Guy (John Cassavetes) and Rosemary (Mia Farrow) Woodhouse are looking for an apartment. After viewing one in the Bramford they decide to rent it. The Bramford is an old gothic-style structure. The huge apartment building has a dark and sinister past. Apparently it has a reputation for being the residence of witches and baby killers. Guy is an actor that is still waiting for his big break. Until then he does mostly commercials. Rosemary is a homemaker who hopes to be a mother as soon as they are financially situated.
The apartment next door is rented by an older couple, Minnie (Ruth Gordon) and Roman (Sidney Blackmer) Castevet. Living with them is a young woman, Terry Gionoffrio (Victoria Vetri) that the older couple took in from the streets. Rosemary and Terry meet in the laundry room and strike up a friendship. One evening Guy and Rosemary find out that Terry committed suicide by jumping out of the seventh floor window. The Castevets are upset at the loss of their young ward and begin a friendship with Guy and Rosemary. Rosemary finds them a little nosy but Guy seems to take to them.
Guy finally gets the break he has been looking for when the actor scheduled to play an important role suddenly goes blind. Secure in his new role Guy now is ready to start a family. Rosemary keeps track of her cycle and on the evening she is ovulating Minnie brings over a special dessert. Rosemary complains about the taste of it being a little chalky and only eats a little of it. That’s when she passes out and has the most bizarre dreams.
Her dreams culminate to where she is laid on a mattress and is raped by a demon. Stranger still she dreams that Guy, the Castevets and several other tenants of the building are all standing around naked watching. When Rosemary wakes up the next morning she is covered in scratches. Guy says that he had sex with her while she was asleep. His excuse it that he didn’t want to miss “baby night”.
The sexual assault results in Rosemary becoming pregnant. The Castevets talk her into seeing their doctor, Dr. Sapirstein (Ralph Bellamy) instead of the doctor recommended by her friends, Dr. Hill (Charles Grodin). Rosemary has now embarked on a dark and twisted road involving Satanists, the death of a friend and the betrayal of the one she loves the most.
“Rosemary’s Baby” was released in 1968 and was directed by Roman Polanski. The film was based on the book by Ira Levin and was produced by William Castle. One of the main features of the movie is how closely it follows the book. Polanski incorporated large sections of the book’s dialogue into the script.
William Castle makes a cameo appearance as a man waiting to make a phone call outside Rosemary’s phone booth. The part of the Bramford Apartments was played by the Dakota apartment building in New York City.
As for the characters, Guy is a total jerk that sold his wife to the devil for a part in a movie. I wanted to smash his face in. For the most part, Rosemary is very much like the classic abused wife. Although at times she was just ridiculously stupid. Minnie Castevet is a hoot as the nosey but extremely annoying neighbor and her husband Roman is just a little spooky.
“Rosemary’s Baby” is a long movie, about two hours and seventeen minutes long. It also doesn’t have a lot of gore. It unfolds slowly. It’s really not all that suspenseful either. But it does have a lot of atmosphere. It’s sinister and evil. Polanski’s choice to follow the book so closely made for a very detailed story that flows organically but it also made it difficult to keep your attention in spots.
In 2014, the film was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress, being deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."