OK film fans, tonight I was feeling a bit tired and by the time I got home, made dinner and plopped down on the couch it was already getting pretty late. On nights like this sometimes I'll go for a new comedy, something light, but tonight I felt like an old favorite, something comfortable, like a visit with old friends. Or, as in this case, friends with a really annoying kid.
Rosemary's Baby is a horror classic, a nexus point where the reinvention of modern horror springs from the restrictive confines of old production codes. It was not a gruesome gory blood fest like those that would come after it, nor was it an old fashioned horror film like those proceding it. Released in 1968, American films were just beginning to show life in more realistic tones. How couples talked, fought and had sex was being explored in ways unheard of in prior decades. Directed in a brooding, creepy and uniquely stylized manner by Roman Polanski (no, I'm not getting into that tonight), the film takes full advantage of the era's cultural changes in telling this story.
Polanski brings the audience into the lives of Rosemary (Mia Farrow) and Guy (Nick Cassavetes) Woodhouse, a young couple who move into a large New York loft in a very creepy (and real!) building. Rosemary finds their elderly neighbors are a bit boorish, especially the overbearing Minnie (Ruth Gordon), but Guy seems to take a liking to the husband. The young couple decides to start a family soon after moving in and the mood begins to shift considerably.
Polanski turns our focus on Rosemary, causing us to identify with her during the pregnancy and share in her doubts and fears. Because of this we are not always sure if we can believe what we are seeing. Is it real or just a side effect of the pregnancy going awry? Polanski takes the baton from legendary suspense/horror director Alfred Hitchcock, using his iconic style of creating suspense and fear by giving the audience knowledge of impending catastrophe while the characters are oblivious to what's coming. When the conclusion comes and Rosemary uncovers the frightening truth, it's not a surprise to us but rather horribly inevitable, and this is what ultimately makes it so unnerving.
Hitchcock began directing films in the 20s with most of his best known work coming in the 50s, even his classic Psycho came out in 1960. While less elegant than the master, the advantage Polanski has here is the ability to work with a broader canvas and more realistic brushstrokes that give the film a more humanistic depth. As my Patron saint, Roger Ebert, points out, "The characters and the story transcend the plot. In most horror films, and indeed in most suspense films of the Alfred Hitchcock tradition, the characters are at the mercy of the plot. In this one, they emerge as human beings actually doing these things."
Rosemary's Baby is not a gruesome, shock-fest but rather a sophisticated, masterful and effective display of the suspension of disbelief. It is Polanski's skill as a director that pulls us in and holds us entranced even as the we begin to wonder if what we see is happening or the just in Rosemary's mind. It's truly a classic that paved the road to more graphic 70s classics like The Exorcist and The Omen. I love a good horror movie and I'm not opposed to blood and guts, but the recent trend in Hollywood, with the advent of "torture" horror like the Saw/Hostel films leave me feeling nonplussed. The "based on true events" films aren't much better and I actually fear the crop of imitators that will be spawned by the success of Paranormal Activity. The plot is all that carries these films and we rarely care about the characters let alone find them dynamic enough to transcend the story. Sometime, like this film, progress is good. But sometimes too much progress can be a bad thing.
No comments:
Post a Comment