Rosemary's Baby (1968)

It's been a while since we've watched some Polanski on the blog, but today we're watching his most infamous film, Rosemary's Baby. Maybe it's so infamous becuase it was released the year before Polanski's own bride- Sharon Tate and their child were murdered by the cultish Manson Family, a bitter case of life imitating art but Rosemary's Baby's appeal has never seen it wane as an iconic horror classic.
Last of the old school moguls, Robert Evans- brought Polanski over to direct this from a bestselling novel, and it marked the first time Polanski had directed in America and the first wrote on his own, although he'd always had a hand in the writing and this would be his 5th film.
Maybe it's the subtext that the film is caught between these 2worlds at the end of 60's - the young embracing the emergence of European astetics and the old who could remember wartime America. The young couple are bleeding cool with her super-short, super-iconic Vidal Sassoon haircut and his professional acting career- ideals that would have been strange even 10years before vs. the old pushy old guard that 'know better' and nosey and yearn for simpler times.
Yet there's the delicious irony being that this couple generally do want to conform to having a nice house and for the wife to stay home with the home and family, while their elderly neighbours are Satanic witches who are always trying to drug you so they can live forever!!! 
Mia Farrow in her most famous role (FFFFFFF YOU WOODY.) plays the mother to be and i'm tempted to say, she's not very good at acting at this point if you couldn't pass it off as admissible naivety in this part. She's either shy and blank or out of her gore with paranoia. I'd like to level the same accusation to John Cassavetes, who playing her husband, and actor. I suppose playing a successful stage and screen actor as yeoman-like workaday shipbuilding is an original take but i'm not convinced. Need to watch some Cassavetes movies, he reminded me to add his work on the old LoveFilm list. The really great stuff in this movie are the old people; actors like Ruth Gordon- nosey and omnipresent, Patsy Kelly-she doesn't feature heavily but makes a strong impression as would-be Satanic nanny and Ralph Bellamy, who i've been certain was the Devil since I saw him famously, casually use the 'n' word in Trading Places.
But I think Rosemary's Baby's appeal continues because Polanski weighs the paranoia perfectly; i was poo-pooing Rosemary's perceptions as pre-natal depression and then anxiety isn't afraid to be over-the-top and 'arch', in film's concluding scene.
I think as a horror thriller, it quite old fashioned and genteel but then I've never been pregnant with son of Satan. I have had kidney-stones, if that counts...

I watched Rosemary's Baby (1968) on FilmFour
My 2011 in Movies will return with The Cars That Are Paris (1974)...