evening, Rosemary proposes: "Hey, let's make love." After they both undress and begin kissing, Guy jokes morbidly and interrupts their romantic mood: "I think I hear the Trench sisters chewing." To brighten up their new abode, the interior of the apartment is painted, decorative wallpaper is hung, and new carpet is laid. While hanging new curtains, Rosemary views one of Guy's TV commercials - the camera follows her as she adoringly sits in front of the tube and watches his role as an interested customer at a Yamaha dealership. The ad ends with an explosion of white zooming out from the screen's center toward Rosemary.

While Rosemary is in the basement's laundry room on her first visit there, she meets one of the other tenants - Terry Gionoffrio (Victoria Vetri who is credited in the film as Angela Dorian - her moniker as a Playboy Playmate model in September 1967 and as Playboy's 1968 Playmate of the Year). Momentarily, Rosemary thinks that Terry resembles a famous nude model/actress (in one of the film's in-jokes): I'm sorry. I-I-I thought you were Victoria Vetri, the actress. Vetri quips that she often gets mistaken for Victoria, but she "doesn't see the resemblance." Terry is rooming with the Castevets on the 7th floor, hence, one of Rosemary's immediate neighbors. The basement is a fearful place for them - "it gives me the creeps" according to Rosemary. To provide protection, Terry displays her mysterious, smelly and noxious "good-luck charm" [filled with tannis root] given her by Mrs. Castevet.

After Rosemary bends down to smell the locket, Terry describes her admiration for the "wonderful," childless couple that took her in as their ward: They picked me up off the sidewalk, literally...I was starving and on dope and doing a lot of other things. They're childless though. I'm like the daughter they never had. At first, I thought they wanted me for some kind of a sex thing but they turned out to be like real grandparents...I'd be dead now if it wasn't for them. That's an absolute fact. Dead or in jail. One evening, the Woodhouses hear weird chanting through the flowery, wall-papered wall of their bedroom, and then when returning home another night, they confront a bloody, unexpected scene outside their apartment building - Terry has suicidally jumped from a window to her gruesome death on the street. Out of the darkness stride the two elderly neighbors, Roman Castevet (Sidney Blackmer) in a red, pin-striped dinner jacket with red bowtie and a grotesquely-dressed Minnie (Ruth Gordon).

According to Roman, Terry's death was inevitable since she was "deeply depressed every three weeks or so." The Woodhouses meet their neighbors in the adjoining apartment. [The Satanists' first chosen maternal vehicle to bear a child - the ill-fated Terry - proved unsuitable, so they either killed her or placed a spell on her to commit suicide. She might have become "deeply depressed" after learning her fate - that she would bear the Devil's child.] That night, Rosemary suffers hallucinatory nightmares of her Catholic school upbringing and frightening visions of the accident. A few days later, the busybody, garrulous and eccentric neighbor Minnie, with her hair up in an odd, white polka-dotted scarf, pays a visit. When Rosemary spies her over-solicitous neighbor through the peep-hole (in a ludicrously distorted fish-eye view) and then opens the door, she literally invites in more than she ever anticipated. The young bride tells her intrusive guest that she has a nursery planned and "hope(s) to be" pregnant as soon as they're settled. The bright, freshly-painted apartment startles Minnie, and she nosily asks the price of one of the living room chairs.

She later badgers Rosemary into accepting an invitation for her and Guy to join them for supper that evening. Guy dejectedly returns home for lunch after being passed over in a Broadway audition for an acting part, and reluctantly agrees to attend the Castevet's dinner engagement with Rosemary. Rosemary’s Baby (1968) - The Criterion Collection The Criterion Collection Spine #630 Horrifying and darkly comic, Rosemary’s Baby was Roman Polanski’s Hollywood debut. This wildly entertaining nightmare, faithfully adapted from Ira Levin’s best seller, stars a revelatory Mia Farrow as a young mother-to-be who grows increasingly suspicious that her overfriendly elderly neighbors (played by Sidney Blackmer and an Oscar-winning Ruth Gordon) and self-involved husband (John Cassavetes) are hatching a satanic plot against her and her baby. In the decades of occult cinema that Polanski’s ungodly masterpiece has spawned, it has never been outdone for sheer psychological terror.

Cast New, restored digital transfer, approved by director Roman Polanski, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack New documentary featuring interviews with Polanski, actress Mia Farrow, and producer Robert Evans Interview with author Ira Levin from a 1997 broadcast of Leonard Lopate’s public radio program New York and Company, about his 1967 novel, its sequel, and the film Komeda, Komeda, a feature- length documentary on the life and work of jazz musician and composer Krzysztof Komeda, who wrote the score for Rosemary’s Baby PLUS: A booklet featuring a new essay by critic Ed Park; Levin’s afterword to the 2003 New American Library edition of his novel; and Levin’s rare, unpublished character sketches of the Woodhouses and floor plan of their apartment, created in preparation for the novel Cover based on a theatrical poster by Stephen Frankfurt Current Posts Repertory Pick: Polanski Comes to Pennsylvania December 10, 2015 Over the next two weeks, the Bryn Mawr Film Institute will present a series called Fatal Vision: The Cinema of Roman Polanski, Pt.1, highlighting Polanski’s early European art films and timed to .

. . Read more » Video By Chuck Stephens November 06, 2012 “Stuck with Satan”: Ira Levin on the Origins of Rosemary’s Baby November 05, 2012 The following originally appeared as the afterword to the 2003 New American Library edition of the novel Rosemary’s Baby. Having observed that the most suspenseful part of a horror story is . . . Read more » 10 Things I Learned By Karen Stetler October 31, 2012 Rosemary’s Baby: “It’s Alive” By Ed Park October 30, 2012 All of them actors? Nearly everyone wears a mask in Roman Polanski’s devilishly clever work of horror. Read more » Three Reasons “Stuck with Satan”: Ira Levin on the Origins of Rosemary’s Baby November 05, 2012 The following originally appeared as the afterword to the 2003 New American Library edition of the novel Rosemary’s Baby. Having observed that the most suspenseful part of a horror story is . . .

Read more » Film Essays Rosemary’s Baby: “It’s Alive” By Ed Park October 30, 2012 All of them actors? Nearly everyone wears a mask in Roman Polanski’s devilishly clever work of horror. Read more » Big Screen Repertory Pick: Rosemary’s Baby in Athens September 29, 2016 Tonight, Ciné, in Athens, Georgia, will kick off its Son of Schlocktoberfest horror series with a screening of Roman Polanski’s 1968 occult masterpiece Rosemary’s Baby. This macabre adaptation . . . Read more » Interviews Gregory Crewdson’s Cinematic Worlds By Hillary Weston February 03, 2016 For more than two decades, photographer Gregory Crewdson has been creating otherworldly images that reveal an eerie side of Americana. His works, typically tableaux of small-town life, transform . . .

Read more » Big Screen Repertory Pick: Polanski Comes to Pennsylvania December 10, 2015 Over the next two weeks, the Bryn Mawr Film Institute will present a series called Fatal Vision: The Cinema of Roman Polanski, Pt.1, highlighting Polanski’s early European art films and timed to . . . Read more » Clippings Film Picks from Agnès Varda, Arnaud Desplechin, Olivier Assayas, and More November 06, 2015 As part of the launch of the new French streaming video service La Cinetek—which was founded by the filmmakers Pascale Ferran (Bird People), Cédric Klapisch (Chinese Puzzle), and Laurent Cantet . . . Read more » Video Rosemary’s Baby Movie Review & Film Summary (1968) | Roger Ebert Tweet Roman Polanski's "Rosemary's Baby" is a brooding, macabre film, filled with the sense of unthinkable danger. Strangely enough it also has an eerie sense of humor almost until the end. It is a creepy film and a crawly film, and a film filled with things that go bump in the night.

It is very good. Advertisement As everyone must have heard by now, the movie is based on Ira Levin's novel about modern-day witches and demons. But it is much more than just a suspense story; the brilliance of the film comes more from Polanski's direction, and from a series of genuinely inspired performances, than from the original story. For this reason, the effectiveness of "Rosemary's Baby" is not at all diminished if you've read the book. How the story turns out, and who (or what) Rosemary's baby really is, hardly matters. The film doesn't depend on a shock ending for its impact. Although I haven't read Levin's novel, I'm informed that he works in the conventional suspense mode. We meet Rosemary and her husband and the couple next door. We identify with Rosemary during her pregnancy, sharing her doubts and fears, But when the ending comes, I'm told, it is an altogether unexpected surprise. Advertisement Polanski doesn't work this way. He gives the audience a great deal of information early in the story, and by the time the movie's halfway over we're pretty sure what's going on in that apartment next door.

When the conclusion comes, it works not because it is a surprise but because it is horrifyingly inevitable. Rosemary makes her dreadful discovery, and we are wrenched because we knew what was going to happen--and couldn't help her. This is why the movie is so good. The characters and the story transcend the plot. In most horror films, and indeed in most suspense films of the Alfred Hitchcock tradition, the characters are at the mercy of the plot. In this one, they emerge as human beings actually doing these things. A great deal of the credit for this achievement must go to Mia Farrow , as Rosemary, and Ruth Gordon , as Mrs. Castevet, the next-door neighbor. Here are two of the finest performances by actresses this year. Advertisement And the interesting thing is how well they work together: Miss Farrow, previously almost untried in the movies, and Miss Gordon, an experienced professional. Because we can believe them as women who live next door to each other, we find it possible to believe the fantastic demands that the Castevets are eventually able to make on Rosemary. Polanski has also drawn a memorable performance from Sidney Blackmer , as the explicably sinister old smoothy, Roman Castevet.

John Cassavetes is competent as Rosemary's husband but not as certain of his screen identity as he was in " The Dirty Dozen ." The best thing that can be said about the film, I think, is that it works. Polanski has taken a most difficult situation and made it believable, right up to the end. In this sense, he even outdoes Hitchcock. Both "Rosemary's Baby" and Hitchcock's classic "Suspicion" are about wives, deeply in love, who are gradually forced to suspect the most sinister and improbable things about their husbands. Advertisement But Cary Grant in "Suspicion" was only a bounder and perhaps a murderer, and we didn't even really believe that (since he was Cary Grant). Rosemary, on the other hand, is forced into the most bizarre suspicions about her husband, and we share them and believe them. Because Polanski exercises his craft so well, we follow him right up to the end and stand there, rocking that dreadful cradle. Popular Blog Posts

Question: Who directed the 1968 film ‘Rosemary’s Baby’?
Answer: Roman Polanski