Posted on 03/07/2018 11:12:12 AM PST by simpson96
Right to its bitter end, there is no escaping “Rosemary’s Baby.” On film Ira Levin’s best selling novel is as horribly frightening as it was on paper. Few people could put Levin’s book down. By the same token, viewers of the movie at the Criterion and Loew’s Tower East Theatres will find themselves compelled to see it through. It is that tantalizing a shocker.
The subject matter is peculiarly repugnant. It is witchcraft, not as practiced in Salem or the like, but as taken seriously in our very own city.
The setting is an apartment house modeled after those venerable Gothic caverns on the West Side. The building’s blackened, menacing hallways with their incredibly high ceilings set-off the innocent glow of the young heroine who lives in this gloomy setting with her bridegroom.
Knowing the story from the book killed a little of the suspense for me since director Roman Polanski follows it relentlessly. Therefore, I will tell nothing of the plot. What makes this film worthy of attention, no matter how one reacts to Polanski’s exacting inclusion of Rosemary’s erotic dreams and the sickening triumph of evil in the end, is, surprisingly, Mia Farrow.
Miss Farrow’s special magic is her fragility. She reminds one of a fawn in captivity. What she does so remarkably well is draw sympathy to Rosemary who is herself a captive fawn, a totally helpless heroine surrounded by evil on all sides with now way out. Everyone in the audience will want desperately to help her.
(Excerpt) Read more at nydailynews.com ...
The Omen, Rosemary’s Baby, and Fallen, a movie with Denzel Washington, all show the premise that evil wins.
The Omen, Rosemary’s Baby, and Fallen, a movie with Denzel Washington, all show the premise that evil wins.
What I never understood was why the coven could not recruit a willing young woman to mate with the devil and bear the child. Surely they could have found somebody in the world besides the women they had to dupe.
Also, why did Frank Sinatra marry Mia Farrow? I never understood that either.
I always thought there was something off about Clara on the Andy Griffith Show. Did Aunt Bea know?
That’s the singularly THE stupidest post of this year!
And you got that info...WHERE?
Not very Biblical, that series (duh).
But the opening to “Omen II” was done very well, IMHO.
The film was shot in Manhattan and LaVey was in California; IIRC.
You got me on that one. She’s certainly no Ava Gardner.
Michael Moore is a current resident.
...”Also, why did Frank Sinatra marry Mia Farrow? I never understood that either.”
Sinatra was always a little ‘tetched’ in the head.
Ava Gardner always said that Frank had a thing for young boys, and in marrying Farrow he married one.
In defense of Sinatra though, he did offer to Farrow that he would have Woody Allen's legs broken for running off with Soon Yi.
Not only that, The Dakota and other such building on Central Park West were and still are Co-ops; not rentals!
Even back in the 1960s, a young couple like Rosemary and Guy could not only NOT afford to buy a co-op ( you couldn't get a mortgage for one back then and for some, probably not even now! )would NEVER have passed the Board interview, and couldn't have afforded the rent for such an apartment, in a rental.
Are you sure about that fat slob Moore?
The Exorcist was the scariest movie the first time I saw it. But I’d consider Rosemary’s Baby to be the better of the two films.
The movie would probably be protested today by Satanists and branded as bigoted toward them by the left.
She ate the mouse, didn't she?
What I never understood was why the coven could not recruit a willing young woman to mate with the devil and bear the child. Surely they could have found somebody in the world besides the women they had to dupe.
—
Because there would be no movie if that was the case. It’s called conflict.
LOL! THE ENTIRE CAST WAS MADE UP OF WITCHES!
It’s a good movie, I watch it once in a while. The acting is good (especially a wonderful Ruth Gordon who won an Oscar for it) and New York City in the 60s takes center stage. The Dakota, 5th Avenue at Christmas time, sweaty, gritty summertime with Mia wearing all those wonderful 60s fashions! As you remember, that was when Twiggy was all the rage and Mia’s shape is similar.
And how can you go wrong when you have Elisha Cooke, Jr, lol?!
A factoid I came across with respect to the Dakota: The walls and floors between aprtments are filled with eighteen inches of earth excavated out of the Central Park then under construction. Seems you could gire a cannon in one of the Apts and no one would hear it.
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