Word: polanski
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...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...
...Polanski's overrated Knife in the Water was at least well-paced and slick, exuding an unpretentious formalism we happily like to associate with good committed art. Since then, the money increased, Hollywood beckoned, Polanski learned English, and his films have apparently fallen into every cinematic pitfall readily available. Repulsion revelled in cheap lens distortion and sound effects, and The Fearless Vampire Killers was lousy with back-drops painted in poorly processed Metrocolor...
...mogul's product: Yamaha cycles, Pall Mall cigarettes, and assorted brand names are 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...
...fortune to make the movie. It's a sure-fire success formula--not exactly a sublime collaboration of great artists, let alone unusually talented craftsmen. Rosemary's Baby, then, would be easy to dismiss as a slack and inadequate thriller were it not for everyone's desire to take Polanski seriously as an auteur...
Seen in relation to Polanski's previous work, Rosemary's Baby is distressing. Given that his films concern human isolation and the problems therein, Polanski stopped looking for solutions with Cul-de-sac which ends hopelessly with all relationships breaking down and everyone left in their own tortured hell. Not content to leave his films in limbo, Polanski seems to offer a solution to isolation by affirming the brotherhood of devil worship and the black forces, rather than warning us of their existence...