Sunday, December 24, 2017
358 - Rosemary's Baby, United States, 1967. Dir. Roman Polanski.
Rosemary Woodhouse hears things. She hears things through the walls.
Voices. Some kind of chanting. Music. Fur Elise for example. Someone playing the recorder. Her husband Guy says it is a man named Dr. Shand. How does he know?
Sometimes she hears what sounds like a crying baby.
Who is it? What is it?
Something seems a little off about this apartment building.
Mrs. Gardenia went senile.
Donald Baumgart went blind.
Hutch went into a coma.
Terry Ginolfrio jumped off the window ledge to her death.
Maybe the Bramford is not the best choice for a new home after all.
Rosemary loved it when she and Guy first looked at it. She begged him to take. But now she would just as soon move.
Their neighbors, Roman and Minnie Castevet, are the friendliest people in the world. But that does not help anything. In fact, it might just be part of the problem. It might even be the problem. They are always coming over. Bringing food. Talking her into using their doctor. Making her drinks with vitamins in them. Giving her something to wear around her neck. Some kind of herb. Or root. Tannis root? What is that anyway? And chocolate mousse. Or . . . chalky mousse.
After a few bites, Rosemary secretly throws the rest away. But she seems to have eaten just enough to pass out. Too bad, because tonight was the night she and Guy were going to make a baby.
She has strange dreams. Something about her Catholic upbringing. Nuns. Windows. Bricks. People from her life. A man on a sailboat. And, well, in her dream she seems to be making a baby after all. Just not with Guy. And not with another man either. But with something, well . . . thank goodness it is only a dream.
She is most relieved when she awakens.
Honey, I had the awfullest dream.
No worries. We made a baby after all. Everything is going to be fine.
But what exactly are those scratch marks on her back?
Guy's fortunes take a turn for the better. When Donald Baumgart goes blind, Guy gets the role instead. Paramount is calling. Universal is also interested. They may be moving to the Hills of Beverly.
But as his career ascends, her pregnancy seems to go in some unusual places.
And she grows more frightened.
Is it all just in her head? Prepartum depression? Or is there really something going on in that apartment next door?
And what secret lurks inside that hidden closet?
Rosemary's Baby came out in 1968 and took the nation by storm.
It had been somewhat of a risk. An unprecedented type of horror story. A B-picture schlock producer. A foreign director making his first American studio film. A television actress making her first film. An independent director and improvisational actor as the leading man. Filming that ran beyond schedule. And above budget. And a first edit that came in at over four hours. Paramount could lose a lot of money.
Paramount made bank. And the film won an Oscar. And started a new genre. And launched a few careers.
All of this came together during a second Golden Age at Paramount.
It all started with a wunderkind named Robert Evans. He and his brother Charles Evans and a tailor named Joseph Picone had started a line of women's clothing called Evan-Picone, and they revolutionized the industry by popularizing women's slacks. They added a fly to skirts and darts to pockets, and the rest is history. They sold out to Revlon in 1962 and became multi-millionaires.
During Evans' time in women's apparel Norma Shearer, the widow of another producing wunderkind, Irving Thalberg, hand-picked him to play her husband in a movie. He was not an actor, and he was 26 years old, but he made his debut and then, after acting for awhile, went on to become one of the great producers in film history.
And at only 36 he was named the head of Paramount Studios. He had a golden touch, and under his leadership Paramount experienced some of its greatest successes and enjoyed some of its finest days. He had his hand in some of the great films in history, from The Godfather (1972) to Chinatown (1974), and his output as studio chief or producer stretched from Barefoot in the Park in 1967 to How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days in 2003. In 1994 he published his memoir, which itself became a runaway bestseller and introduced him to a new generation of film fans, The Kid Stays in the Picture. It was also made into a film in 2002.
Ira Levin was a novelist and playwright who had had success on Broadway, beginning in 1956 with No Time for Sergeants, a vehicle that had made Andy Griffith a star on stage and later on screen. That year his first novel, A Kiss Before Dying (1953), was made into a film starring Robert Wagner and Joanne Woodward. (It would be remade in 1991 with Matt Dillon and Sean Young.) He would go on to write the novels The Stepford Wives (1972) and The Boys from Brazil (1976), and the Tony-award winning play Deathtrap (1978), all of which would be made into movies.
But in 1967 he was looking for a topic about which to write his second novel, and he thought about horror, how the suspense and tension build before the actual dramatic events--that the horror comes not from the climatic events but from the dread leading up to them. He thought of a pregnancy because it gave him nine months in which to build the tension. The novel that came out of it, Rosemary's Baby, became the top selling horror novel of the entire decade and launched a new boom in the genre.
William Castle bought the rights to the novel. Castle was yet another producing wunderkind, who had started working for Harry Cohn at Columbia at age 23. As a horror producer, he was known for rigging the actual theaters to correspond to the films being shown. For one film, a skeleton would fly overhead with its eye sockets glowing red. For another, certain seats would vibrate during climactic moments. He himself had directed many movies, but when he approached studio head Robert Evans about directing Rosemary's Baby, Evans knew that the material was too good for a B-picture. He had Castle produce, but he would have to find a major artistic talent to direct it.
Robert Evans turned to Roman Polasnki, a Polish Jew who had survived the Holocaust as a little boy while losing his parents. He was born in Paris, went to film school in Poland, made his first film in Poland, and made his next three films in England. When Evans called upon him, he had just four films under his belt--Knife in the Water (1962), Repulsion (1965), Cul-de-Sac (1966), and The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967)--the last one being a parody and the three before it all considered international masterpieces. His first film had been nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Film, so he was on people's watch list. Evans knew good filmmaking, and he wanted his films to be good, so he brought him in.
Mia Farrow was the daughter of director John Farrow and actress Maureen O'Sullivan. At the time of the film she was series regular Allison Mackenzie on the television series Peyton Place. She had appeared in a couple of films but had not yet had a significant role in a film. Roman Polanski wanted Tuesday Weld for the role but the Studio had him consider Mia Farrow, and he grew to like the choice.
Polanski himself selected John Cassavetes. The Studio wanted Robert Redford, but they were in the process of suing him, so he was not available! Cassavetes was himself a writer and director, and his style was very different from Polanski's. The two clashed on set, and Polanski speaks of Cassavetes as being difficult to deal with, but his final performance is strong.
Consider how many filmmakers came together to make this film.
Studio head Robert Evans was himself an actor and producer.
Producer William Castle was himself a director.
Director Roman Polanski was himself a writer and actor.
Actress Mia Farrow was the daughter of a director.
Actor John Cassavetes was himself a writer and director.
And actress Ruth Gordon was herself a screenwriter! (See below.)
Meanwhile, a couple great character actors should be noted.
Ralph Bellamy, who plays Doctor Sapirstein begin his long and prolific career in the early 1930s and worked all the way through to Pretty Woman in 1990. We saw him recently as Bruce Baldwin, Cary Grant's rival, in His Girl Friday (1940). In that film Cary Grant makes the inside joke when he says of him, "He looks like that fellow in the movies. You know, Ralph Bellamy."
The always reliable droopy dog Elisha Cook plays landlord Mr. Nicklas. It is he who discovers the secret closet through which Rosemary will later go. He also started in the early 1930s and worked through to the 1980s. He appeared in some of the finest films of the 1940s, including the "first" film noir, Stranger on the Third Floor (1940), and Sergeant York (1941). He supported Bogie in The Maltese Falcon (1941) and The Big Sleep (1946). We have seen him in The Killing (1956) and One-Eyed Jacks (1961).
Charles Grodin, at age 33, also launches his career here, in the role of Rosemary's first doctor, C. C. Hill.
Today is Christmas Eve, a time when we are celebrating the Virgin Birth of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
Coincidentally, the list of film titles which was set up before the beginning of the year has us watching and writing about another birth.
Another baby.
And a conception that was less than immaculate.
* * * * *
Rosemary's Baby was nominated for the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay and it won for Best Supporting Actress for Ruth Gordon. She was nominated the year before for Inside Daisy Clover, and she was nominated three times for Best Screenplay for A Double Life (1948), Adam's Rib (1951), and Pat and Mike (1953). Yes, ladies and gentlemen, Ruth Gordon was a successful screenwriter as well as actress.
* * * * *
John Cassavetes
031 - Shadows, 1959
http://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2017/01/031-shadows-1959-united-states-dir-john.html
032 - Faces, 1962
http://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2017/02/032-faces-1968-united-states-dir-john.html
033 - A Woman Under the Influence, 1974
http://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2017/02/033-woman-under-influence-1974-united.html
034 - The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, 1976
http://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2017/02/034-killing-of-chinese-bookie-1976.html
035 - Opening Night, 1977
http://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2017/02/035-opening-night-1977-united-states.html
Roman Polanski
024 - Repulsion, 1965
http://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2017/01/024-repulsion-1965-united-kingdom-dir.html
040 - Tess, 1979
http://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2017/02/040-tess-1979-united-states-dir-roman.html
243 - Knife in the Water, 1962
http://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2017/08/243-knife-in-water-1962-poland-dir.html
Ralph Bellamy
307 - His Girl Friday, Howard Hawks, 1940.
http://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2017/11/307-his-girl-friday-united-states-1940.html
Elisha Cook, Jr.
347 - The Killing, Stanley Kubrick, 1956.
http://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2017/12/347-killing-united-states-1956-dir.html
354 - One-Eyed Jacks, Marlon Brando, 1961.
http://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2017/12/354-one-eyed-jacks-united-states-1961.html
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