Rosemary’s baby is probably one of the most acclaimed films by filmmaker Roman Polanski, a recognition that comes not only from her high film quality, but also from the mysteries that seem to envelop her.
Filmed in the building where, just over a decade later, John Lennon, the same building where Boris Karloff lived and died, was killed, and just a year before the murder of the filmmaker’s wife, Sharon Tate, Rosemary’s Baby is a film that, even today, arouses horror and mystery.
- Polanski is currently one of the most controversial filmmakers.
- Embroiled in various legal problems.
- However.
- His cinematic heritage is almost unmatched.
A young couple, extraordinarily special neighbors and a tragic pregnancy are some of the main points of the film, where Rosemary and her husband are immersed in the usual task of finding a home and starting a family.
However, her husband’s ambitions far exceed the expectations of the family, forcing the marriage to sink into a less unlikely hell than it seems.
Rosemary’s Baby is a feature film that takes us down a path between the fantastic and the rational, a path full of pitfalls, misfortunes and claustrophobia, undoubtedly one of the great jewels of horror cinema.
The film is full of uncertainties, it takes the freedom to sow doubt in the viewer and make him walk the tightrope. A rope that touches agony, asphyxiation and even claustrophobia, although it is always surrounded by strokes of rationality.
Speaking of uncertainty, already in the nineteenth century, Pedro Antonio de Alarcón, one of Edgar Allan Poe’s great scientists, allowed himself to say that Poe’s genius was precisely “to be rationalist and aspire to the fantastic”.
An affirmation that today, two centuries later, fits perfectly into Polanski’s film, the subject of this article. Uncertainty, doubt and psychological terror are the basis of Rosemary’s Baby.
? I don’t want the viewer to think about this or that; I don’t want you to know for sure. This is the most interesting thing: uncertainty ?. -Roman Polanski-
Polanski leads the viewer to doubt the real and the fictional: are dreams just dreams or the fruit of reality?The viewer will wonder and wonder what they see on the screen.
It is true that in the middle of the twentieth century religions played a fundamental role, in this sense the feature film was a true revelation, even blasphemy, but in the midst of a rational and skeptical era, in the middle of the 21st century, the viewer finally asked himself the same question as decades ago.
Thus, Baby of Rosemary demonstrates the immortality of his discourse and manifests a terror that, far from being read with the magnifying glass of a particular era, continues to terrorize and baffle today.
This doubt or question between the impossible and the possible, between the real and the unreal, is the real key to terror and suspense in Polanski’s film.
The way to orient our gaze, to place ourselves in a certain point of view thanks to framing, and to present the characters at the right times, does not understand the epochs or trends, and appeals directly to the psychological.
In short, it changes our minds, our fear of the unknown and the uncertainty created by doubt.
Polanski did not invent satanic cults; it’s something that comes directly from our own reality. Polanski also didn’t invent the script, but part of a familiar starting point.
As if coming out at the end of a romantic comedy, the filmmaker uses the young couple to destroy it and even ridicule it, not forgetting the fundamental role of the audience, which will make sense of a fantastic but believable story, and that will eventually doubt everything he sees on screen.
Much of the cult or admiration involved in the characteristic lies in the strange events that accompany it. As we have already said, the film was shot in the Dakota building in New York, a place that, in its construction, was far from the city center.
However, over time and its growth, it has become a building desired by high society and various personalities from the world of film, music and culture.
Despite this, it appears that Polanski was warned and heard that filming the film was a kind of suicide. Tragically, his wife was murdered just a year later. The composer of the soundtrack, Krzysztof Komeda, died a short time later. The story’s protagonist, John Cassavetes, also died a short time later.
Isn’t it clear if Boris Karloff had practiced spiritualism?or not while living in the apartment building, but a few years after the filming of the feature film, John Lennon died at the door of the Dakota apartment building, where he lived.
A multitude of mysteries join the perfectionism of Polanski, a filmmaker who has not hesitated to put his actors in extreme situations. Its protagonist, Mia Farrow, had to eat raw meat while she was a vegetarian, and was forced to shoot a scene across a street that had not closed, so the vehicles we see braking so as not to crush it are not cinema, but reality itself.
The young actress received divorce papers from Frank Sinatra during the filming of the film and faced various feuds on set, so Rosemary’s Baby is cursed not only for the topics it deals with, but also for the mysteries and uncomfortable facts. that involved its production. .
Despite all this, we will not say that terror lies in the anecdotes and horrors associated with the film, but in the film itself, we have rarely faced a terror that does not understand times or fashions, no matter how long it has elapsed, as it continues to increase.
The Baby of Rosemary presents something universal, uses cinema and stylistic resources to shape a claustrophobic, terrifying and desperate atmosphere.
The film, in fact, is an adaptation of ira Levin’s book of the same name. The proposal passed into Hitchcock’s hands, Jane Fonda was considered for the role of Rosemary, and there were many changes until reaching the result offered. by Polanski.
A great result, beautiful, and that awakens the entire cinematic imaginary, but that has only won one Oscar, that of Ruth Gordon for the role of Minnie Castevet.
Polanski endorsed the stage, managed to seduce the Freudian in a dream like no other, which opposes the real and the fantastic, that baffles the viewer.
Without a doubt, we are faced with one of the best horror films of all time, a feature film in which the old and even the obsolete have no place. He appeals to the unconscious, to our almost animal sense of “being alert,” as if something exceptional was going to happen while watching the film.