For the series Cinemino Classics
Mr and Mrs Woodhouse, Rosemary (b.Mia Farrow) and Guy (John Cassavetes), they go to live in an apartment in an austere building in Manhattan, New York. Their neighbors are Minnie Castavet (Ruth Gordon) and her husband Roman (Sydney Blackmer), a disturbing-looking couple. Soon, Rosemary is plagued by a series of mysterious events: her roommate’s suicide and nightmares in which she dreams that she was raped by some kind of devil, and wakes up in the morning to find that she has been scratched in various parts of her body. Gradually, the woman, who is expecting a child in the meantime, begins to fear becoming a victim of a sect involved in black magic. What child is she carrying? Her fears are justified, since her husband, a failed actor, agreed to sacrifice the child to Satan in exchange for success. After giving birth, Rosemary is informed that the newborn is dead, but then she discovers that the birth of the Devil’s son is being celebrated in Castave’s apartment… After Repulsion
a memorable portrait of female paranoia, Polanski creates one of the most famous horror films in cinema history, paving the way for the theme of Satanism, which would then feature such cult films as Exorcist. In his film, the director states that Evil dominates our lives and fuels our existential pain. The film was a great success with the public and critics and received an Oscar and a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress. Ruth Gordon. Filmed in 1968 at the Dakota Building in New York, famous for the murder John Lemmon, Rosemary’s Baby the film, haunting and in some ways “cursed”, seems to foreshadow a tragedy that will hit Polanski hard. The following year, August 8, 1969 Sharon Stonethe director’s wife, seven months pregnant, dies in her villa on Cielo Drive in Bel Air, Los Angeles, barbarously murdered by members of a satanic sect led by Charles Satan Manson, a criminal who aspired to become a great musician. The massacre shocks America and helps extinguish forever the pacifist myth of the hippie movement.