SUPER SCREAMS OF THE SIXTIES AND SEVENTIES: ROSEMARY’S BABY and THE EXORCIST **** (out of ****)
		THE EXORCIST (Director’s Cut) Starring Ellen Burstyn, Max von Sydow, Jason Miller, Lee J. Cobb,  Kitty Winn, Jack McGowern, and Linda Blair Directed by William Friedkin & written for the screen by William Peter Blatty, from his novel 1973 126 min R
ROSEMARY’S BABY Starring Mia Farrow, John Cassavettes, Ruth Gordon, Elisha Cook Jr., Charles Grodin, and Ralph Bellamy Directed & written for the screen by Roman Polanski, from the novel by Ira Levin 1968 136 min R
The last “golden age” of Hollywood is said to be the late 1960s and early 1970s, and the two big scares of the era were “Rosemary’s Baby” and “The Exorcist.”  The social issues of the time were stuff like changing gender roles and family duties.  This forced fright into the home, the domestic, the ordinary.  As a result, in movies like “Rosemary’s Baby” and “The Exorcist,” the commonplace is rendered unreasonably unnerving almost entirely by camera placement, long takes, and strange sounds coming through the walls.  Either there’s too much depth-of-focus, too much light, or the shadows are too big, and we’re always afraid something’s going to jump out.  Whether we’re watching demonic possessions, a witch’s Sabbath, a medical procedure, a couple at dinner, or a simple walk down the street, everything is observed with the same calm, sterile precision, with step-by-step honesty that is impossibly foreboding. The result is that everything we’ve been taught not to be afraid of—monsters under the bed, creepy strangers, sex, being alone in the dark—is made scary all over again.  And, of course, in both films we know what’s coming, and the movies know we know what’s coming.  Both films know this is a waiting game, putting off the appearance of the monster, tightening the screws, until we can’t stand it anymore. Pauline Kael quite accurately describes “Rosemary’s Baby” in this way:  “Pregnant women sometimes look at their men as if to say, ‘What did you do to me?’…[The movie] is probably more fun for women who are past their childbearing years.”  With the arrival of a child comes the knowledge that Rosemary will have to impart her values.  But she has lost the religiosity of her youth and this troubles her; do I still have any values?  Up until the final scene, we can never really tell if the neighbors are up to no good or if our pregnant heroine is going out of her mind, and even this last scene is too hallucinogenic to be considered decisive. “Rosemary’s Baby” follows a young couple (Mia Farrow and John Cassavettes), new to New York.  He’s a struggling actor and she’s stuck in the creaky old apartment all day, vaguely weirded out by the elderly neighbors who dress in candy colors and are freakishly pleasant.  The night she gets pregnant she has a strange dream of her husband bargaining with a strange cult, her womb in exchange for him getting a shot as an actor.  From there, everything the neighbors do takes on strange meaning for Rosemary, everything her husband says sounds like a lie, and nothing she learns about the old apartment building is good. The movie belongs to Farrow’s Rosemary, who is fragile in mind and body.  She is sometimes childlike in her dimness, yet in her situation we would probably not think of life in terms of a movie, but in terms of politeness and social boundaries.  We know what’s going to happen because this is a movie, but all Rosemary knows is to not be rude to strangers unless you’re really sure they’re trying to eat your baby.  “Rosemary’s Baby” becomes a sort of comedy of manners. In “The Exorcist” we again meet another actor, this time a single mother (Ellen Burstyn), not a father, and it is her perfectly innocent little daughter (Linda Blair) in a perfectly innocent DC suburb who comes under attack by a demon.  Bit by bit, her behavior changes, things around her move without being touched, she blurts out the strangest things, and then on the stairs…well, I’m not going to mention that. The biggest keep-you-up-at-night in “The Exorcist” is that she is besieged out of the blue.  Her mother behaves very reasonably; outside of the girl’s bedroom, “The Exorcist” is basically what you’d call realistic, even documentary-style.  She goes to doctor after doctor before turning to the Church, to whom she has never turned before. What presages the possession in “The Exorcist” if not a little girl trying to sublimate the angst she feels over the imminent divorce and breakdown of her family?  The cheerful chirping between mother and daughter in “The Exorcist” is a complex invented to handle their rising breakdown.  It is a phony act of faith, just as the actress mother in “The Exorcist” is putting on a false morality in the movie within a movie.  The B plot of “The Exorcist” follows a troubled young priest (Jason Miller) who feels he has a failed his ailing, widowed mother by turning down a worldly psychiatric practice in exchanged for the priesthood.  Again, a domestic failing takes supernatural dimensions.  Both the priest and the daughter find strength in the title character (a fantastic Max von Sydow), the most fatherly Father of a movie full of non-biological fathers (not a single male character in the film is acknowledged as having a child). What is left out of “The Exorcist” is just as interesting as what goes in.  Chief among them is how little we actually learn about aged von Sydow’s Father Merrin.  We start the movie with him on an archeological dig, in an almost wordless sequence, and although we believe he has some sort of previous connection with the demon, the connections are never clearly drawn.  The movie is better for it.  The movie’s sequels and prequels probably reveal and exploit all this, and most of it is probably unnecessary.  It’s also cool to see the conflicted hero of “The Seventh Seal” as a pillar of faith. Page two of "Rosemary's Baby/The Exorcist."                         Back to home.