Rosemary’s Baby

film by Polanski [1968]

Written by Lee Pfeiffer

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Last Updated: Oct 24, 2024 • Article History

Rosemary’s Baby, American horror film, released in 1968, that is considered a landmark within the horror genre for its focus on the occult as well as for a naturalistic mise-en-scène that emphasizes psychological tension over cartoonish thrills. The movie, an adaptation of Ira Levin’s best-selling novel (1967) of the same name, was director Roman Polanski’s first American production.

The film centres on Rosemary Woodhouse (played by Mia Farrow), an intelligent but naive young newlywed who, with her husband Guy (John Cassavetes), moves into an old apartment building in New York City. Their neighbours Minnie and Roman Castevet (Ruth Gordon and Sidney Blackmer, respectively) are eccentric and nosy but seemingly harmless, and after befriending them, Guy’s acting career suddenly takes off. Rosemary’s subsequent pregnancy, however, is fraught with difficulties. After reading a book that suggests that Roman is the son of an infamous Satanist, Rosemary begins to suspect that her neighbours have persuaded Guy to make a pact with the devil involving her unborn child in return for his professional success. Feeling helpless, she soon becomes consumed by paranoia. After giving birth at home under heavy sedation, Rosemary is told by Dr. Sapirstein (Ralph Bellamy), a friend of the Castevets, that her baby has died. Upon hearing an infant’s cries elsewhere in the building, however, she finds a coven of Satanists gathered in the Castevets’ apartment with Guy and her newborn son. Informed that Satan is the child’s father, Rosemary initially reacts with horror but then seems to accept her role as mother of the demon spawn.

A box-office hit, Rosemary’s Baby offered audiences a contemporary and highly intelligent take on Satanism, in which the devil worshippers hide their devotion to evil under a veneer of affability and sophistication. The film is even darkly humorous at times, as exemplified by Roman’s famous line about the baby: “He has his father’s eyes.” The dreamlike scene in which Rosemary is raped by Satan broke new cinematic barriers, overtly mingling sex with frightening imagery. However, Polanski wisely preferred to leave the horrors unseen, even during the movie’s climactic finale.