The Enduring Horror of ROSEMARY’S BABY
When you start talking to women about their health-care experiences, a constant theme that emerges is that of dismissal. Their reports of constant and unceasing physical pain is recontextualized as simply emotional reactions, if they’re believed at all. It’s another one of life’s little indignities that make women’s lives arbitrarily harder.
There is no more vulnerable position, of course, that a woman can be than in a state of pregnancy. Studies strongly suggest that a woman has a higher chance of being murdered during pregnancy than she does of dying as a result of the pregnancy itself. You’ll never believe it, but the most common source of maternal femicide is an intimate partner, almost always men. It’s one of the most chilling statistics I’ve ever come across, and it speaks to so many societal pressures and fissures. For whatever reason, women and their wombs are seen as possessions by their male partners, like an asset that can be traded or outright liquidated when the bet turns bad.
That said, it’s not like life is always a bed full of daffodils for men. A man’s world can be a whole other ball of stress, of expectations, of comparison, of having to be masculine and fatherly, to provide amidst severe existential doubt, especially in demanding, personal careers. It’s very, very, very easy to feel like a complete failure when vocational aspirations fizzle out, or take turns, or morph into something nightmarish. When those dark moments occur, there are a lot of dudes out there who would sell just about anything to the devil in order to reverse their fortunes. Probably too many.
Anyway, life is fucking hell. To that end, one of the finest horror movies ever made completely understands this, and it was made by Roman Polanksi, one of the touchiest subjects in all of Hollywood history. Let’s talk about it! Happy Halloween!
ROSEMARY’S BABY (1968)
Directed by: Roman Polanksi
Starring: Mia Farrow, John Cassavetes, Ruth Gordon, Ralph Bellamy
Written by: Roman Planski
Length: 137 minutes
Released: June 12, 1968
Adapted from the 1967 Ira Levin novel, ROSEMARY’S BABY tells the tale of Rosemary and Guy Woodhouse and their fateful encounter with Minnie and Roman Castavet, an elderly couple that live down the hall from them at the Bramford, their new apartment complex (one with a reputation for being haunted by a rumored deep and persistent evil). Guy is a working actor, one with a prominent role in a commercial set to go national. Rosemary is a full time homemaker, with aspirations of motherhood (the title of the movie is a bit of a spoiler in this regard).
A professional setback strikes after Guy gets narrowly turned down for a potentially career-making role in a play, and he takes out his frustrations on Rosemary. He’s not physically abusive or anything (at least not yet), but he develops a penchant for being neglectful and distant in pursuit of work. Thankfully, the kindly-seeming elderly Castavets take the Woodhouses in and seem supportive of Guy’s career and Rosemary’s desire for a family. After a particularly fruitful interaction, fortunes seem to reverse. The actor who got the role over Guy suddenly goes blind and has to drop out. Guy is in. Also…Rosemary is pregnant! By whom is a matter of debate; in one of the most stunning and batshit sequences in the entire film, Rosemary has too much to drink and dreams of being raped by a devilish creature during a nude orgy. The reality of the situation might be even worse; the one who rapes her is her own husband, Guy, having done so while she was unconscious.
Still, once she becomes pregnant, everyone is over the moon, including Minnie, who starts encouraging Rosemary to see their physician, Dr. Saperstein, and giving her vitamin concoctions to drink. Then…Rosemary’s health starts turning. She loses a ton of weight and becomes gaunt. Despite assertions from Guy, the Castavets and Dr. Saperstein, it becomes clear to outside observers that something is wrong. And nobody seems to be treating Rosemary’s persistent pelvic pain, one that’s been going on for months. It’s all completely normal, they tell her….
If you haven’t gathered from the above, the story of ROSEMARY’S BABY is one that wallows in a ton of resentment towards every institution you can think of: the Catholic Church, men, women, motherhood, modern medicine. It’s a deeply, deeply cynical movie, one that could only have been made by Roman Polanski at this particular time in American history, a man who in 1968 hadn’t yet committed any of the sexual crimes he would later be accused and/or convicted of, in case this was something holding you back from watching one of the great horror films of the era, and one that manages to be fairly classy considering its subject matter (one of the least scary things in this movie is a coven of Satanists).
1968 was a turbulent time, both for the country and for Hollywood itself. Six days prior to ROSEMARY’S BABY was released, Robert Kennedy was assassinated by Sirhan Sirhan, the capper to a multi-year run of politically-motivated murders that also claimed Martin Luther King Jr. and the President of the United States. Meanwhile, the old studio system was about to be dead and in the ground after the release of movies like BONNIE & CLYDE and THE GRADUATE. Things were very much in flux, to put it kindly (dancing on a razor’s edge would probably be more fair). It’s in this anger and uncertainty that ROSEMARY’S BABY does its work. There seems to be this strong sense throughout that something isn’t working, that something has irrevocably fractured, and that something very wrong and evil is about to emerge from the cracks.
Of course, this was all context I didn’t really have when I first saw this, probably on TV and probably when I was 13 or 14. It was probably on TCM, probably with a Robert Osborne introduction. I remember finding it interesting, its slow and steady pace captivating even to this young mind. Certainly, by the end, there are enough memorable images (who can forget Mia’s bulging eyes as she finally sees her child?) to make for an unforgettable movie-watching experience. But…at that time, I also remember it feeling a little too alienatingly adult, even a little long.
Given that, it’s notable that the first thing I clocked about ROSEMARY’S BABY this time around (as an alienated adult myself) was indeed its length, a cool 137 minutes. There’s been intermittent but persistent discourse about how long movies should be, usually whenever someone like Coppola, Nolan, or Scorsese releases a new picture (draw your own conclusions as to why that might be). I admit that the creeping increase in the average length of a film is notable. One of the beautiful things about going back to old genre pictures is that you can knock out quite a few of them in a day when they’re 60, 70 minutes a pop. BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN is 75 minutes! DUCK SOUP is barely over an hour! On the other hand, when something like Marvel’s ETERNALS clocks in at 156 minutes, you tend to wonder how much money is being spent on dead air.
But, I’ve always ascribed to the philosophy that good movies are exactly the length they need to be. So, yes, even though ROSEMARY’S BABY’s runtime lies at 2 hours and 17 minutes, you never really feel it, nor could you imagine it being a second shorter. Every scene, every frame is dedicated to establishing atmosphere, character, background, or circumstance. It’s one of those movies where you learn tons of information all the time without it ever feeling too overwhelming. Hell, even something as simple as its setting (the majority of the action takes place inside one apartment building) goes a long way towards putting you in the mindset of Rosemary herself: trapped, with no clear way to see daylight. The movie may be long, but not a moment of it is wasted.
The most incredible thing about ROSEMARY’S BABY is how hard its dark punchline lands. After you’ve seen it once, it’s kind of funny how straight-forward the movie really is. Every time you think, “Hmmm, the Castavets are acting really shady”, it’s because they’re being shady. Every time you wonder, “Why is Guy being such an asshole?” well, it’s because he’s working with the Castavets to turn their baby over to the Devil. Whatever horrible thing you’re imagining is happening in the background, in the margins, it’s exactly what’s happening.
But, on an initial watch (or distant rewatch), because everything is happening just outside the view of Rosemary, a character who is essentially in every scene, and because we’re only left to put the pieces together that we have in front of us, they’re just a little room for doubt most of the way as to whether Rosemary’s actually just losing her mind. Maybe the pain in her pelvis was just that and nothing more. Maybe Dr. Saperstein really is treating her to the best of his ability. Maybe Guy is just a scared parent-to-be and handling it badly. Maybe this idea of a coven conspiracy is just the fever dream of an unwell mind.
My favorite moment in this regard actually belongs to Charles Grodin’s Dr. Hill, presented as the “good doctor” to Saperstein’s “evil doctor”. Rosemary sneaks off to his office to explain her findings in witchcraft and lobby her allegations against Saperstein. Hill calmly puts her in an examination room and says he’ll call Mt. Sinai, only for Saperstein and Guy to arrive instead. Did he call them in because he’s a concerned doctor who thinks he’s seeing a decompensating patient? Or is he also part of the coven? Either read is potentially valid. If you submit to it, ROSEMARY’S BABY really draws you into the feeling of intense, violent paranoia.
And then, with minutes left to go, the movie drops the conceit and has everyone just start screaming, “Hail Satan!” It’s a shocking change in philosophy and pace, and it makes you almost want to laugh out of shock, even as your stomach drops into your feet. As Rosemary starts to rock the cradle containing her Antichrist child, perhaps the darkest ending to a movie I can conjure up concludes.
Speaking of Rosemary, it should be stated in no uncertain terms that Mia Farrow’s work in this is simply astounding. It’s a shame that so much of her legacy is wrapped in another complicated artistic monster, because this movie is a perfect example of what made her so special. This cast is filled with heavy hitters. John Cassavetes is so fucking good in this, and probably a more fitting choice than the original guy they had in mind, Robert Redford. I get the thought there, Redford being the ultimate all-American of the era, but nobody expresses male anxiety than Cassavetes. Ruth Gordon is so sweetly terrifying in this, a performance that earned her an Oscar that year. Nobody has quite depicted the cruelty of the American health-care system like Ralph Bellamy (besides maybe Louise Fletcher in ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST). Even the aforementioned Grodin is putting in what would end up being an against-type performance as the seeming ally Dr. Hill. Everybody is swinging hard and connecting every time at the plate.
And, yet, none of it would matter if Farrow wasn’t so fucking compelling. The entire movie rests on her. The amount of footage that doesn’t include her is minimal. If we don’t follow her every emotion, if we don’t believe the pain she’s in, the anguish of being so brutally gaslit, of being used, of that maternal instinct still brimming through, even at the bitter end…the movie would cease to exist. It may even come off as absurd claptrap. Occultists? The Antichrist? What world is this, exactly?
But, because Farrow is so utterly perfect in portraying the anguish of a woman being gaslit all the way to hell, it’s made so clear what world we’re in when we watch ROSEMARY’S BABY. We’re in ours.
And that’s horrifying enough.