Film

Michael Bay is planning a remake. But even a director as sensitive to the vagaries of human behavior as Bay can’t possibly know how perfect our moment is for an update. Set the movie in strollercentric Park Slope, where mommies rule. Cast Michelle Williams—she’s cute in a pixie cut. Surround her with a coven of hoodie-clad, Richard Dawkins–toting “atheists,” obsessed with their organic foods and exclusive doctors. Of course these people know what’s best for Satan’s spawn. (Michael, call me; we’ll talk points.)

Roman Polanski’s creepy original is mostly set in the troubled year of 1966. Delicate Rosemary Woodhouse (Farrow) is due in June. (Put that date together in your head.) Famously, Time asked “Is God dead?” in April. We could use more novelists like Rosemary’s Ira Levin, who saw Revelations in the chatty Manhattan apartment life of his day, or robot wives in fictional towns like Stepford. Levin was perfect for horror, a writer who started with the real world first. Polanski himself adapted the book for the screen; Robert Evans, his producer, suggested flower child Mia Farrow over Polanski’s first choice, Tuesday Weld.

Seen today, Rosemary’s Baby still shocks with its intimate rendering of a woman innocently bringing on the apocalypse. (It’s only Farrow’s occasional stiffness that plays against the concept’s perfection.) Intriguingly, Rosemary’s Baby is a horror film with very little horror in it, only Polanski’s creeping camera, crouching just outside of smoky rooms where diabolical plans are forged.

Is it a cursed movie? Composer Krzysztof Komeda would soon die in a skiing accident; Polanski’s life was upended by the unthinkable just weeks before he was to become a father. And, of course, it was filmed at the Dakota. But only the superstitious would agree. Rosemary’s Baby is the path to Polanski’s Chinatown and what should have been a long and productive Hollywood career.