Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin 10 out of 10

 Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin

10 out of 10

 

 

Before reading one of the most successful horror and mystery narratives ever published, this viewer had seen the classic adaptation of this marvelous book, directed by the now disgraced, though still extremely talented Roman Polanski, with Mia Farrow and John Cassavetes – what a strange coincidence to have Cassavetes play Guy Wodehouse, living near the Castevetes – a motion picture that rests on the New York Times’ Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made list https://www.listchallenges.com/new-york-times-best-1000-movies-ever-made/list/19 and that has some interesting innuendo detailed in the book written by the producer of the film, Robert Evans, a man who had been an actor, head of Paramount Studios, producer of The Godfather and Chinatown among so many other landmarks, and author of The Kid Stays in the Picture http://realini.blogspot.com/2015/09/the-kid-stays-in-picture-by-robert.html

 

Robert Evans has many extraordinary stories to tell about Hollywood, Vladimir Nabokov, how he discovered the best actor of the last half century, the making of Godfather, Chinatown, Love Story and what happened with Rosemary’s Baby, the hiring of the rising Roman Polanski, how Mia Farrow has been asked by her then husband, the controversial friend of the mob, Frank Sinatra, to abandon the project, which she did not, they had a separation and at the end of the production, she wanted Robert Evans to advertise on two pages in one of the major film publications – on one page, the tremendous success of Rosemary’s Baby would be highlighted, with a smashing box office success, and opposite, the takings of the Sinatra movie, released at about the same time and flopping, a bad feature…incidentally, the under signed has never seen where the massive talent of Sinatra was, outside his musical performances…

While we can read Rosemary’s Baby on a few registers, interpreting the story in a few ways, just as Joyce Cary says in the introduction to Mister Johnson – the reader has to recreate a world…’all the reader has is a lot of crooked marks from which he has to create a world…reading is not a passive act…’-it seems that the Faust myth can be placed at the heart of the narrative…Guy Woodhouse wants to have a success as an actor and is willing to do anything to advance his stalling career, including the infamous pact with the Devil…

 

Therefore one way to interpret what happens to Rosemary’s or the Devil’s baby – depending on which path we take, or to repeat the aforementioned mantra, the world we choose to create from crooked marks on paper or the screen of a Kindle these days – would be to see this as the tale of some sick people, worshippers of the Devil – and that can be easily taken as describing the world we live in, where hundreds of millions, what am I saying, a few billion, are delusional and adhere to cults like the one in America, where they kneel in front of a very stable genius aka ultimate idiot, and in other places they also support the likes of BolsaNero, Duterte, MBS, Modi, even Xi has many millions of genuine fans, though it is hard to assess real popularity and allegiance in a tyranny – who want to take the coming baby as their own…

Rosemary Woodhouse is married to Guy, an aspiring actor, and they want to move into the coveted Bramford Building, when an old day dies and her apartment becomes available…their friend, Hutch, warns them that the building has had a rather gruesome history, surrounded by mystery and tragedy –one would indeed take place quite soon, as ‘Ro’, which was what Guy often calls her, meets a friendly woman in the scary basement of the Bramford, once they get the approval, where they both go for their laundry, they talk about their neighbors, Minnie and Roman Castevet, and the charm the girl has from them…a short time after this, the girl is found dead on the sidewalk, in what is declared a suicide.

 

Roman and Minnie Castevet visit the young family and they become very friendly, though with hindsight, we get to see that they had been actually interested in promoting their villainous goals, dedicated to their belief in Satan, willing to do anything to get him to rule on earth, payback for the ‘abuse’ they suffered from those who fear god, using black magic, special potions, cheating, pretending to be kind, disinterred, loving old people and lying about their identity…Roman is in fact the son of a famous, or infamous, personage, involved in the same nefarious activities which will bring his son to every small town of the world…

‘Pleased to meet you, Hope you guess my name But what's puzzling you Is the nature of my game…’ the lyrics of Sympathy for the Devil come to mind, albeit we can also read this remarkable book in a different manner, considering – at least for some time – that maybe Rosemary does have delusions and as the famous doctor says, she has some issues connected with her pregnancy, every such period is different and she imagines much of what is going on…she has dreams after all that include the late president and Jackie Kennedy, who is nice to her, many men and women naked and sexual encounters…

 

On the other hand, when she wakes up after too much drinking – and she does have to suffer the effects of the noxious charm that hangs over her head now that Terry had died, and the herbs and potions that Minnie makes her use to presumably feel better, due to natural combinations, that are surely in fact poisonous and destined to bring about the birth of ‘Adrian Son of Satan’- she finds she has scratches and then her ‘beloved’ husband admits to having forced himself on her, because ‘he had not wanted to miss the optimal period’…in fact, he is so much into conceiving and having a baby only now, that he has been into a some sort of connection with the Castevetes and has admitted to the pact, to give the baby to the Devil, so that he can get roles and become an established celebrity, with all the earthly prizes.

When Hutch sees that Rosemary is losing weight, instead of gaining it, which is normal for a pregnant woman, and furthermore, she looks terrible and feels excruciating  pains – associated with the feeding of the son of Satan within her womb…incidentally, she eats raw meat now and one day, she finds she is heating the raw heart of a chicken – he tries to warn her, then he studies more about the plants she is given, the potions and the very peculiar and offending, malodorous charm she has around the neck, smelling of some foul substance, looking like a mold.

 

The Satanic coven decides to eliminate Hutch, the obstacle in the path of the Son of Satan, the arrival of the ‘year one’, and Guy Wodehouse is the accomplice, taking a glove from the man, used in their ritual, and just like in the case of the rival that woke up one morning to find that he is blind, Hutch is plunged into a comma and eventually dies, but leaving a book that explains what is happening and Rosemary has a chance to look into it…the under signed had been elated to read the Magnum opus A Kiss Before Dying http://realini.blogspot.com/2014/07/a-kiss-before-dying-by-ira-levin.html one of the best masterpieces ever, written by the same glorious Ira Levin