Sightlines · how to watch
How to watch Rosemary's Baby
1968 · Roman Polanski · Rosemary's Baby on Sightlines
4 things to watch and listen for on a first viewing, without spoilers, and 4 more once you have seen it. Each names something you can see or hear, the pattern it belongs to, and what noticing it gives you. How these keys work.
On a first viewing
Notice Rosemary pushed to the edge of the frame. (camera)
Fraker uses wide lenses that bend the sides of rooms without looking showy, and shoots her through doorways and across thresholds. She rarely gets to fill the space she is standing in.
Payoff: The camera treats her the way her neighbors treat her, as something to be observed and managed. In the reading: dicisign. The reading calls this a dicisign: you feel the camera watching a woman who is herself watching, and keeping its distance from her.
Look at how brightly the apartment is lit. (light)
There is no Gothic shadow anywhere in the building. Fraker lights the Bramford in soft available light, so the sinister scenes look like dinner parties. The uncanny arrives in daylight and stays there.
Payoff: Nothing in the image certifies what you suspect. Plain daylight will neither confirm nor deny, and that is where the dread sits.
Watch who is standing while Rosemary is sitting. (staging)
Polanski blocks Minnie and Roman so they lean over her at the table. Dr. Saperstein takes the commanding chair. Even Guy tends to crowd whatever space she is in.
Payoff: Height and position make the argument. Every room is arranged so that somebody else holds authority over her body.
Listen to the lullaby Farrow hums over the opening. (sound)
Komeda wrote a wordless lullaby and Farrow sings it over the aerial shots of the city. It is major key and tender and it refuses to resolve. Elsewhere the film leans on silence and street noise.
Payoff: The film's own voice is a mother's song that will not settle. Comfort and threat share the same melody.
The 4 rewatch keys open on this page when you choose "Seen it?".
Carry this in: Watch the doorways and who stands over Rosemary. Notice how rarely she gets the room.