Word: hitchcock
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Every time Roman Polanski puts his name on a film, six dozen critics say he's out-Hitchcocked Hitchcock. Rosemary's Baby, a pointless and supremely mediocre melodrama, provoked the same now-customary response: one New York paper assumed confidently that Hitchcock would have been proud to have made it and, on nearer horizons, Boston After Dark's very own Deac Rossell (a nice tall boy who smiles a lot) decided to write a paramount press release calling Rosemary's Baby "worthy of the dean of film thrillers, Hitchcock." I get mad when I read this kind of nonsense...
...count me out. Hitchcock wouldn't put his name anywhere near junk like Rosemary's Baby. Generalizing shamelessly, Hitchcock films make important, often positive, statements about a wide range of human problems. Polanski's films exist at best in tortured ambiguity and increasingly are sloppy stylistic exercises in low-level suspense mechanics...
...shown on TV sets, dropped on tables, and exhibited shamelessly throughout. The exteriors are bleached-out process shots taken on different days with no attempt made to reconcile light changes. When a little action is necessary, Polanski drags out the hand-held camera for some shaky realism (catch Hitchcock filming violence with a hand-held camera!); and repeatedly, Polanski substitutes tight close-ups for style. If nothing else, Rosemary's Baby is ugly--aesthetically derelict, the groping of a bombed-out mind...
...might have been scripted by Alfred Hitchcock, but the absence of cameras and crew made the scene one of the scariest ever played by Actress Maureen O'Sullivan, 57. Alone in her bungalow in Weybridge, Surrey, after Daughter Mia Farrow, 23, had breezed off to London for the week, Maureen was asleep when two bandits burst into her bedroom, gagged and trussed her with nylon stockings, methodically ransacked the place, and escaped into the night with $13,200 worth of brooches, rings and necklaces. It took her half an hour to free herself and phone the police. Luckily...
...Alfred Hitchcock, D.F.A., director...