Rosemary's Baby (film) Reception What is Rosemary's Baby reception? In 2014, Rosemary's Baby was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.
Did Rosemary's Baby receive any awards?
Did Rosemary's Baby receive any awards?
From contemporary reviews, Renata Adler wrote in The New York Times that "The movie--although it is pleasant--doesn't seem to work on any of its dark or powerful terms. I think this is because it is almost too extremely plausible. The quality of the young people's lives seems the quality of lives that one knows, even to the point of finding old people next door to avoid and lean on. One gets very annoyed that they don't catch on sooner." Variety stated, "Several exhilarating milestones are achieved in Rosemary's Baby, an excellent film version of Ira Levin's diabolical chiller novel. Writer-director Roman Polanski has triumphed in his first US-made pic. The film holds attention without explicit violence or gore... Farrow's performance is outstanding." The Monthly Film Bulletin stated that "After the miscalculations of Cul de Sac and Dance of the Vampires" Polanski had "returned to the rich vein of Repulsion". The review noted that "Polanski shows an increasing ability to evoke menace and sheer terror in familiar routines (cooking and telephoning, particularly)" and Polanski has shown "his transformation of a cleverly calculated thriller into a serious work of art."  Ruth Gordon won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in this film.  Today, the film is widely regarded as a classic; the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes gave the movie a 99% rating (68 out of 69 reviews), with the site's consensus describing it as "A frightening tale of satanism and pregnancy that is even more disturbing than it sounds thanks to convincing and committed performances by Mia Farrow and Ruth Gordon".  In 2014, Rosemary's Baby was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.  Rosemary's Baby was one of Stanley Kubrick's favorite films, according to his brother-in-law and assistant Jan Harlan. CANNOTANSWER
Ruth Gordon won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in this film.
Rosemary's Baby is a 1968 American psychological horror film written and directed by Roman Polanski, and starring Mia Farrow, John Cassavetes, Ruth Gordon, Sidney Blackmer, Maurice Evans, Ralph Bellamy, Angela Dorian, Clay Tanner, and, in his feature film debut, Charles Grodin. The film follows a young, pregnant wife in Manhattan who comes to suspect that her elderly neighbors are members of a Satanic cult, and are grooming her in order to use her baby for their rituals. It is based on the 1967 novel of the same name by Ira Levin.

Though set in New York City, the majority of principal photography of Rosemary's Baby took place in Los Angeles throughout late 1967. It was released in June 1968 by Paramount Pictures, and was a box-office success, grossing over $30 million in the United States. The film received numerous accolades, including multiple Golden Globe Award nominations and two Academy Award nominations. Ruth Gordon won both the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress as well as the Golden Globe in the same category.

Rosemary's Baby deals with themes related to paranoia, women's liberation, Christianity (Catholicism), and the occult. The film earned almost universal acclaim from film critics and won numerous nominations and awards. It is widely regarded as one of the greatest horror movies of all time. In 2014, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress, being deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."

Plot
Guy Woodhouse, a stage actor and his wife, Rosemary, move into the Bramford, a large Renaissance Revival apartment building in New York City. They disregard their friend Hutch's warning about the Bramford's dark past with witchcraft and murder.

Rosemary meets Terry Gionoffrio, a young recovering drug addict whom Minnie and Roman Castevet, the Woodhouses' elderly neighbors, have taken in. One night, Terry apparently jumps to her death from the Castevets' 7th-floor apartment, distressing the Castevets. Guy grows close to them, but Rosemary finds the couple annoying and meddlesome. Minnie gives Terry's pendant to Rosemary as a good luck charm, saying it contains "tannis root".

Guy is cast in a prominent play after the lead actor inexplicably goes blind. With his acting career flourishing, Guy wants to have a baby with Rosemary. On the night that they plan to conceive, Minnie brings over individual cups of chocolate mousse for their dessert. When Rosemary complains hers has a chalky "under-taste" and does not finish it, Guy criticizes her as being ungrateful. Rosemary consumes a bit more to mollify him, then discreetly discards the rest. Soon after, she grows dizzy and passes out. In a dreamlike state, she hallucinates being raped by a demonic presence (Satan) as Guy, the Castevets, and other Bramford tenants watch. None, including Rosemary, are clothed. The next morning, Guy explains the scratches covering her body by claiming that he did not want to miss "baby night" and had sex with her while she was passed out.

Rosemary becomes pregnant, due the last week of June. The elated Castevets insist that Rosemary go to their close friend, Dr. Abraham Sapirstein, a prominent obstetrician, rather than her own physician, Dr. Hill. During her first trimester, Rosemary suffers severe abdominal pains and loses weight. By Christmastime, her gaunt appearance alarms her friends and also Hutch, who has been researching the Bramford's history. Before sharing his findings with Rosemary, he falls into a mysterious coma. Rosemary, unable to withstand the pain, insists on seeing Dr. Hill, while Guy argues against it, saying Dr. Sapirstein will be offended. As they argue, the pains suddenly stop and Rosemary feels the baby move.

Three months later, Hutch's friend, Grace Cardiff, informs Rosemary that Hutch is dead. Before dying, he briefly regained consciousness and said to give Rosemary a book on witchcraft, All of Them Witches, along with the cryptic message: "The name is an anagram". Rosemary eventually deduces that Roman Castevet is an anagram for Steven Marcato, the son of a former Bramford resident and a reputed Satanist. She suspects that the Castevets and Dr. Sapirstein belong to a Satanic coven and have sinister intentions for her baby. Guy discounts this and later throws the book away, upsetting Rosemary and making her suspicious of him.

Terrified, she goes to Dr. Hill for help. Assuming that she is delusional, he calls Dr. Sapirstein, who arrives with Guy to take her home. Rosemary locks herself into the apartment, but coven members somehow infiltrate and restrain her. Dr. Sapirstein sedates a hysterical Rosemary, who goes into labor and gives birth. When she awakens, she is told that the baby was stillborn. As Rosemary recovers, she notices her pumped breast milk appears to be saved instead of disposed of. She stops taking her prescribed pills, becoming less groggy. After Rosemary hears an infant crying, Guy mentions that new tenants with a baby have moved into the building.

Believing her baby is alive, Rosemary discovers a hidden door leading into Minnie and Roman's apartment. The Castevets, Guy, Dr. Sapirstein, and other coven members are gathered around a bassinet draped in black with an upside down cross hanging over it. Peering inside, Rosemary is horrified and demands to know what is wrong with her baby's eyes. Roman proclaims that the child is Adrian, Satan's son. He urges Rosemary to mother her child, promising her that she will not have to join the coven. When Guy attempts to calm her, saying that they will be rewarded and can conceive their own child, she spits in his face. After hearing the infant's cries, however, Rosemary gives in to her maternal instincts and gently rocks the cradle.

Cast

Production

Development
In Rosemary's Baby: A Retrospective, a featurette on the DVD release of the film, screenwriter/director Roman Polanski, Paramount Pictures executive Robert Evans, and production designer Richard Sylbert reminisce at length about the production. Evans recalled William Castle brought him the galley proofs of the book and asked him to purchase the film rights even before Random House published the book in April 1967. The studio head recognized the commercial potential of the project and agreed with the stipulation that Castle, who had a reputation for low-budget horror films, could produce but not direct the film adaptation. He makes a cameo appearance as the man at the phone booth waiting for Mia Farrow to finish her call.

François Truffaut claimed that Alfred Hitchcock was first offered the chance to direct the film but declined. Evans admired Polanski's European films and hoped he could convince him to make his American debut with Rosemary's Baby. He knew the director was a ski buff who was anxious to make a film with the sport as its basis, so he sent him the script for Downhill Racer along with the galleys for Rosemary's Baby. Polanski read the latter book non-stop through the night and called Evans the following morning to tell him he thought Rosemary's Baby was the more interesting project, and would like the opportunity to write as well as direct it. After negotiations, Paramount agreed to hire Polanski for the project, with a tentative budget of $1.9 million, $150,000 of which would go to Polanski.

Polanski completed the 272-page screenplay for the film in approximately three weeks. Polanski closely modeled it on the original novel and incorporated large sections of the novel's dialogue and details, with much of it being lifted directly from the source text.

Casting

Casting for Rosemary's Baby began in the summer of 1967 in Los Angeles, California. Polanski originally envisioned Rosemary as a robust, full-figured, girl-next-door type, and wanted Tuesday Weld or his own fiancée Sharon Tate to play the role. Additionally, Jane Fonda, Patty Duke and Goldie Hawn were considered for the part.

Since the book had not yet reached bestseller status, Evans was unsure the title alone would guarantee an audience for the film, and he believed that a bigger name was needed for the lead. Mia Farrow, with a supporting role in Guns at Batasi (1964) and the yet-unreleased A Dandy in Aspic (1968) as her only feature film credits, had an unproven box office track record; however, she had gained wider notice with her role as Allison MacKenzie in the popular television series Peyton Place, and her unexpected marriage to noted singer Frank Sinatra. Despite her waif-like appearance, Polanski agreed to cast her. Her acceptance incensed Sinatra, who had demanded she forgo her career when they wed.

Robert Redford was the first choice for the role of Guy Woodhouse, but he turned it down. Jack Nicholson was considered briefly before Polanski suggested John Cassavetes, whom he had met in London. In casting the film's secondary actors, Polanski drew sketches of what he imagined the characters would look like, which were then used by Paramount casting directors to match with potential actors. In the roles of Roman and Minnie Castevet, Polanski cast stage actors Sidney Blackmer and Ruth Gordon, respectively. Ralph Bellamy, also primarily a stage actor, was cast in the role of Dr. Abraham Sapirstein.

Polanski wanted to cast Hollywood old-timers as the coven members but did not know any by name. He drew sketches of how he envisioned each character, and these helped the casting director fill the roles. In every instance, the actor cast strongly resembled Polanski's drawing. They included Ralph Bellamy, Patsy Kelly, Elisha Cook, Jr., Phil Leeds and Hope Summers.

When Rosemary calls Donald Baumgart, the actor who goes blind and is replaced by Guy, the voice heard on the phone is actor Tony Curtis. Farrow, who had not been told who would be reading Baumgart's lines, recognized his voice but could not place it. The slight confusion she displays throughout the call was exactly what Polanski hoped to capture by not revealing Curtis' identity in advance.

Filming

Principal photography for Rosemary's Baby began on August 21, 1967, in New York City, where location shooting commenced. When Farrow was reluctant to film a scene that depicted a dazed and preoccupied Rosemary wandering into the middle of Fifth Avenue into oncoming traffic, Polanski pointed to her pregnancy padding and reassured her, "no one's going to hit a pregnant woman". The scene was successfully shot with Farrow walking into real traffic and Polanski following, operating the hand-held camera since he was the only one willing to do it.

By September 1967, the shoot had relocated to California's Paramount Studios in Hollywood, where interior sets of the Bramford apartments had been constructed on soundstages. Some additional location shooting took place in Playa del Rey in October 1967. Farrow recalled that the dream sequence in which her character is attending a dinner party on a yacht was filmed on a vessel near Santa Catalina Island. Though Paramount had initially agreed to spend $1.9 million to make the film, the shoot was overextended due to Polanski's meticulous attention to detail, which resulted in him completing up to fifty takes of single shots. The shoot suffered significant scheduling problems as a result, and ultimately went $400,000 over budget. In November 1967, it was reported that the shoot was over three weeks behind schedule.

The shoot was further disrupted when, midway through filming, Farrow's husband, Frank Sinatra, served her divorce papers via a corporate lawyer in front of the cast and crew. In an effort to salvage her relationship, Farrow asked Evans to release her from her contract, but he persuaded her to remain with the project after showing her an hour-long rough cut and assuring her she would receive an Academy Award nomination for her performance. Filming was completed on December 20, 1967, in Los Angeles.

Music
The lullaby played over the intro is the song "Sleep Safe and Warm." It was composed by Krzysztof Komeda and sung by Mia Farrow. The song "Für Elise" is also frequently used as background music throughout the film. The original film soundtrack was released in 1968 via Dot Records. Waxwork Records released the soundtrack from the original master tapes in 2014 which included Krzysztof Komeda's original work.

Release

Critical response
In contemporary reviews, Renata Adler wrote in The New York Times that
"The movie—although it is pleasant—doesn't seem to work on any of its dark or powerful terms. I think this is because it is almost too extremely plausible. The quality of the young people's lives seems the quality of lives that one knows, even to the point of finding old people next door to avoid and lean on. One gets very annoyed that they don't catch on sooner."

Variety said, "Several exhilarating milestones are achieved in Rosemary's Baby, an excellent film version of Ira Levin's diabolical chiller novel. Writer-director Roman Polanski has triumphed in his first US-made pic. The film holds attention without explicit violence or gore... Farrow's performance is outstanding."

The Monthly Film Bulletin said that "After the miscalculations of Cul de Sac and Dance of the Vampires", Polanski had "returned to the rich vein of Repulsion". The review noted that "Polanski shows an increasing ability to evoke menace and sheer terror in familiar routines (cooking and telephoning, particularly)," and Polanski has shown "his transformation of a cleverly calculated thriller into a serious work of art."

Today, the film is widely regarded as a classic; it has an approval rating of 96% on review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes based on 72 reviews, with an average rating of 8.80/10. The site's critics' consensus describes it as "A frightening tale of Satanism and pregnancy that is even more disturbing than it sounds thanks to convincing and committed performances by Mia Farrow and Ruth Gordon." Metacritic reports a weighted average score of 96 out of 100 based on 15 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".

Accolades

Home media 
The Rosemary's Baby DVD, released in 2000 by Paramount Home Video, contains a 23-minute documentary film, Mia and Roman, directed by Shahrokh Hatami, which was shot during the making of the film. The title refers to Mia Farrow and Roman Polanski. The film features footage of Roman Polanski directing the film's cast on set. Hatami was an Iranian photographer who befriended Polanski and his wife Sharon Tate. Mia and Roman was screened originally as a promo film at Hollywood's Lytton Center, and later included as a featurette on the Rosemary's Baby DVD. It is described as a "trippy on-set featurette" and "an odd little bit of cheese."

On October 30, 2012, The Criterion Collection released the film for the first time on Blu-ray.

Legacy
Following the film's premiere, a string of other films focusing on Satan worshippers and black magic were produced, including The Brotherhood of Satan, Mark of the Devil, Black Noon, and The Blood on Satan's Claw.

The scene in which Rosemary is raped by Satan was ranked No. 23 on Bravo's The 100 Scariest Movie Moments. In 2010, The Guardian ranked the film the second-greatest horror film of all time. In 2014, it was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.

Sequels and remakes
In the 1976 television film Look What's Happened to Rosemary's Baby, Patty Duke starred as Rosemary Woodhouse and Ruth Gordon reprised her role of Minnie Castevet. The film introduced an adult Andrew/Adrian attempting to earn his place as the Antichrist. It was disliked as a sequel by critics and viewers, and its reputation deteriorated over the years. The film is unrelated to the novel's sequel, Son of Rosemary.

A remake of Rosemary's Baby was briefly considered in 2008. The intended producers were Michael Bay, Andrew Form, and Brad Fuller. The remake fell through later that same year.

In January 2014, NBC made a four-hour Rosemary's Baby miniseries with Zoe Saldana as Rosemary. The miniseries was filmed in Paris under the direction of Agnieszka Holland.

In 2016, the film was unofficially remade in Turkey under the title Alamet-i-Kiyamet.

The short "Her Only Living Son" from the 2017 horror anthology film XX serves as an unofficial sequel to the story.

In popular culture
The film inspired the English band Deep Purple to write the song "Why Didn't Rosemary?" for their third album in 1969, after the band had watched the movie while touring the US in 1968. The song's lyrics pose the question, "Why didn't Rosemary ever take the pill?"

The movie was parodied in the 1996 Halloween episode of Roseanne, "Satan, Darling".

See also
 List of American films of 1968
 Satanic film
 Anton LaVey

Notes

References

Sources

External links

 
 
 
 
 
 
 .
 .
 .  Collection of Rosemary's Baby posters from around the world.
 BABY, podcast by Culture.pl's Stories From The Eastern West about the making of the film.
 Rosemary’s Baby: “It’s Alive” an essay by Ed Park at the Criterion Collection

1968 films
1968 horror films
1960s pregnancy films
American films
American supernatural horror films
American pregnancy films
Films about cults
Demons in film
The Devil in film
English-language films
Fictional depictions of the Antichrist
Films about actors
Films based on American horror novels
Films based on works by Ira Levin
Films directed by Roman Polanski
Films featuring a Best Supporting Actress Academy Award-winning performance
Films featuring a Best Supporting Actress Golden Globe-winning performance
Films set in 1965
Films set in 1966
Films set in apartment buildings
Films set in New York City
Films shot in Los Angeles
Films shot in New York City
Films about rape
Films about Satanism
Films with screenplays by Roman Polanski
United States National Film Registry films
Films about witchcraft
Gothic horror films
Films scored by Krzysztof Komeda
Paramount Pictures films
Photoplay Awards film of the year winners
Rosemary's Baby may refer to:

 Rosemary's Baby (novel), a 1967 horror novel by Ira Levin
 Rosemary's Baby (film), a 1968 horror film based on the novel
 Rosemary's Baby (miniseries), a 2014 horror television miniseries based on the novel
 "Rosemary's Baby" (30 Rock), an episode of the television series 30 Rock Son of Rosemary is a 1997 horror novel by American writer Ira Levin. It is the sequel to Rosemary's Baby.

Plot
The novel begins in November 1999, with Rosemary Woodhouse waking up in a long-term care facility. She has lain in a coma since 1973. Wholly unharmed, Rosemary soon learns that her coma resulted from a spell the coven cast on her when they discovered that she planned to run away with her young son, Andy. In her absence, Andy was raised by Minnie and Roman Castevet, the leaders of the coven. Rosemary recovered only after the coven's last member had died.

Rosemary finds that Andy, now 33 years old, is the popular and charismatic leader of an international charitable organization. Mother and son are reunited, and Rosemary instantly becomes world-famous both for her remarkable recovery and as Andy's long-lost mother. Rosemary is also struck and puzzled by a repeated reference to "roast mules", an anagram that many people continually mention.

Andy assures his mother that he has rebelled against the coven's evil influence. He says he uses his powers to achieve world peace, but a long chain of deadly events leads Rosemary to believe that her son has unwittingly become the Antichrist and is ushering in the end of the world. Her fears are proven when a candle-lighting event that Andy has organized to celebrate the new millennium unleashes a deadly virus that destroys all human life. In the wake of the destruction, Satan returns to Earth and drags Rosemary into Hell.

Rosemary abruptly awakens to find that it is 1965 again and that she is still married to Guy Woodhouse. The events of the entire first book and that of the second book up to that point have all been Rosemary's vivid dream. Rosemary and Guy receive a call from Rosemary's friend Edward "Hutch" Hutchins, who offers the couple a rent-free apartment in the Dakota Apartments (the model for the Bramford, their apartment building in the first book) for one year. The couple is delighted at the offer, until Hutchins makes a remark about lighting candles and "roast mules" that causes Rosemary to regard her dream as a possible forewarning of future events.

The anagram
The book contains the anagram puzzle "roast mules". Levin never gives the answer to his readers, simply saying that it is a word that most five-year-old children would recognize. However, many online users speculate that it could be "somersault." Some have also suggested "soul master" (though that is two words, not a single word).

The ending
After Rosemary wakes up, she receives a phone call from her friend Hutch, who suggests that Rosemary and Guy would move to an apartment in the Dakota. He mentions that one of The Beatles is looking into buying an apartment there. This comment may be treated as an inside joke, since John Lennon and Yoko Ono did indeed purchase an apartment at the Dakota, in which the film Rosemary's Baby was filmed.

However, they purchased it in 1973, while Hutch tells Rosemary about this in 1965. This may be a hint that Rosemary did not wake up in the past, and did not dream all of the events of the novel.

Furthermore, in the center of the novel, there is an episode when Rosemary finds herself in Strawberry Fields, Lennon's memorial garden in Central Park. This takes place at the beginning of December, around the anniversary of Lennon's death. Having been in a coma for 27 years, she is not aware of Lennon's murder, and she does not recognize the words "Imagine" at the center of the garden. This episode remains unexplained in the novel, though it may be a hint that Rosemary did not dream it, as how could she dream Lennon's memorial garden, back in 1965?

Therefore, the ending may suggest that Satan does, in fact, kill Rosemary and drag her down into Hell (after admitting that he had lied to her when promising her eternal youth). Her "waking up" in 1965 is, in fact, the afterlife or Purgatory.

Notes

1997 American novels
Novels by Ira Levin
Sequel novels
Dutton Penguin books
Fiction set in 1965
Fiction set in 1999
The Devil in fiction
Novels about the Antichrist
Novels about nightmares