Posted: Sun., Dec. 31, 1967, 11:00pm PT

Rosemary's Baby

By Variety Staff

Paramount. Director Roman Polanski; Producer William Castle; Screenplay Roman Polanski; Camera William Fraker; Editor Sam O'Steen, Bob Wyman; Music Christopher Komeda; Art Director Richard Sylbert

Mia Farrow John Cassavetes Ruth Gordon Sidney Blackmer Maurice Evans Ralph Bellamy

Several exhilarating milestones are achieved in Rosemary's Baby, an excellent film version of Ira Levin's diabolical chiller novel. Writer-director Roman Polanski has triumphed in his first US-made pic. The film holds attention without explicit violence or gore.

Mia Farrow and John Cassavetes, a likeable young married couple, take a flat in a rundown New York building. Ralph Bellamy, an obstetrician prescribing some strange pre-natal nourishment for Farrow and Maurice Evans, Farrow's sole ally, who dies a mysterious death, as well as Charles Grodin, enter the plot at adroit intervals.

The near-climax - Farrow has been drugged so as to conceive by Satan - and the final wallop make for genuine cliff hanger interest.

Farrow's performance is outstanding. Cassavetes handles particularly well the difficult projection of a husband as much in love with his wife as with success. Neighbour Ruth Gordon is pleasantly unrestrained in her pushy self-interest, quite appropriate herein, while other principals score solidly.

1968: Best Supp. Actress (Ruth Gordon)

Nomination: Best Adapted Screenplay

(Color) Available on VHS, DVD. Extract of a review from 1968. Running time: 134 MIN.