Cherished Cinema

Rosemary’s Baby (Roman Polanski, 1968)

Hello all.

Watching this marked the first time that I have ever watched Repulsion and Rosemary’s Baby fairly close to one another. They are strikingly similar (to be honest I enjoyed Repulsion a bit more) both featuring distressed women and both films deal with issues of sanity. It was also the first time I had watched this movie in over ten years, which allowed me to go into it without much memory of what actually happens.

The film opens with a panning shot across the city, with a woman singing in the background, and then it transitions into the new apartment. Everything moves along smoothly until the superintendent notices the dresser in front of the closet door. The camera itself stops from moving across the apartment to backtrack and refocus on the dresser signifying the closet (or more importantly, the fact that the closet was blocked) as important. One thing I have noticed after years of watching Polanski’s films is that there are all of these seemingly pointless signifiers throughout each of his films that, once the film has ended, their importance comes to light. Rosemary’s Baby is certainly no exception. The main example of this is the first real conversation the young couple has with the Castevets where religion is discussed. The viewer has already learned that Roman Castevet is a cultured individual having traveled all around the globe for most of his life. This allows the viewer to assume that his dismissal of Christianity is based on his exposure to other things. It is later revealed that his feelings are at the core of his satanic beliefs.

The strangest part of the movie is the “dream-rape” sequence. Given it’s a dream, I understand that it is not supposed to fit within the realm of the entire film and that is what makes the scene brilliant. It is brilliant insofar as the viewer (at least I did) dismisses this as a dream because of the way it is shot and also due to the way her husband acts as she wakes up. This is a great film, I love its structure and the closing ten minutes end the film on as high a note as the film opened with.

Thank you for reading!