Rosemary, on the other hand, is forced into the most bizarre suspicions about her husband, and we share them and believe them. 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.īut 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). In this sense, he even outdoes Hitchcock. Polanski has taken a most difficult situation and made it believable, right up to the end. The best thing that can be said about the film, I think, is that it works. John Cassavetes is competent as Rosemary's husband but not as certain of his screen identity as he was in " The Dirty Dozen." Polanski has also drawn a memorable performance from Sidney Blackmer, as the explicably sinister old smoothy, Roman Castevet. 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. Here are two of the finest performances by actresses this year.Īnd the interesting thing is how well they work together: Miss Farrow, previously almost untried in the movies, and Miss Gordon, an experienced professional. In this one, they emerge as human beings actually doing these things.Ī great deal of the credit for this achievement must go to Mia Farrow, as Rosemary, and Ruth Gordon, as Mrs. In most horror films, and indeed in most suspense films of the Alfred Hitchcock tradition, the characters are at the mercy of the plot. The characters and the story transcend the plot.
Rosemary makes her dreadful discovery, and we are wrenched because we knew what was going to happen-and couldn't help her. When the conclusion comes, it works not because it is a surprise but because it is horrifyingly inevitable. 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. 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. We meet Rosemary and her husband and the couple next door. The film doesn't depend on a shock ending for its impact.Īlthough I haven't read Levin's novel, I'm informed that he works in the conventional suspense mode. Unfortunately, not everyone in the world is as nice as Baby Bink's parents especially the three enterprising kidnapers who pretend to be photographers from the newspaper. How the story turns out, and who (or what) Rosemary's baby really is, hardly matters. Baby Bink couldn't ask for more he has adoring (if somewhat sickly-sweet) parents, he lives in a huge mansion, and he's just about to appear in the social pages of the paper. For this reason, the effectiveness of "Rosemary's Baby" is not at all diminished if you've read the book.
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