Rosemary's Baby

After moving into a new apartment building, a young woman (Mia Farrow) suspects her new neighbors (Ruth Gordon and Sidney Blackmer) may be part of a satanic plot involving her unborn baby.

Rosemary’s Baby is a well-plotted, atmospheric, paranoid thriller with a great cast that works well up until the final few minutes.

Mia Farrow’s great as the titular Rosemary maintaining the audience’s sympathy throughout and never going over the top in a role that’s fraught with tricky scenes. Her performance is even more impressive when you consider that during filming her then-husband Frank Sinatra served her with divorce papers.

Opposite her John Cassavetes is perfect as her ambitious husband. In a case of art imitating life, Farrow and Cassavetes marriage dissolves in the film because of his rise to fame, just as Farrow and Sinatra’s dissolved in real life because of hers.

Ruth Gordon won an Oscar for her role as Farrow and Cassavetes nosey neighbor, and Sidney Blackmer’s every bit as good as her husband.

Director Roman Polanski echoes his earlier film, Repulsion, in creating a claustrophobic atmosphere of dread based around apartment living, and manages to maintain both the atmosphere and the tension through most of the film’s 136-minute running time. Indeed, it’s not until the final five minutes that the film really stumbles.

While you could argue that Polanski was subtly mocking religious zealotry with Blackmer and company’s cries, the scene is unintentionally hilarious and drains the finale of its menace and tension. This, combined with the film’s almost non-ending leave you feeling almost let down, as if there was some kind of invisible line the filmmakers weren’t willing to cross.

That said, while the lackluster ending does keep this good thriller from being great, it shouldn’t stop you from giving it a look.