#10: Rosemary’s Baby (1968)

To 1966! The year one!

No special effects, no sensational scares, no tricks of any kind. Using little more than a perfectly calibrated tone, director Roman Polanski (who brilliantly adapted the script from Ira Levin’s novel) blends the psychological with the supernatural into a slow cooker of paranoia and ultimately stark terror, using only the recognizable elements of our everyday: Our loved ones, the eccentric and meddlesome neighbors next door, and that strange demonic chanting heard through the bedroom wall in the middle of the night.

Mia Farrow is Rosemary Woodhouse, a young, delicately beautiful everywoman very much in love with a husband she wants to please and the idea of eventually becoming a mother. The husband is Guy (a never better John Cassavetes), a struggling New York actor whose personal insecurities are only overshadowed by his ego and selfishness. The young, chic, upwardly mobile couple have just opened a fresh chapter of their life with a move into a Gothic-style apartment building (the Bramford) right in the heart of the city. Their elderly neighbors, especially the oddball and sickly sweet Minnie and Roman Castevet (Ruth Gordon and Sidney Blackmer), have welcomed them with open arms and Rosemary has lost herself in the joys of remodeling.

During a small, personal dinner party, Rosemary’s old family friend Hutch (Maurice Evans), tells the couple about the history of their new home (the real-life Dakota just off Central Park). Witches, covens, cannibalism; what seems like nothing more than the stuff of fascinating gossip among close friends over good food and drink — at least until the next dinner party. Rosemary and Guy reluctantly accept an invitation from the Castevets after a gruesome introduction over the dead body of their ward, a young, troubled woman the kindly old couple took off the streets who jumped several stories to her death. (more…)

What is the difference between art and entertainment?

There is, obviously, some overlap: Not all art entertains (though some does); not all entertainment is art (though some is).  At bottom, it seems, the difference is one of intent – the artist seeks to connect us with larger meanings, larger truths about the world, about ourselves.  The primary focus of art is therefore to illuminate, with any entertainment had in the process merely a bonus.

The goal of the entertainer, on the other hand, is perhaps less sublime, though no less worthy – to distract, to tickle, to stimulate the fancy.  Entertainment is at bottom diversion, and I say this without a trace of disdain – often it is the quality and quantity of our diversions which makes the difference between a joyful life and a merely bearable one.

One year ago this weekend, a beating black heart pulsed in summer’s midst: The Dark Knight.  It was big-budget, comic book based franchise movie, made for popcorn eaters seeking suitable summer diversion.  And It delivered beyond the filmmakers wildest expectations – the masses were so entertained that they lifted it up into the box office stratosphere in grateful recompense. (more…)