An excellent cast combined with the provocative idea of witchcraft yields a top-notch thriller under Polish director Roman Polanski’s deft handling in this, his US film debut.
Waif-like Rosemary Woodhouse (Mia Farrow) and her overly ambitious husband, Guy (John Cassavetes) move into a Gothic apartment block in Manhattan and naively become involved with their flamboyant elderly neighbours – Minnie and Roman Castevet (Ruth Gordon and Sidney Blackmer).
The seemingly kindly old couple are actually Satanists and Rosemary is raped – with her husband’s complicity – by the Devil, and then bears his child.
Based on the novel by Ira Levin, Rosemary’s Baby tells the story from Rosemary’s point of view, so that the audience shares the growing realisation on her part that there is something horribly wrong with her pregnancy and that the twittering, vulgar Minnie and the courtly Roman are not all that they seem.
Shot on location in the creepy Dakota apartment building on Central Park West in New York City (the same building John Lennon was murdered outside in 1980) the film cleverly mingles the mundane and the macabre to suspend our disbelief in witchcraft and give the film’s coven a terrible plausibility.
Ruth Gordon (pictured above) won a deserved Oscar for her busybody portrayal of eccentric menace.
Rosemary Woodhouse
Mia Farrow Guy Woodhouse
John Cassavetes Minnie Castevet
Ruth Gordon Roman Castevet
Sidney Blackmer Hutch
Maurice Evans Dr Sapirstein
Ralph Bellamy Terry Fionoffrio
Victoria Vetri Laura-Louise
Patsy Kelly Donald Baumgart
Tony Curtis Mr Nicklas
Elisha Cook Jr Dr Hill
Charles Grodin Girl at party
Sharon Tate
Rosemary Woodhouse
