ROSEMARY'S BABY

Rosemary is a young girl from New York married to a little-known actor. Things seem to change when her husband starts getting more important roles while she, meanwhile, is pregnant. The following days do not pass quietly: Rosemary is obsessed with strange nightmares and begins to think that her neighbors are plotting something behind her back, in agreement with her own husband. The pregnancy does not end well: she is told that the newborn is stillborn. The young woman is not convinced and discovers the truth: her spouse, in exchange for success, has given their child to a satanic sect... An excellent film, at times really unsettling, produced by the "cult" director William Castle and directed by a still little-known Roman Polanski. The film begins in a falsely idyllic way, as the director himself wanted: the protagonist seems very happy and secure, in the rented apartment where she lives and that she is preparing for the arrival of a child. Then, little by little, one realizes that everything becomes increasingly hostile, not only the apartment and the building (which, in reality, was the Dakota Building, where Boris Karloff, Lauren Bacall, and John Lennon lived), but all of New York seems to become a cold and hostile place. The story manages to involve the viewer gradually, in a continuous crescendo that culminates in a great finale. The pace of the film is rather slow, but not so much as to diminish the interest or the narrative tension. The cast is rich in great actors: from the young protagonist Mia Farrow, who manages to convey perfectly the fragility and insecurities of poor Rosemary, to the legendary John Cassavetes in the role of the mean husband seeking success; special mention deserves the interpretation of the zealous, curious, and obsessive neighbor that earned Ruth Gordon the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. An absolutely out-of-the-box horror film and at the same time a classic: what freezes the blood are not the haunted houses and monsters of "classic" horror films, but a couple of elderly neighbors or a doctor; a reality that belongs to everyone and in which it is not difficult to identify... A refined, visionary, and claustrophobic film that adds to the story — taken from a bestseller by Ira Levin — a very dark atmosphere that makes it an absolute masterpiece of the genre.