Monday, October 20, 2014

You're Never Safe, Rosemary

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It amazes me that I can still sit down and watch fifteen minutes of Rosemary's Baby, a movie I've seen more times than any other, a movie I could very nearly recite backwards and forwards, and still find something that I'd never noticed before. This time, it was...
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... this shot here. Rosemary has just "lost" her baby only to hear a baby's cries coming through the wall. She turns off the air conditioner to hear better, but Mrs. Gilmore (Hope Summers) comes into the roomjust then and tells her people "are actually dying from the heat" and goes to turn the A/C unit back on. Rosemary thinks she's being sly...
... hiding her pills in the bed-frame...
... but that second shot, man! That second shot just never lets her go. Mrs. Gilmore might seem to be looking out the window, but she's still looking right at Rosemary - Rosemary is never safe. It might turn out in the end that Rosemary's trick works; she piles up the pills and sneaks next door. But Polanski's camera, it always knows. It never lets her go.

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