UNDERAPPRECIATED TALENT: OLIVIA WILLIAMS

In a profession boasting an unemployment rate hovering somewhere around 85%, one can hardly call an actress as consistently employed as Olivia Williams an underutilized talent in the literal sense. On the contrary, while continuing to work extensively in both theater and television, Ms. Williams has appeared in major and independent films every year since first coming to the attention of U.S. audiences in Kevin Costner’s epic flop, The Postman in 1997.

It’s just that (in my not-so-humble opinion) Olivia Williams, in proportion to her talent, beauty, and versatility, deserves to be a bigger star than she is. Whether in roles comedic, Lucky Break – 2001; maternal, Peter Pan – 2003; earthy, Flashbacks of a Fool – 2008; sensitive, Rushmore – 1998, insightful, An Education – 2009, or (my personal favorite) vitriolic, The Ghost Writer – 2010; Williams has amassed an impressive catalog of unflaggingly impeccable screen performances. Performances that have rightfully granted her a reputation as an accomplished supporting actress capable of enlivening even the most prosaic of projects, but also performances that, by rights, should have made her into one of Hollywood’s most sought-after leading ladies.

 

Traditionally, America has never really quite known what to do with British actresses, their alienating accents allocating them to roles of teachers, nannies, historical heroines, authority figures, or Joan Colins-esque divas. Too often, unless a British actress is capable of adopting an American accent for high-profile roles (a la, Kate Winslet, and indeed as Williams did in both The Postman and The Sixth Sense), she finds her fate to be something akin to that of Helen Mirren, Judi Dench, and Maggie Smith: significant Stateside success reserved for middle age and beyond.

A member of The Royal Shakespeare Company, Olivia Williams has shined in many prominent roles, winning a British Independent Film Award for The Heart of Me (2002) and being named Best Supporting Actress by the National Society of Film Critics and the London Critics Circle for The Ghost Writer. Yet, owing in large part to her posh speaking voice, short-sighted casting directors have failed to make use of William’s intelligent, Julie Christie-like sensuality and drop-dead sexuality (so often hidden behind desks and corseted in period clothing, few seem aware that Olivia Williams has a killer body).

 I’m no doubt making a plea for a brand of stardom and recognition the actress is probably not in the least bit interested, but when I read how she’s completed work on a forthcoming Arnold Schwarzenegger action film (Ten - 2014) or has lent her smooth, sonorous voice to the animated, Justin and the Knights of Valor (2013), my mind can’t help but go to the analogy of using a thoroughbred racehorse to pull a milk cart.

Recommended for Olivia Williams fans: The Sixth Sense (1999), Anna Karenina (2012), Hanna (2011), Hyde Park on Hudson (2012), Seasons 1 & 2 of Dollhouse on DVD.

The versatile and award-winning co-star of Maps to the Stars, Roman Polanski's The Ghost Writer, The Sixth Sense, An Education, Rushmore, Anna Karenina, and many others, is the topic of my Moviepilot article - Underutilized Natural Resource: Olivia Williams. Click on the title to read my tribute to one of the best  actresses to come out of Great Britain since Julie Christie!

AUTOGRAPH FILES;

Copyright © Ken Anderson

CUL-DE-SAC 1966

Ask me the name of my absolute, #1 all-time favorite film director and I’ll say Roman Polanski without hesitation or equivocation. From the time I was old enough to know what a director was, Polanski has always been a filmmaker whose work I both related to and respected. In the trifecta of most-admired directors that form my own personal, sub-Freudian model of personality and attraction: Ken Russell speaks most eloquently to my passionate, sensual tastes; Robert Altman I love for the compassion he reveals in the absurd humor he finds in the human condition; and Polanski, more than any director whose work I enjoy, gives voice and vision to those subtle nightmares that hide out in the darker corners of my psyche. The ones so scary that you either have to laugh or scream.

No One Does It to You Like Roman Polanski

Cul-de-Sac, his 3^rd feature film and a true artifact of the - “Now what was that all about?” - era of college campus cinema of the '60s, is Polanski at his quirky best. And while it's a masterfully shot confirmation of Polanski’s skill as a visual storyteller, actually describing just what kind of film Cul-de-Sac is, is another matter. Take one of those gangster-takes-strangers-hostage American noir thrillers like The Petrified Forest (1936), He Ran All the Way (1951), or The Desperate Hours (1955); cross it with a French nouvelle vague art film about marital discord and the inability to communicate, à la Jean Luc Godard’s Contempt (1963); then top it off with a dose of Theater of the Absurd tragicomedy (the film’s original title, When Katelbach Comes, being an obvious homage to Samuel Becket’s Waiting for Godot, and a less obvious borrowing of the name of an actor from one of Polanski’s early short films) - and you have some idea of what Cul-de-Sac is. Or isn't.

Polanski's trademark skill at utilizing locations as though they are integral characters in the story is atmospherically evoked by the remote 11th-century castle that serves as the fortress/prison in Cul-de-Sac. Situated high atop a craggy hill on the British peninsula of Holy Island, a major plot point has it that the access road to the castle is obliterated twice daily by high tides (a similar device that was used to good effect in the 2012 Daniel Radcliffe thriller, The Woman in Black).

In 1966 neither audiences nor critics were particularly responsive to trying to sort the whole thing out, so Cul-de-Sac’s subsequent failure at the boxoffice threatened to sink Polanski's newfound reputation as quickly as Knife in the Water (1962) and Repulsion (1965) had established it. But in the famous words of John Huston’s Noah Cross in Polanski’s 1974 masterpiece Chinatown: “Politicians, old buildings and whores all get respectable if they last long enough.” And indeed, Cul-de-Sac has enjoyed a major revival over the years. Embraced by fans and Polanski himself as one of his best and most cinematic films, it's hailed by contemporary film enthusiasts for many of the very things it was reviled for back in the day.

Donald Pleasance as George

Francoise Dorleac as Teresa

Lionel Stander as Richard (Dickie)

Jack MacGowran as Albert (Albie)

Dickie and Albie, gangsters wounded during a botched “job” of an undisclosed nature, take refuge at the secluded retreat of retired businessman George, and his much younger wife, Teresa. Seeking nothing but a place to hide while awaiting rescue by the mysterious, Mr. Katelbach, the fugitive pair hold the newlyweds hostage, setting off a bizarre chain of power struggles, game-playing, and revelatory disclosures which ultimately lead each character to their personal cul-de-sac.

The brainchild of Roman Polanski and longtime collaborator Gerard Brach (The Tenant, The Fearless Vampire Killers, Tess, Frantic) Cul-de-Sac represents the specific cinematic aesthetics, sensibilities, and humor of the pair. “When we were writing this script, we simply wanted to create a movie that would reflect our taste in cinema,” said Polanski to biographer, Denis Meikle, stressing a point difficult to contest. Similar in tone to many of Polanski’s short films, Cul-de-Sac has the look and feel of an extremely accomplished film-school thesis project and is the nearest Polanski has come to making the kind of '60s New Wave art film he spent a large part of his early career ideologically distancing himself from.

Forsaken by whom? Katelbach? God? Godot?

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

One of the biggest thrills to be had in watching Cul-de-Sac is to once again see a motion picture that demands attentiveness. The economics of filmmaking today (to be profitable, movies have to appeal to as broad a demographic as possible) has resulted in an uptrend in cinematic obviousness. Movies today can’t afford to be misunderstood. Everything is spelled-out, underlined, and explained with such pedantic literalness, a kind of passive, dull-wittedness has replaced active engagement on the part of the moviegoing experience.

(An irksome side effect of this distrust of ambiguity can be seen on Internet movie sites like IMDB. The comment sections of these sites, meant to promote discussion, have been taken over by a combative fanboy/fangirl mentality and a zero-tolerance for differences of opinion, conflicting points of view, or multiple interpretations when it comes to sacred cows…I mean favorite films.)

In one of Cul-de-Sac's many allusions to identity and role-playing, straight-laced George reacts to his sexually mischievous wife dressing him in her peignoir and applying makeup. The gown worn by Pleasence recalls that of Catherine Deneuve (Dorleac's real-life younger sister) in Polanski's Repulsion

Movies that explain every detail do audiences no great service. In fact, I think they rob viewers of a marvelous opportunity to “experience” a film instead of merely trying to “understand” it or figure it out. Cul-de-Sac is a textbook case on how a film can be entertaining, suspenseful, touching, dramatic, and tragic (and at the same time entirely coherent) and still leave considerable aspects of the plot open to individual interpretation.

Things left vague or unexplained in Cul-de-Sac:

George and Teresa’s relationship.

The circumstances behind the dissolution of George’s first marriage to the unseen Agnes.

Why the couple chose to live in such a remote location.

The particulars of what actually brings Dickie and Albie to the castle for shelter.

The interrelationships of the uninvited guests (specifically Jacqueline and Cecil).

The motivation behind almost all of Teresa’s actions.
Katelbach himself.

Confining oneself exclusively to what is disclosed in the film, Cul-de-Sac supports myriad interpretations. And therein lies both its genius and its fun. It’s a film people can talk about afterward, sharing impressions and comparing notes. No two individuals are likely to see Cul-de-Sac in exactly the same way. And beware the literal-minded who insist on one "correct" understanding of the film. These are the kind of folks who can't tell you what they feel about a painting until they've read the museum card.

I'm crazy about the composition of this shot. It kicks off a virtuoso 7-minute sequence shot in one take.

PERFORMANCES

Anyone familiar with Donald Pleasence’s somnambulistic performances in the Halloween horror film franchise will be properly thunderstruck by what an expressive and animated actor he can be in the right role. With his shaved head a burlesque of the hundreds of eggs on display throughout the film (the shaved head was Pleasence's idea and came as a big surprise to control-freak Polanski). Pleasence is all repressed agitation and pent-up passion. His unfocused feverishness (he never quite knows where to channel it, and when he does, it comes out all wrong) is met in equal doses by the icy assurance of Francoise Dorleac. Playing a paradoxical female with plenty of yin and yang to spare, Dorleac is the impulsive catalyst in this combustible mix of characters. Some critics have decried what they see as yet another misogynist Polanski fantasy in the character of Teresa, but I found it interesting that she is portrayed as not only fearless, but also the strongest and most resourceful character in the film. Self-servingly so, perhaps, but better that than one of those helpless, always in need of rescue types that proliferated in movies throughout the '60s and '70s.

Does Teresa feel a kinship with the survivalist gangster, Dickie?

Blacklisted veteran actor Lionel Stander, all gravel-voiced and possessed of old-Hollywood bearing, is an inspired choice for a film that derives a great deal of its tension (and absurdist comedy) from the oil/vinegar chemistry of its characters. He’s like a gangster from an old Warner Bros. movie who somehow got himself teleported into a '60s art film. There's a comical lack of complexity to this man (although there's a lovely moment when he's shown gently looking over the belongings of his friend) as he struggles to get his neurotic hostages to just shut up and do what he says.

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

A terrific storyteller with a taste for the idiosyncratic, Polanski is unsurpassed in mining the tension and gallows humor to be found in disparate characters forced into interaction under claustrophobic circumstances. As he does explicitly in Carnage, Death and the Maiden, Bitter Moon, and Knife in the Water, and more subtly in Rosemary’s Baby, The Tenant, and Frantic; Polanski likes to have fun with the idea that anybody actually knows anything about anyone—least of all themselves.

Typical Polanski/absurdist humor: In the midst of a deadly hostage situation...uninvited guests! That's a very young Jacqueline Bisset back there radiating reams of '60s sang-froid behind those shades.

THE STUFF OF DREAMS
By all accounts an extremely difficult and unpleasant film to make, Cul-de-Sac was nevertheless a labor of love for Polanski, and that fact, above all, really shines through when watching it. Even without it confirmed (as it is in the Criterion Collection DVD interview with Polanski) one can sense from Cul-de-Sac that it is a film made with little thought given towards commercial concerns, and all energies trained on making the kind of film that inspired Polanski to want to be a filmmaker in the first place. It's a story about character and consequence told almost entirely through image and atmosphere. Pure cinema, as Polanski would call it.

Superficially speaking, Cul-de-Sac is just one spectacular-looking film. Every exquisitely-composed shot bears the stamp of having been labored over and lit to perfection. But it's also a marvelously layered film of the sort that keeps feeding you more information the more you see it. It's in this realm that Polanski's legendarily persnickety nature and eye for detail pays huge dividends, providing a rewarding cinema experience of the kind that grows increasingly rare. For fans of Roman Polanski, Cul-de-Sac is a must-see. What am I saying? It's a must-see for anyone who loves film!

Existential Despair

Copyright © Ken Anderson  2009 - 2013

CARNAGE 2011

A hissing cousin of Mike Nichols’ Closer and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in its corrosive dissection of the barely suppressed barbarism behind mannered civility (it also recalls the delightfully vitriolic “The Family” sketches from The Carol Burnett Show); Carnage is, for me, in both content and execution, absolute perfection. Adapted from the play God of Carnage by Yasmina Reza, the plot is not a plot so much as a setup: one day in Brooklyn Bridge Park (not Hillside!) 11 year-old Zachary Cowan hits schoolmate Ethan Longstreet with a stick and causes a bruised lip and the loss of two teeth.

Jodie Foster as Penelope Greenstreet

John C. Reilly as Michael Longstreet

Kate Winslet as Nancy Cowan

Christoph Waltz as Alan Cowan

The well-heeled parents of the two children get together one afternoon to “discuss” what to do about it. If the yupster, retro-contemporary names of the children doesn't tip you off, one look at the tastefully decorated apartment of the Longstreets or the affluent, Barneys New York sleek of the Cowans clarify exactly what genus of modern parent we're dealing with here.

The Longstreets and the Cowans make a "superficially fair-minded" attempt to arrive at a civilized solution to their sons' playground savagery

Although I know the box office is currently ruled by caped crusaders of all stripes, a premise like this poses more thrill potential for me than a Dark Knight/Avengers marathon. The cast, Polanski… all were enough to send me into delirious orbit. When the theatrical trailer debuted online a full five months before its Christmas premiere, I could barely contain my anticipation. Happily, I was put out of my misery when a friend got me into a pre-release screening (which just happened to be the very John C. Reilly, Christopher Waltz Q & A included as a bonus feature on the film's  DVD). Had I harbored any fears of the finished film not living up to the promise of the trailer–I hadn't–they were dashed within the first moments of this expert and economic black comedy (the film is only 80 minutes long) when it became apparent that Polanski was going to fold me up into a neat little overexcited bundle and pack me up in his hip pocket. 

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM
While I'm no fan of pop entertainments that insidiously glorify bad behavior (which pretty much takes in the entirely of reality TV, most sitcoms, and a great many contemporary motion picture comedies); I apparently can’t get enough of films that really stick it to those deserving targets who seek to hide their intolerance and misanthropy behind masks of bourgeois decorum.

"Luckily, some of us still have a sense of community. Right?"

In the days of the Marx Brothers, these types were the high-society matrons and stuffed shirts we longed to see brought down a peg by a custard pie to the face. Today they’re the evolved, socially-concerned yoga mat carriers; the university-educated followers of kabbalah who clutter the weekend Farmer’s Markets; the protectors of property values in yuppie enclaves who tsk-tsk in sympathy at the unrest in the urban jungles they read about on their Kindles while waiting for their iced venti sugar-free mochas at Starbucks.
What's so brilliant about Carnage is the way it recognizes how, in today's world, outside agents of irreverent anarchy like the Marx Brothers are no longer necessary to expose these people's pretensions. No, they're their own worst enemies and perfectly capable of doing it to themselves.

"Morally, you're supposed to overcome your impulses,
but there are times you don't wanna overcome them."

The comedy of Carnage is in how quickly the sophisticated civility of the parents turns to gloves-off savagery when things don't proceed as smoothly as anticipated. Buttons are pushed, boundaries are crossed and before you know it, the playground children begin to look like paragons of self-control in comparison.

PERFORMANCES

As much as I enjoyed Robert Altman’s ensemble pieces, the sheer sweep of his films (1978’s A Wedding featured 48 characters) inevitably led to some actors–often the most fascinating–being given short shrift. The joy of Carnage’s four-character /mixed doubles setup is that it keeps each of Polanski’s heavyhitters together onscreen for the lion’s share of the film with the result being a satisfyingly evenhanded display of some of the most nuanced and electrifying acting pyrotechnics I've seen in a long while. The in-deadly-earnest seriousness with which each actor tackles the material makes Carnage a wildly funny black comedy of consistent laughs born of character and situation. I've often complained that I can't find a contemporary comedy that actually makes me laugh. Carnage made me laugh so loud and long that it brought tears to my eyes.

Eruption
Things start to go wrong in a very big way

Each cast member manages to shine while still maintaining the evenhanded feel of an ensemble piece. As a child of the '70s I can’t help but harbor a personal fondness for Jodie Foster, an actress whose early work I greatly admired, but whose adult output has largely been restricted to restrained performances in substandard movies (I’m one of the few who really didn't care for Silence of the Lambs, although there was no denying Foster gave a compelling performance). 

As the most ideologically invested member of Carnage’s quartet, Foster’s descending spiral from fair-minded conciliator to ragingly moral despot is truly something to behold. I love how she progresses from being one of those false, over-smiling "nice ladies" to an exposed nerve of indignant rage. There's not a moment when she's onscreen when she's not absolutely a delight to watch, and I've never seen such a forceful performance from her (she's also a hoot. She has a comic's timing). For my money, it's the best performance of her career.

There Will be Blood: “Cruelty and splendor. Chaos. Balance.”

THE STUFF OF FANTASY
When I say that Carnage is the best contemporary film I've seen since Black Swan, I make the assertion secure in the knowledge that I'm coming from a place wholly subjective. I derive so much pleasure from Carnage's malevolent satire because I actually know these people. I daresay that I even recognize some of myself in them, but for the most part, I relate to Carnage because these people are familiar. I also like the actors a great deal, making it easier for me to spend 80 minutes with individuals I would otherwise find reprehensible. But once again, I allude to my oft-declared penchant for films of heated emotional conflict bordering on abuse (Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?; Carnal Knowledge;  X, Y and Zee). As much as this film suits me, I seriously can't imagine a George and Martha bicker-fest is going to be everyone's cup of tea.

Although Carnage takes place in Brooklyn, it's a satire of individuals indigenous to any big city. I've lived in Los Angeles most of my adult life. I work in Santa Monica and Pacific Palisades, two outrageously affluent communities full of beauty and a surplus of sunshine. Yet on any given day, take a look at some of the people walking around, and you're not likely to see a more sour, unhappy-looking bunch of people anywhere. These folks walk along some of the cleanest, most pleasant streets in the world and never speak, smile, or even acknowledge one another, lost as they are in their Smartphone worlds (it's a curiosity how the faces of the privileged classes so rarely reflect peace of mind).
Yet these are the same individuals who think of themselves as good people and pride themselves on their liberal sensibilities. This is in spite of maids and nannies being the only people of color around, and the populace's almost frontier sense of alarm at the presence of "outsiders." To be fair, there are many authentic, genuinely decent people populating this social stratum, but I have to say that my partner and I have been the squirmy audience to more than a couple of dinner parties amongst the civilized set that has degenerated into Carnage-like bloodbaths.

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

One of my all-time favorite directors, Roman Polanski, at 79, can still do more cinematically with a single set than most filmmakers can accomplish with a wealth of soundstages at their disposal. As a film that confines itself completely to the living quarters of the parents of the injured child, you can add Carnage to Roman Polanski's unofficial "Apartment Trilogy" (Repulsion, Rosemary's Baby, and The Tenant). Although Carnage lacks Polanski's trademark"peephole" shot from those films (a distortion view of a character as viewed through an apartment door's peephole), he does treat us to this pleasing alternative by way of a cameo that's almost as much fun as when he taught Jack Nicholson a nasty lesson in Chinatown:

Roman Polanski makes a cameo appearance as the Longstreet's nosy neighbor.
Minnie Castevet would be proud.

So, if in 2011 (a year bursting at the seams with youth-oriented film fodder) the movie industry saw fit to throw a single bone to that tiny sector of the populace craving something more intellectually engaging than the lights, bells, and whistles distraction of CGI; I'm happy that in Polanski's Carnage, it was at least a bone with a little meat on it.

BONUS FEATURE:
Click the link below to see the Roman Polanski's 4-minute short film for PRADA (honestly, even what is essentially a commercial by Roman Polanski is more entertaining than most of today's films).
Roman Polanski's 2012 Short Film for PRADA - starring Helena Bonhan Carter & Ben Kingsley

Copyright © Ken Anderson   2009 - 2013

ROSEMARY'S BABY 1968

"Cinematically speaking, if stressful social times trigger in our culture the need for escapism as a coping mechanism, then such conditions must equally inspire the necessity of what can be best described as a shrouded emotional outlet: an avenue, concealed to the psyche, through which the fears and uncertainties of the times can be safely vented. In this manner, the horror film has always been socially revealing." - 

Rosemary's Baby: Child of the '60s:

Rosemary's Baby was released in June of 1968. And as social climates go, one couldn't find a year more defined by stress, fear, and uncertainty than America in 1968. This was the year that saw: Richard Nixon being elected to the office of President; the assassination of two American symbols of hope (Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy); U.S. involvement in the war in Vietnam escalating; and big cities and college campuses across the nation wracked by violent civil rights protests and heated anti-war demonstrations. Observed Los Angeles Times journalist Bettuane Levine: "It was a very bad year. Strikes, sit-ins, and bloody riots dotted the land, as various groups sought their share of the pie. The result was a country in crisis, our cities in tatters, our dislocated lives punctuated by assassination, Cold War threats, nuclear terrors, and a general feeling that nothing would ever be the same again."

The real-life Time Magazine cover, dated April 8, 1966, poses the unasked
question augured by Rosemary's Baby's unsettlingly ambiguous ending 

The seemingly insurmountable hurdle faced by anyone endeavoring to make a horror film in the tumultuous atmosphere of the late-'60s lay in determining what could possibly frighten an audience that, on a nightly basis, had beamed into their homes the violence and real-life terrors of war and protest confrontations escalated by the police and military. Audiences who, via photojournalism periodicals like Life and Look, regularly confronted graphic evidence of a nation growing increasingly chaotic. What fictional creature or imagined narrative could compete with the real-life horror that was modern America?   

Enter, Rosemary's Baby. Ira Levin's cannily-plotted 1967 bestseller was a contemporary horror story about modern-day witchcraft. Classic gothic horror conventions were revitalized by reimagining them through the prism of an emerging new worldview. A world in which drafty castles, thunderstorms, cobwebs, bats, and creaky doorways had long ceased being viable mechanisms of fear. A world of reason and logic that had moved (or so it thought) beyond the primitive influences of superstition and myth. Rosemary's Baby proposed that even in a world where God and religion were deemed obsolete, there remained unexplained (and unimaginable) things that never died. And evil that was impervious to the passage of time. 

Mia Farrow as Rosemary Woodhouse

John Cassavetes as Guy Woodhouse

Ruth Gordon as Minnie Castevet

Sidney Blackmer as Roman Castevet

Roman Polanski's uncommonly faithful film adaptation took Ira Levin's narrative one step further by removing the unequivocal (the novel takes the existence of Satan as a reality and presents the coven, its intentions, and Guy's recruitment as elements of fact) and replacing it with ambiguity.  

Polanski threads the tale of a young bride's mounting certainty that a coven of witches has evil designs on her unborn child with both cultural subtext (it subtly proposes that the dawning of the year "One" [1966] and the birth of the Antichrist on earth are the explanation for 1968's real-life horrors) and a sense that many of Rosemary's anxieties are the product of her imagination. Polanski initially filmed and later deleted several scenes that distinctly confirmed Guy's involvement with the coven and purposely gave all of Rosemary's fantastic fears rational alternatives. An avowed atheist, Polanski wanted to make an occult horror film about witchcraft and Satanism that would play just as well as a psychological thriller about a pregnant woman suffering a severe paranoid breakdown. No matter how the film is viewed, in Polanski's deft hands, Rosemary's Baby is an intense and atmospheric slow-boil horror experience that also works as an overwhelmingly persuasive allegory about the durability of evil. 

Maurice Evans as Edward "Hutch" Hutchins

Ralph Bellamy as Dr. Abraham Sapirstein

Watching Rosemary's Baby, it's difficult not to find yourself succumbing to the darkly-comic overtones of its somewhat audaciously clever plot: The living Devil born in a creepy Manhattan apartment building (the notorious Bramford, portrayed externally by the equally infamous Dakota, site of the tragic 1980 shooting death of John Lennon) to an ordinary woman. Indeed, a lapsed Catholic of wavering, undefined faith, used as a vessel by a coven of septuagenarian Satanists to herald the end of God's hegemony and the beginning of new, Satanic world order. 

Charles Grodin as Dr. C.C. Hill

Sixties audiences responded (perhaps more subliminally than consciously) to what the horror of Rosemary's Baby represented: it offered a timely and relevant "explanation" as to why the world of 1968 was such a hellscape. The son of Satan was born on earth in 1966, ushering in an era that the uncharacteristically impassioned Roman Castevet promised would- "Redeem the despised and wreak vengeance in the name of the burned and tortured." 

So, Levin's perverse reversal of Christian myth provided a kind of cathartic release for '60s audiences, for in offering an "explanation" for the chaos of the times...even a horrifically unimaginable one...order felt temporarily restored.

Minnie: "Sometimes I wonder how you're the leader of anything!"
The outwardly ineffectual Roman casts his steely and deadly gaze on Rosemary's friend Hutch, who proves to be too curious about that tannis root charm for his own good

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

Rosemary's Baby truly excels in its dramatization of the banality of evil. Though played for darkly comic effect, it's really rather jarring that the monsters in this contemporary horror film are harmless-looking little old ladies and men. Just the kind of colorless, ordinary people we are so quick to dismiss. Imagine how this detail played to audiences in the "Don't trust anyone over 30" climate of the '60s, and you get a taste of just how subversively eerie Rosemary's Baby seemed when it hit the screens. Audiences accustomed to horror films as low-budget, B-movie double-feature fare were disquieted when this major motion picture (which was intentionally shot to look as though it were a Doris Day comedy) with an art-house director and an A-list cast dared to make a horror film that took itself seriously enough to be genuinely frightening. 

Guy's First Betrayal
Polanski's use of a low camera angle allows Guy to shield his face from Rosemary
(and the audience) the first time he lies to conceal his seduction by the coven

Obfuscation and the barely-seen detail luring around the corner are among the tolls Polanski employs in his depiction of a world morally turned on its axis. In keeping so many of the film's horrors unseen or unsubstantiated, Polanski orchestrates a gradual, nightmarish transformation of all that is perceived as safe and familiar into the potentially dangerous and sinister. As a cleverly constructed parable of '60s unease, Rosemary's Baby captured the country's imagination and became a major boxoffice hit. 

The gradual dismantling of the safe structures of Rosemary's world has a destabilizing effect on the viewer, making us empathize with her isolation and vulnerability. 

Any security or safety Rosemary finds in her marriage is an illusion.

Rosemary responds to father figures. Her friend Hutch is unsuccessful in
protecting her from the superficially paternal Dr. Sapierstein, who betrays her

Rosemary's body is under assault from within and without

PERFORMANCES

Although the consistently underrated Mia Farrow contributed many outstanding performances to the films she made with Woody Allen (Broadway Danny Rose being a particular favorite), no performance of hers has ever got to me like her Rosemary Woodhouse. From the moment she appears onscreen, she exhibits a credible vulnerability and appeal that anchors the film in the kind of emotional reality necessary to make this horror fantasy work. The character from the novel comes to life in Farrow's fully-inhabited personification of a modern woman with a traditional streak (beyond home and family, there's no indication that she has any other ambitions) and a nagging guilt about her backsliding Catholicism. Best of all, her actions propel the plot. Her mistakes, strengths, vulnerabilities, and values determine how the coven's plans for her will play out.

At every turn, the actions and behavior of Farrow's Rosemary are rooted in something psychologically authentic. She's so good that no one else is imaginable in the role despite how well suited they were to Polanski's initial vision (he sought Jane Fonda or Tuesday Weld). I think Mia Farrow's Rosemary ranks with Faye Dunaway in Bonnie and Clyde and Jane Fonda in They Shoot Horses, Don't They? as one of the best performances by an American actress in the '60s.

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

As he demonstrated with his psychosexual thriller Repulsion (1965), Roman Polanski is an adept translator of the strange "reality" of the unreal world of dreams. The dissociated sounds, the dissipated images, the disconnected logic...Polanski captures all of these shifting subconscious impressions to great effect in crafting Rosemary's Baby's centerpiece moment--the dream/nightmare sequence. It's an eerie, atmospheric classic that's so effective that no two people see the events of Rosemary's dream in the same way. Like a real dream, its interpretation is ambiguous as it is subjective.

As you might imagine, this sequence particularly disturbed me as an 11-year-old. As a Catholic School kid, I wasn't aware of having harbored any set thoughts about the possibility of a real Satan or the Devil. This scene kinda forced the issue in a nightmarishly literal way.

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

Rosemary's Baby wasn't the first film I ever saw; it just feels that way. At 11 years old, it was the first film to make an indelible impression on me. I never forgot it. Part of this was due to the fact that it was absolutely THE most frightening film I had ever seen to date and was responsible for innumerable bad dreams and a reluctance to enter dark rooms for months thereafter. Revisiting it over the years in revival theaters and special Anniversary screenings (memorably, one with producer Robert Evans in a Q & A at the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences) only solidifies what I intuited back in 1968; Rosemary's Baby was and is a small masterpiece.

The scene that gave me a goosebump chill the first time I saw it

A horror film that plays fast and loose with the conventions of the genre, blending elements of the psychological thriller and paranoid social drama. Beautifully shot, well-written, superbly acted, and above all, smart as a whip. During Rosemary's Baby, you never lose the feeling that you are in the hands of a director who knows exactly what he's going for and how to elicit precisely the response he wants from an audience. 

It's a film of solid assurance in every aspect.

BONUS MATERIAL:

D'Urville Martin, who portrayed Diego, the elevator man (who reappears in Rosemary's dream as the gruff sailor on Kennedy's yacht), became a prolific producer, actor, and director in the Black Film explosion of the early '70s. In addition to appearing in films like Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967), Black Ceasar (1973) and being cast as the original Lionel Jefferson in TV's All in the Family, Martin directed and played the villain in the Rudy Ray Moore cult classic Dolemite (1975). 

* 2019 addendum: In the superb Eddie Murphy movie Dolemite is My Name (2019) about Rudy Ray Moore and the making of Dolemite, D'Urville Martin is portrayed by Wesley Snipes.

In 2014 Rosemary's Baby was made into a monumentally misguided TV miniseries starring Zoe Saldana. My thoughts on the matter - The Devil is in the Details: Adapting Rosemary's Baby for the Big and Small Screen.

AUTOGRAPH FILES:

My sister (my siblings are the only folks who still call me Kenny) got John Cassavetes to autograph this receipt when she saw him at a restaurant on Fairfax Avenue in Los Angeles in 1979. She knew I would get a kick out of it, and I did, indeed.

"It's Vidal Sassoon. It's very in."
The $5000 haircut

On August 14, 1967, a week before production began on Rosemary's Baby, legendary hairstylist Vidal Sassoon was flown to Hollywood to give Mia Farrow's already short haircut a "trim" as a publicity stunt. I had the opportunity to interview Mr. Sassoon in 2003. An incredibly nice and gracious man.

Copyright © Ken Anderson   2009 -2011