Rosemary's Baby
This week's chicest house of the week is Apt 7A at the fictitious Bramford residence
Fall is finally upon us. I am so grateful for the wind, significant drop in temperature and a season of fashion I can’t wait to wear. Los Angeles is one of those places where fall forces us all to be more formal and I love that for my city.
The other best part of fall is Halloween. Spooky season, my favorite season, is upon us. As I was thinking of topics for today’s newsletter, I got inspired by my favorite iconic horror movies.
For this week’s house of the week, I’m going to highlight the Manhattan apartment from the 1968 classic film, Rosemary’s Baby. I first saw this movie 19 years ago in my film class at USC and it immediately became one of my top 10 favorite films of all time. Rosemary’s Baby was written and directed by Roman Polanski. It was his first ever film, which led to an iconic career in the genres of thrillers, literary adaptations and period dramas.
It’s a historically significant film for several reasons, including the social ramifications and unfair conformation forced on women, women’s liberation in the 1960s, the unexpected problem many women face of loss of identity after marriage, psychological tension, paranoia, Catholicism and the occult. These are all real life issues, oppressions and fears that the movie weaves into the storyline, which made it revolutionary for its time.
The Dakota is the historic setting for the film, renamed in the movie as the “Bramford”. It’s a famous Renaissance Revival building in Manhattan built in 1884. Rosemary Woodhouse (played by Mia Farrow) and her husband Guy (John Cassavetes) are newlyweds who move into the sinister building to unit 7A, a musty Gothic apartment filled with aged heavy drapery, paneling, dark wood and a general dark and dismal sentiment. Rosemary has a creepy sense about the building from the beginning (a woman’s intuition) based on the erratic and odd behaviour of the previous tenant, as well as a suicide that occurs next door shortly after they move in. Her neighbors, Minnie and Roman Castevet, are a little too friendly and get close to Guy, who starts to spend a lot of his time with Roman. I won’t spoil the intricate details incase you haven’t seen the film, but Rosemary has to navigate living next to occult devil worshipping neighbors who have brainwashed here husband, all while she is carrying satan’s child. This is the main plot we all know.
However, there is a subplot of the film that I only recently realized. It’s the parallel story of Rosemary redecorating the apartment and bringing in a sense of newness and freshness, while unknowingly being controlled by dark and evil.
When she moved into The Bramford and saw how dark and bleak it was, Rosemary immediately sets out to redecorate, bringing light into the dark apartment. She white washes the walls, replaces the old outdated furniture with midcentury and Danish modern pieces, including a beautiful oval table and dining chairs, a new yellow armchair, green sofa and incorporating shades of yellow and cricket green decor. Light shines through as she replaces the heavy drapes with curtain sheers. Most everything is interestingly enough the color of happiness….yellow. She updates the moldings and panelings and gives the entire place a timeless, light and airy makeover. She also moves the new oval dining table to the window so that guests can enjoy the beautiful city view. She truly does all she can to make that house a home. However, while Rosemary is brightening up the unit and bringing more sunshine in to suit her needs, the neighbors and the building itself are modifying her to suit their needs as they turn her into the carrier of satan’s child. All the yellow decor and sunny changes slowly turn creepy and spine-chilling to the audience as Rosemary faces a depressing isolation, trapped in her home all the time, with no friends and no one to talk to about the trouble brewing upon her. As the pregnancy progresses, she looks more and more sickly. The building is a villain in itself that stomps on her bright youthful light and decor.
All that being said, Rosemary did an outstanding job with her timeless remodel that would even work in 2024.