Birthday of Rosemary's Baby
June 12, 1968 in New York (USA) the premiere of the film "Rosemary's Baby". Director Roman Polanski.
The film "Rosemary's Baby" was the first film in the work of Roman Polanski, shot in Hollywood. His previous films were shot in Europe. Moreover, both Alfred Hitchcock and William Castle, the venerable author of many low-budget thrillers and, moreover, the owner of the rights to the adaptation of the novel "Rosemary's Baby", claimed to stage this film. But the film company Paramount Pictures preferred both of them to a relatively young native of socialist Poland, Roman Polanski.
The film "Rosemary's Baby" was the first film adaptation in the work of Roman Polanski. The literary basis of the film was the eponymous bestselling novel by Ira Levin. This film is a fairly rare example of the fact that the author of the book was satisfied with the film adaptation. The producer of the picture, William Castle, explained this phenomenon by the fact that Polanski, for the first time performing an adaptation, sought to reproduce the novel on the screen as close to the original as possible, accurately reproducing all the small details of the text of the literary work.
This desire to get as close as possible to the text of the novel extremely irritated the performer of one of the main roles, John Cassavetes, who constantly strove to improvise. Because of this, later Polanski called Cassavetes "a real pain in the ass."
Producer William Castle was convinced that the film was damned. Soon after filming, he had an exacerbation of gallstone disease, an emergency operation was needed. As soon as Castle recovered, an accident happened with the film's composer Krzysztof Komeda, which turned into his death. Sharon Tate, Polanski's wife, was then brutally murdered by the Manson Family.
Due to the fact that filming lasted longer than planned in the family of Mia Farrow and her then husband Frank Sinatra, scandals began. Mia Farrow, in order to save the family, wanted to refuse to participate in the filming of the film. But Robert Evans, managing director of Paramount Pictures, convinced her that she was guaranteed an Oscar. And Mia continued to act in film. And Sinatra filed for divorce. And their marriage union broke up.
Robert Evans' promise did not come true: Mia Farrow was not even nominated for an Oscar. True, she was nominated for a Golden Globe, but this award was awarded to Joanna Woodward for her role in the film "Rachel, Rachel". However, Mia Farrow did not remain completely without an award: she was awarded the Italian David David Donatello Prize - along with Barbra Streisand for the film "Funny Girl".
The same award - David di Donatello - but in the nomination Best Foreign Director - became the only award for the director of the film - Roman Polanski.
If the festival success of the film "Rosemary's Baby" can be described as moderate, then the film critics highly appreciated the film critics. Suffice it to say that according to the Rotten Tomatoes website, 96% of the reviews of professional American film critics are positive. Roger Ebert rated the film with a maximum of 4 stars and included it on his list of Great Movies. In his review, he described the film as follows:
«Roman Polanski's "Rosemary's Baby" is a brooding, macabre film, filled with the sense of unthinkable danger. Strangely enough it also has an eerie sense of humor almost until the end. It is a creepy film and a crawly film, and a film filled with things that go bump in the night. It is very good.»
The film was equally highly praised by Russian film critics. So, for example, Evgeny Nefyodov stated:
“Rosemary's Baby” is one of the most accurate in authenticity, in recreating the atmosphere and displaying some essential features, in the depth of comprehension of the “captured time” of films of its era .... The picture is also unique for the reason which remains one of the few cinema horror stories ever made, almost without traditional frightening effects.
But even more significant was the financial success of the picture. Data on the budget of the film and its box office in different sources vary. The budget is estimated from 2.3 to 3.2 million dollars. Box office - from 31 to almost 34 million dollars in the United States alone. But even if we take the maximum budget estimate ($ 3.2 million) and the minimum collection estimate ($ 31 million), it turns out that the film brought its creators revenue almost 10 times greater than its production cost.
In the USSR, the film was not shown. At least before the start of perestroika.
The following number speaks about the success of the film “Rosemary's Baby” among modern viewers: 67% of IMDB and Kinopoisk users rated this film from 8 to 10.
Based on the success indicators listed above, the rating of the film according to the version of FilmGourmand was 8.513, which made it the 318th Rank in the Golden Thousand.
