罗斯玛丽的婴儿

The film poses the inquiry into little fears in life that indicate possible danger, and into how these little fears would sooner or later give way to piousness before religious thinking. As the wife, and a traditional house type, of a not-so-famous actor whose stardom has to be maintained by repeatedly referring to the only two plays he’d participated yet still remain unheard of, the pregnancy comes as a promised ticket to the middle-class happiness. The baby is conceived bearing expectations of its makers, a word that might seem inappropriately appropriate in this case. Rosemary grows protective of her unborn child, as she struggles in-between a drifting husband and the separation from her old life as she moves into a new apartment whose old owner had committed suicide and whose neighbors appear eerily hospital. The revelation that’s to startle the audience and hold their breath at the end of the film actually starts leaving traits as Rosemary loses herself as an independent human being and is seen as the bearer of a child, and a stranger in her own new life. In an attempt to get a hold of her own life, Rosemary decides to change her hairstyle, which is criticized by both her husband and Hutch, the friend from back when she first came to New York, who would later warn her about the demonic danger she’s facing. The change in appearance doesn’t achieve the expected result, yet instead weakens her strength and amplifies her insecurity. The abdominal pain ensues.

Even near the end of the film, when a panicking Rosemary tries to escape from her bewitched husband and seek help from outside, we cannot be sure if the fear of Rosemary are indeed ongoing witchcraft or just illusions of a hysterical mother-to-be. The film intentionally baffles the audience by stalling the truth, so as to put us in a psychological turmoil in which we find it hard to decide whether to believe Rosemary or the better majority. For a moment, Rosemary seems like the possessed one. The movie takes a doubtful attitude towards metaphysical thinking, even urging the audience to remain prudent when inexplicable things happen. The fear of Rosemary, the absence of a drive in life, the confusion and unease that’s felt when adapting herself into a new life a new role, makes her easily prone to being sacrificed both as the bearer of Satan, and the victim of ill-intentioned otherness.

The revelation of truth at the end of the film is a scalding whack in the face of Polanski to revolt his audience, intentionally adding more spice to his film that could’ve been deemed as underperformed and interminable. The fact that the movie ends with Rosemary seemingly accepting her fate as the mother of a demon adds to the controversy of the movie, which ends abruptly and with frailty.

Thinking about the following infamous slaughter of the Polanski house including his pregnant wife Sharon Stone, the film is living witness of an age when movies still possessed the influencing power it so desperately desires now.

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