“He
has his father’s eyes.”
I don’t know if there’s anything original I can say about this one. It’s the birth of modern horror, alongside Night of the Living Dead. While they’re both great films, only one of them is still scary; all apologies to George Romero. I think the most frightening thing in this film is the appearance of Rosemary herself. Mia Farrow’s a slip of a thing normally, but after she gets that pixie haircut and is in the downward slope of her pregnancy, she looks downright wraithlike. The black dress, the bags under her sunken eyes…you buy her mental and physical breakdown completely. If there’s a misstep in the film, it’s showing the actual rape of Rosemary by Satan. I suppose it’s handled well enough – it’s a genuinely upsetting sequence – but tips the hand a bit too early. You’re always firmly on the side of Rosemary being quite sane and the plot against her being real, but would that be the case if you hadn’t seen demon hands caressing her (with subsequent scratch marks the next morning)? It’s firmly established that her husband is a grade-a creep (man is John Cassavetes good – it’s equally rewarding to read the film as patriarchal fears of impotence), so it’d be completely plausible that he raped her while she slept. Introducing ambiguity to the proceedings would have made for an even more powerful film, I think. But here I am nitpicking one of the best films ever, full stop. And Komeda’s score might be my favorite of any horror film. Hermann’s Psycho theme is more iconic, but Komeda’s working in several shades of grey here.
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