Spoilers Alert: Don't read this if you haven't seen the film. It is an examination of the whole film. Don't proceed if you want to be surprised by this brilliant film.
There are many filmmakers who approach a film like every other film of its kind before it. For example, a director is handed a script for an action film similar to Die Hard but set on a train. Instead of giving the film his or her own personal touch, the director and his or her crew create an exact replica of Die Hard, just on a train. They think that by doing this that they will receive the same response to their film that the very successful predecessor had. Of course, many copycats do succeed if they follow the formula to the tee. But some filmmakers don't go that way; they take a risk by injecting the genre piece with their own personal vision on how to express such things as story, ideas, and emotions. If they are successful, their film inspires copycats instead of just being one it. One such example is writer-director Roman Polanski's Rosemary's Baby.
The plot of Rosemary's Baby begins with the arrival of Rosemary and Guy Woodhouse at their new apartment building. Life seems perfect there. Rosemary quickly meets a young woman, Terry, and they hit it off. But her new acquaintance is found dead outside their apartment building soon after. This leads Rosemary and Guy to become more familiar with the elderly next-door neighbors Roman and Minnie Castevet, whom Terry was staying with. Rosemary doesn't take to them like Guy but puts up with them. Guy soon decides they should have a baby and gets her pregnant when she passes out, which is basically rape since she is covered with scratches the next morning (furthermore, in what appears to be a nightmare during the rape, she sees the apartment residents standing around naked and watching as a monster actually impregnates her). Arousing her fears more, the Castevets take great interest in her pregnancy and introduce her to Dr. Sapirstein, who becomes Rosemary's new doctor. Rosemary soon finds herself losing weight and feeling great pain. Everybody else in the apartment building as well as Dr. Sapirstein tells her it is normal and she needs to just have her drink fixed by Minnie daily if she wants the pain to stop. Rosemary doesn't recognize a root used in the drink and asks her old friend Hutch to find out what the root is. He soon ends up in a coma and dies later. But Hutch is a herald since he leaves behind a warning in the form of a book for her, which states that the root is used for satanic purposes. Before this, she decided it was time to switch doctors but found her pain had stopped with her decision. Now, a few days before delivery, she suspects the plot is true thanks to the book and the similarities between Roman and the picture of a man in the book, whose name is an anagram for Roman Castevet. Guy claims she is losing it and puts the book away. Rosemary figures he is in on the plot, too, and goes on the run. She tries to get help from another doctor but the unbelieving man tricks her and just turns her over to Sapirstein. The pregnant woman tries to escape the coven's clutches but goes into labor at the apartment. She wakes up and is told by Guy that the baby is dead. But she hears baby cries in the apartment building. She sneaks out of the apartment and finds the baby in the Castevets' place. Unfortunately, she finds it is the baby of Satan and displays all his features. Without much choice given her psychological state, she takes care of the baby.
According to Stuart Voytilla, writer of Myth and the Movies, Rosemary's Baby is a genre piece since it is a member of a certain story type (or types) that features other stories with similar narratives, subjects, and conventions that have been seen by its audience before. Genre is not to be confused with myths, stories that represent the ideas and hopes of a culture and are passed down from generation to generation as a traditional way to express and keep certain ideals from never disappearing in a society. Of course, the myth of the devil crosses over into the horror genre, such as in this film. Genre connections can occur three ways. It can be individual (between the viewer and the film). This means the viewer has certain expectations when seeing this type of genre. This film, part horror genre and part thriller genre, brings multiple expectations with it; for example, thrillers put an ordinary person in extraordinary circumstances. Rosemary's situation certainly qualifies this as a thriller, especially since she is not asked to be a part of this coven (her husband has misled, or seduced, her into this world). Another genre connection is inter-textual since the film connects to the genre and other films of the genre. The horror type of human being versus foreign monster, such as the devil, is in other films of the genre like The Omen and The Exorcist, offspring of Polanski's triumph. The final genre connection is cultural, expressing concerns of a culture. The devil is definitely a fear in many cultures, appearing under many different names but affecting many individuals in the same way. Of course, most people favor a god over the devil; this film shows some individuals who beg to differ.
Genre analysis is important not only to show the formulas that exist but also to critique ideas. In horror, it is perfect for looking at the fear of not only the devil but also the unknown. The first scene occurs after an aerial journey over the city to the apartment. The pink-lettered credits and lullaby do not suggest a horror thriller; in fact, it is traits more of soap operas or possibly a dark Doris Day flick. This heightens the fear of the unknown to the viewer since this doesn't let us completely know what is going on. Maybe Polanski's aerial trip represents the journey into the unknown, the apartment building, by the heroine Rosemary, an archetype who must sacrifice her to restore order in her universe.
The first sequence in the apartment room is the first look at this new place by Rosemary and Guy, which is a slow-paced montage of shots and lit like a soap opera, continuing the nature of the opening (most of the film is this way accept for a few terrifying moments). It is the mise-en-scene that reveals the most details in the film, especially when superintendent Mr. Nicklas takes them in and shows them around. The composition in depth shows Nicklas babble about a woman dying and leaving her things behind in the apartment in the foreground as Rosemary looks around in the background while Guy watches and follows her in the middle; this is the situation in many of the shots in the apartment. Polanski's first shot leads to another moving shot in a wide room full of plants and books, compressing time and space between shots since the duration of the film sequence is exactly shorter than it would be in real life. A close-up of Rosemary shows that the nosey woman has come across something. An insert of a journal writing of the former tenant states, "I can no longer associate myself," before stopping in mid-sentence. This is the first clue of something unknown since what she referred to is left unsaid. Another close-up shows Rosemary realizes something is not right. A cutback to a group shot shows Guy in the background in the middle staring at Rosemary as Nicklas says the room would be good for a nursery. He seems tense and changes the subject to nearby herbs since he is the shape shifter, who must mislead and question the heroine. He already knows about the apartment and doesn't want her to discover the truth about the deal to help his acting career. They follow Nicklas with back-to-back moving shots into a living room where Rosemary, played innocently and more girlishly than womanly by Mia Farrow, goes around the room as Guy stays between her and Nicklas, who is apparently unaware of this plot. This is obvious when a pan right allows Nicklas and the audience to discover a moved secretary in front of a closet. Guy is willing to acknowledge there is a closet because he can't mislead him on the obvious; he's a little more reluctant helping Nicklas move it back where Rosemary had showed it was in a tilt down of the camera. Nicklas opens the closet to discover a vacuum and towels. Once again, it is unknown why the old woman did what she did. Realizing Rosemary's curiosity about this, Guy misleads her on why the woman did it (he says she was senile). Anchoring this deception is the mugging of actor John Cassavetes, who plays Guy; the character is suppose to be a bad actor who overacts in real life as well, making it hard to catch on to the secret he hides in the first viewing of the film.
The use of a soap opera look in a horror thriller puts it in the revisionist genre mode. Instead of the classical genre mode, we get a questioning of genre conventions and cultural value even if the subject matter is treated with respect and a complex style that is not parody even if coming dangerously close to being. Who is good or evil is also not clear, being more ambiguous in Polanski's screenplay than in the book it is based on.
This is obvious in the first scene of violence, one of the few in the film described by producer Robert Evans as a horror film without the horror. A series of hand-held shots show Rosemary and Guy walking into a crime scene outside their apartment building at night (not coincidentally, this occurs after a scene where they heard Satanic chanting in the apartment next door). Polanski then goes into a spiraling POV hand-held of Terry's bloody body. Rosemary gets emotional at the lost of her new friend, someone she barely knew. She tells the cops what she knows of the woman before we are greeted with the presence of the Castevets, who walk out of the darkness from what seems like nowhere. A conventional horror setup to introduce a villain lurking in the shadows but not for a friendly, elderly couple like the Castevets, dressed in colorful clothes that people who stay at retirement homes wear. Through a series of pans and cuts, the couple shows little emotion when they find out about the body; if anything, they seem disappointed. But this could be like any old couple that has seen many people die in their lifetime, many closer than Terry was to them. They also bicker over what might have happened like a regular couple. But they pretend not to know as much as Rosemary does about her ally Terry, like the fact she had family. They check out Rosemary as she introduces herself in a medium close-up that moves into a group shot that shows the dysfunctional family together for the first time (note that Guy doesn't tell them his name since they already know him in secret). The Castevets hug when she and Guy leave, suggesting they approve of Rosemary for Satan and are not upset over Terry's death since the hug comes here instead of earlier. They are the shadows, the enemies working for the dark side who have Rosemary trapped in their territory.
If you are not convinced that this is a revisionist horror thriller, Polanski makes the ending further proof of it. Rosemary, whose takes up most of the frame in many group shots or has the camera angle in her favor, has decided to exploit the thriller issue of what a heroine does when she is in the face of danger (confined to her bed due to drugging) and decides to venture through the closet's hidden passageway to take matters into her own hands.
This leads to a sequence that has a hand-held camera follow her through the hallways past a picture of a burning church into the living room of the Castevets, where a black crib sits in the background, the coven occupies the mid-ground, and Rosemary stares in the foreground. The mysterious, non-diegetic music stops and the room go silent as the attention turns to Rosemary holding her kitchen knife. A witch finally lets out an old horror film kind of scream as Rosemary walks toward the crib while everybody else watches (unusual that nobody would try to stop her so she could stab somebody for the horror fans of screen blood). Sensing something wrong herself, she stops and looks at Minnie watching in the foreground with Guy walking circles down the hall, revealing he knows something more than just the fact she realizes he lied to her. She also sees the picture of the ancestor of Roman that was in the devil-worshipping book. The silence returns as the camera cuts backs to her. An insert shows her arm reach into the coffin and a cutback to a close-up hand-held of her reveals she is shocked by what she sees; the arrival of a new musical score also emphasizes her surprise. In most horror films, Satan's baby would be showed for shock value since it must be disturbing looking according to Rosemary's reaction. But Polanski decides to keep the baby off screen and the viewer in the dark as to what is in the cradle. Besides, we get the idea something is wrong since she asks what happened to the baby's eyes. A POV shot shows reaction to the question from the coven, which knows something she doesn't. A wide shot with her in the center of the frame spirals around the room as it is revealed that Satan is the baby's father, not Guy. The dizzying motion indicates the mindset of Rosemary as she tries to get a grip on what is happening. A couple of close-ups of Minnie and a witch stating proof the baby must be Satan's lead to a close-up of Rosemary realizing the truth with a superimposed image of Satan's eyes over her own, causing her to drop her knife since it is obvious that it is helpless to fight such a force with that weapon since her Catholic background couldn't even protect her. This leads to a close-up of Roman celebrating God's death and Satan's triumph. The following shot shows Rosemary sit down, a tight close-up that shows she is suffocating in the collapsing of the world she knew. A hand-held shot shows Minnie pick up the knife and check her floor, showing a different response to the odd situation since she treats it as normal. The next shot has Rosemary listening to Roman explaining her importance. The camera closes in on her again, a sign of what happens when she doesn't accept the situation. The camera is wider and more spacious for the members of the coven in the next shot since they are more relaxed and approving of the situation. She just cries in her next close-up. The coven reaction shot shows some disdain toward her behavior. More people arrive in another shot (foreigners have arrived in a fashion similar to the visitors for the baby Jesus). She notices this back in her shot and watches them near the coffin and admire the baby from her POV. Guy comes over to her and she spits in his face. He realizes she doesn't want anything to do with him and he meets the new guests in another shot. The following setup has Minnie come over to her and give her some tea, making Rosemary feel more like a part of the group (something Minnie and Roman want since they need her milk for the baby). A POV of Rosemary shows a witch rocks the baby too fast, causing it to cry like any other baby. In two shots, Rosemary stands up and moves toward the coffin where Roman shows his confidence in her around the baby by allowing Rosemary to rock the baby. Dr. Sapirstein, the threshold guardian who put obstacles in Rosemary's way so she couldn't have the baby outside the apartment, arrives and sees she has discovered his success in a reaction shot. We see as Rosemary's rocking makes the baby stop crying. The others watch in a wide shot, thinking they got her on their side. The final shot of Rosemary shows her reach in and adjust the baby's blanket, suggesting they're right, as she has made the baby the center of her attention. If this means she has joined them is not clear, leaving the narrative open-ended.
Rosemary's Baby is a great film to analyze genres with, especially since its revisionist mode allows the viewer to explore more than one genre and the expectations of each. Though Polanski inverts what we know about certain genres, it still works through individual, inter-textual, and cultural connections. This world is not as normal as it appears nor is its characters; this leaves the audience with the decision to decide what is reality and what is fantasy. Not many films can claim to do that.