ROSEMARY’S BABY was an overnight success when it was released in the summer of 1968. Based on the best-selling book by Ira Levin, it featured TV’s “Peyton Place” star Mia Farrow. The director was the unknown Roman Polanski, a quirky Pole, fresh from the London film scene where he had just completed work on THE FEARLESS VAMPIRE KILLERS. These elements came together to produce one of the most frightening and enduring horror films of all time.

ROSEMARY’S BABY was an important film in many ways. It came at a vital time in American cinema history, along with others such as THE GRADUATE and BONNIE AND CLYDE which signalled that times were changing, and opened the door to what many now call the second Golden Age of Hollywood. This was the rise of the director-as-star/film school era of filmmaking, where film production in Hollywood turned on its head and studios began financing independent productions: independent becoming mainstream. Read Peter Biskind’s brilliant “Easy Riders, Raging Bulls” if you want a full, very readable overview of the period.

During the post-war period, ticket sales had plummeted and studios were drifting in rough seas…

Not only did ROSEMARY’S BABY fit into the changing times, but it was also a necessary and important hit for Paramount Pictures. Hollywood was just emerging from the slump of the 1950s, broken by legislation that forced studios to sell their monopoly over cinema chains. During the post-war period, ticket sales had plummeted and studios were drifting in rough seas, losing touch with their audience. They churned out over-priced, right-wing Westerns, with the odd Hitchcock or sci-fi film reflecting the paranoia of the times. Americans were raising families and building homes with white picket fences, rather than going to the movie house. There seemed to be no money in the film industry, and eventually conglomerates began to buy up the sinking ships, while studio heads sold their former glory and disappeared into mansions in the Hollywood Hills.

Not knowing that a new Golden Age was on the horizon, these massive companies dabbled in making hits without spending money. To this end, Charlie Bluhdorn, head of Gulf and Western (which bought Paramount in 1966), hired Robert Evans. Witty and handsome, albeit inexperienced in film production – he came from an acting background – Evans could talk the talk and walk the walk. He also used his instincts when it came to films: he trusted directors, and money was simply a tool to ensure the talent. Indeed, Evans’ reign over production at Paramount pulled the studio out of the gutter and produced some of the best, most admired and timeless films of the period – he was responsible for films like CHINATOWN, LOVE STORY, HAROLD AND MAUDE and THE GODFATHER. His life at Paramount is recorded in his book, “The Kid Stays In The Picture” – essential and highly entertaining reading for anyone interested in ’70s cinema.

“It’s irreverence that gives you that shot at touching magic.”

So, less than a year after Paramount’s new ownership and the instalment of Evans, a hit was desperately needed; and ROSEMARY’S BABY was the answer. But it wasn’t going to be easy. As Evans puts it, “Fighting is healthy. If everyone has too much reverence for each other, or for the material, results are invariably underwhelming. It’s irreverence that gives you that shot at touching magic.” And if it’s irreverence he wanted, it came in bucket loads during the making of ROSEMARY’S BABY. The film suffered from one disaster after another.

Casting caused the first headache, and actresses lined up outside the producers’ doors to audition for the part of Rosemary herself. Evans wanted Mia Farrow; Polanski wanted Tuesday Weld, but also hoped that his then-wife Sharon Tate might be mentioned. Evans won. Polanski also wanted John Cassavetes but Evans wanted anyone else (once Warren Beatty and Robert Redford had stepped away). Polanski won. Interestingly, Polanski sketched the faces of the characters as he saw them while adapting the book into the screenplay, and it was from those drawings that the casting for each character was initiated. A fantastic cast was eventually assembled around the lead character – winning Ruth Gordon her only Oscar for the role of Rosemary’s demonic neighbour, Minnie Castevet (Evans would later cast her in the classic HAROLD AND MAUDE) and giving Charles Grodin his first noticeable role on the big screen.

… he was “lost if he had to act without his beloved sneakers”

Both Polanski and Evans must have regretted, at some point during filming, their insistence on the lead stars. John Cassavetes, being a director by trade, was troublesome and began to question Polanski’s motives and directing style. He lost interest often, and Polanski claimed that he had no idea about characterisation and just played himself – and also, bizarrely, that he was “lost if he had to act without his beloved sneakers”. That must have been tough for the nude scene on the floor of the empty apartment.

But it was Mia Farrow who unwittingly caused the biggest problems, mainly due to her marriage to Frank Sinatra. ROSEMARY’S BABY was due to shoot for 50 days, and Polanski was a week behind schedule after a week of shooting. Sinatra had cast Farrow in his film THE DETECTIVE, and shooting was due to begin at the end of November. He threatened to divorce her if she hadn’t finished shooting ROSEMARY’S BABY in time to work on THE DETECTIVE. Evans remembers her crying and sobbing, and “years of knowing what makes the head of an actress tick finally found its purpose” as he showed her an hour of the film cut together. He promised her that an Oscar was on the cards (although he was proved wrong when she wasn’t nominated), and declared that not since Audrey Hepburn’s turn in WAIT UNTIL DARK had an actress delivered such a performance in a horror film. In any case, Farrow stayed with the production. In a rather ungentlemanly fashion, the ordeal ended with Sinatra’s lawyer delivering divorce papers to Farrow on set, in front of the cast and crew. In a strange twist of fate, ROSEMARY’S BABY and THE DETECTIVE were released on the same day. While THE DETECTIVE was a hit, it was ROSEMARY’S BABY that made cinema history. Evans claims that Farrow asked him to buy a double-page spread in “Variety”, comparing the box-office performances of the two films, but her request was not fulfilled.

the apartment represents a claustrophobic isolation, gradually surrounding and emprisoning Rosemary.

Still recognised as one of the best ever horror films, ROSEMARY’S BABY is a creepy, unsettling piece that gets under the skin of the audience. A young couple move into a new apartment in New York City, planning to start a family. But upon meeting their eccentric, elderly neighbours, Rosemary begins to be plagued by nightmares – finding herself pregnant after a particularly hellish dream. Fear engulfs her, as she thinks she hears chanting on the other side of the wall, and suspects that her neighbours are trying to poison her. Because Polanski is agnostic, he removed any overt recognition of either God or the devil, making ROSEMARY’S BABY as much a horror film as a study of paranoia. The film is quiet and deliberate, slow paced and atmospheric; the apartment representing a claustrophobic isolation, gradually surrounding and imprisoning Rosemary. The film is widely seen as the second part of Polanski’s “apartment” trilogy, preceded by REPULSION and followed by THE TENANT.

Still as effective today as it was then, the troubled production found a way to “touch magic”, as Evans hoped. This magic is even more apparent when one considers how it would be made today. Would the audience see the baby at the end? Probably. Would the neighbours be stereotypical witches and warlocks? Probably. And would the film question the lead character throughout? Probably not.  A classic of its time, back when mainstream cinema was trying to do something different, ROSEMARY’S BABY is one of the many greats of the period. All we can ask is that they don’t try to remake it.

ROSEMARY’S BABY is showing at the Cambridge Arts Picturehouse on 14^th March as part of the “Reproduction on Film: Monstrosity” season.