Rosemary's Baby (1968)

“We're your friends, Rosemary. There's nothing to be scared about.” — Mrs. Gilmore

Director Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby was at the epicentre of cultural upheaval when it premiered in June 1968. Based on Ira Levin’s novel of the same name, which was a smash hit in the literary world, Rosemary’s Baby captured the zeitgeist of the youth movement and the internalized fears of a new generation disenfranchised by the death of the American Dream. The film industry in the 1960s was waning. Once guaranteed successes were succeeding with audiences less and less. The youth, who were rejecting mainstream culture, wouldn’t pay to see films that reaffirmed the cultural norms they were rebelling against. Hollywood had to learn to play ball with this social change lest it be left in the cultural dust.



The mid-1960s to early 1980s in America saw the advent of the New Hollywood film movement, or American New Wave as it is also known. The studio ethos of tightly controlling every production was gradually replaced in favour of handing over control to the director, mirroring French and Italian New Wave cinema. By giving directors authorial control, Hollywood films steadily shifted away from the carefully crafted, didactically happy American fetishism which had preceded this era and moved towards themes of concern,…

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