"ROSEMARY’S BABY" A GOOD PLACE TO START REVISITING CINEMATIC HISTORY

I have been in a bit of a wilderness as far as catching up with cinematic history goes. Oh I know. It’s an impossible endeavour – or very close to being so anyway. But the simple fact is, I have not watched nowhere near as many of the classics as I would have liked to have by now. That’s why I have decided to really make it a priority. There is a certain place in my head that I would really like to reach, now I don’t know how realistic it is, but we shall see. And I mean, you lot get quite a lot of film reviews out of it so… Not such a bad thing, is it?

Now having a rather active imagination that really enjoyed taking slightly bizarre angles on even everyday life (To give but one example, as a young child I was adamant that when you got into an elevator, the elevator stood still and the building moved…  As you can imagine my Mother was subjected to a whole series of very bizarre questions as I grew up) I was fascinated by horror films and yet tried to avoid them. Knowing that my watching even one would mean nightmares for weeks and a whole new universe of bizarre questions, Mom was incredibly strict about my not watching anything even vaguely horror. Understandably. This is probably why I got a weird sensation of guilty excitement when I came across Rosemary’s Baby the other day. I had to watch it. It was like, I don’t know… That “forbidden pleasure” kind of excitement. I mean obviously Mom doesn’t have a say in what I watch any more (although she shudders at the very mention of Quentin Tarantino – she gets faint at the mere idea of blood you see, much less large quantities of it on her TV screen) but still. You know. It’s that kind of film. It has the reputation. It led to people firmly believing Polanski was into spells and witchcraft himself (How else could he have known? Asked people, momentarily forgetting this little thing called research). Anyway, at 30 years of age I just about felt ready for the experience. I dived (dove?) right in…

So Rosemary (Mia Farrow) and Guy, a newlywed couple move into their brand new home. Guy is an actor looking for his big break, Rosemary is a homemaker and they are madly in love. And although the new flat seems like a dream home to the young couple, soon the peculiar occurrences begin. Rosemary initially explains it all away. Their neighbours are a bit eccentric but they seem ok – if a little nosey. But surely this is to be expected from an old couple with no children of their own? Things take on a slightly sinister turn when Rosemary finds herself pregnant. As her pregnancy advances Rosemary gets more and more sure that her unborn child’s life is in danger… But with Guy seemingly in cahoots with the neighbours who can she trust?

If there is one thing that annoys me above all others when it comes to horror films, it is over-reliance on monsters and jump-scares. A good jump-scare from time to time is a fine thing, however, it should NOT form the backbone of a horror film. A film is not a film if it isn’t playing with your mind. As is the want of Mr Polanski, in this film he DEFINITELY plays with your mind. In fact mind games – with you and poor Rosemary – is mainly what the film is all about. Every filmmaker has a “thing” you may have noticed. In fact I think this is true of books as well, this thing can be a theme, a place, a character, just something that every single one of their artworks share. For some it’s more obvious, for others less so. For Mr Polanski, it’s very clearly flats. In many of his works the flat itself becomes the enemy, turning on its inhabitant. You would have thought with various different films along the same theme, “one more” wouldn’t be anything too special. But this one is. This film is the granddaddy of all the films that came after it, irrespective of the genre, that built themselves up on that feeling of eyes constantly on you, a sense of constantly mounting dread and the complete inability to find a place to turn.     It starts small and slowly grows into an all-engulfing monster which is the heart of this cinematic classic. In fact I believe this film should be watched if only JUST to see how that sense of being completely surrounded, constantly watched and engulfed SHOULD be done on film. And as I write these lines it has only just occurred to me that one of the main reasons Mr Polanski is so good at it has to be his own experience of the feeling.  It is an opportune moment to remember that Mr Polanski is a Holocaust survivor. Couple this fact with Rosemary in the latter part of the film with her shortly cropped hair… Oh I’m not saying it’s an allegory or anything but I think the feeling, the emotion portrayed must surely have its roots in that particular historical moment. I mean yes, her haircut is purportedly Vidal Sassoon but is the prison-style close crop not there to give a message? At the very least it tells us that Rosemary is the prisoner of her circumstances, the house and everyone that surrounds her.

I defy anyone to watch this film and then be able to instantly shrug off the sense of dread it fills you with. These are the kinds of monsters that do not melt away in the sunlight. I know horror is not everyone’s thing… But if monsters do float your boat… This is one film NOT to be missed… 

A LITTLE SOMETHING THAT IS "ARTY": "ZELIG"

Now, Woody Allen is a tricky one. You either love him or you hate him. You either think he is utterly pointless or one of the wittiest directors alive. I am one of the fans. From the smallest thing to the largest thing, Allen’s films are choc-full of stuff. Real stuff you can get your teeth into whether to laugh or cry and as opposed to fluff. You know what I mean. Zelig was another film I “happened across” a while back. I watched it on a rainy morning when I was cramped for time, based solely on the two premises that I was short of time and I definitely wanted fill my “movie a day” quota. Zelig was 80 minutes long, so on it went.
It is, in fact a “mocumentary”. I mean, it is shot in the style of a documentary with “archive footage” and interviews with “experts and witnesses” but it’s really a story starring Woody Allen himself and Mae West. It is the extraordinary tale of Leonard Zelig (Woody Allen) an ordinary Jewish-American citizen with a rather extraordinary ailment… He “turns into” anyone he comes into contact with. Put him near Asian Americans, he starts speaking Chinese, African-Americans, his skin actually changes color. Put him in the same room as a doctor, he’s a doctor, confront him with an iron-monger, what do you know, he’s an ironmonger. The world doesn’t know what to make of him at first. Nobody except a young and beautiful psychiatrist Eudora Fletcher (Mia Farrow)She suspects Zelig’s transformation stems from his abnormally great desire for acceptance and love. Not only that, she also suspects she can cure him. Getting her hands on him, however, is going to be a good deal harder than she first suspected…
Now, I am a pretty smart gal as they go, generally speaking. But this being Woody Allen, I am still not quite sure what EXACTLY the film was poking fun at. But you can see the type, right? I mean, maybe it isn’t even a single type it’s a quality one can attribute to our society in general today. Preferences in society for instance (marked in the film by the public’s adoration of Zelig and their subsequent hatred of him), typical consumer society, we’re so phical these days. We want one thing one moment, two moments later it’s forgotten and we already have a new favorite. We change like “chameleons” with the times and we are led by advertising (let’s face it that IS what advertising is for but still…)
And then there are people like Zelig. On a more personal level they may be afraid to be themselves for fear of rejection (and that alone speaks volumes on where we are today as a whole if individuals are afraid to be themselves) or they may, a bit like Zelig, be rather “underdeveloped” (and this has nothing to do with age) as far as character formation is concerned. Or heck, they may just have an agenda, sucking up to all and sundry, making contacts, working their way up in the world. Whatever the case, you know the type. The people pleaser. Those who are what you want them to be. Who agree with everything you say. And it’s sort of ironic, because people like that are, most often, quite popular. So it’s funny – and well placed – that Zelig becomes the phenomenon of his age at first… A society of chameleons applauding the ultimate chameleon then? Mr. Allen can’t be thinking much of society today… Oh hang on, scratch that… I think we all know the answer to that one… =)