by FilmInk staff
SHOOT THE DEVIL (pages 27-33)
Shooting for Rosemary’s Baby began in New York on 21 August 1967. They followed a 56 day schedule, with the interiors to be done in Los Angeles and the exteriors in Manhattan. Farrow was absolutely dedicated to the part. As the script demanded, she ate raw liver, even though she was then a committed vegetarian.
In New York, to expose Rosemary’s distraction, very early on in the shooting Polanski had Farrow step out for real with him into the path of the oncoming traffic on Park Avenue: ‘“Nobody will hit a pregnant woman,” he laughed, referring to my padded stomach. He had to operate the hand-held camera himself, since nobody else would.’ They did the shot three times. ‘There are 127 varieties of nuts,’ he told a journalist, ‘Mia’s 116 of them.’
In the rape scene, Cassavetes was naked, but among the coven Mia Farrow, Patsy Kelly and Ruth Gordon were not nude, the latter two being clad in body-suits. For the majority of this scene, a standin, Linda Brewerton, was used to substitute for Farrow. Polanski said soon afterwards, about the scene where she is tied down: ‘I can’t even remember if the legs are Mia Farrow’s or those of the standin we used at times to give the star a rest.’
When the scene was finished, Clay Tanner, the actor playing the Devil, climbed off Farrow and courteously remarked, ‘“Miss Farrow, I just want to say, it’s a real pleasure to have worked with you”.’
Footage and photographs of the shooting show how well Farrow and Polanski got on, playing ping-pong on set, making up ‘Mia’s Chart’, a jokey way of monitoring the actor’s technical accomplishment with grades. Farrow was winsomely (or irritatingly) childlike, dancing, painting, playing. Documentary footage also reveals how concentratedly attentive the director was to the process of filming. Yet for three reasons the shoot was not altogether a smooth one.
Afterwards, Polanski welcomed Castle’s lack of interference, something he put down to the older man not being a frustrated film-maker. In fact, the producer had been hot for Polanski to be fired from the film. The youthful director was all too meticulous. There were reputedly fifty-two takes of the laundry-room scene; for Polanski to do forty takes of a scene became usual. Polanski was filming in long, complicated shots, in which everything had to come together perfectly.
After one week’s shooting, they were one week behind schedule; bad weather slowed the shoot in New York down too. The schedule stretched to fourteen weeks; they spent two weeks in New York. Watching him that first night, Kazan had thought him slow. Polanski was a perfectionist, and Castle and Bluhdorn were growing desperate. To Bluhdorn’s indignant scorn, Polanski rejected a red cab sent to drive Rosemary to Hutch’s funeral, and held up filming while someone fetched a proper New York yellow cab; authenticity in the film’s details was vital.
Evans resolved the dispute with Castle and the executives by pointing out the quality of the material that Polanski was filming. Yet for a while, as would often happen with Polanski, it was touch and go if he’d finish the film at all. They went over their $2.3 million budget; but then again the film would eventually make a little under $34 million.
Polanski remembers meeting Otto Preminger on the set; Preminger reassured him that no-one was ever fired for going over-budget. In the end, of course, the movie itself, and its enormous profits, vindicated Polanski. Moreover, the movie threw Sinatra and Farrow’s marriage into crisis.
Sinatra resented Farrow’s stardom, and wanted her to finish it on time and join him, as a dutiful wife should, on the set of The Detective at Fox studios in mid-October. Instead the shooting dragged and Sinatra grew increasingly frustrated. In the end, Farrow had to finish by 14 November, with her shooting on The Detective set to begin three days later. Sinatra threatened to pull Farrow out of Polanski’s movie, and thereby effectively shut it down. Farrow was left with a stark choice: if she didn’t leave Rosemary’s Baby, her marriage was over; if she did leave, her career was over. Sinatra’s lawyer, Mickey Rudin, came to the Paramount set to deliver the divorce papers. Afterwards Mia retreated to her mobile dressing room, sobbing her heart out. As Evans tells it, he persuaded Farrow to stay with the movie by suggesting an Oscar was on the cards.
While reacting to the stress of these events, Farrow did the movie’s final scene where she confronts the hostile, elderly witches and sees her own terrible child, the anguish on camera a reflection of her genuine distress. Farrow commented later, ‘I applied myself to the remainder of the movie with a fervor usually reserved for prayer.’
The third problem was Cassavetes. During the rehearsals, the actor had been friendly enough, but he became increasingly difficult as filming began. Polanski began to question the actor’s ability to go beyond himself and play another person. Cassavetes objected to the scene where Guy and Rosemary made love, ‘protesting that he wasn’t “in the skin flick business.” Mia was equally reluctant to do this scene, but for a different and more understandable reason: she felt apprehensive about Sinatra’s reactions.’
During filming, the many takes undoubtedly frustrated Cassavetes, who disliked repetition, and felt that the actors were losing the freshness and the space to play out the emotion. Each day, the actor came to work with fresh ideas about his role; each day, Polanski dismissed them. Perhaps Cassavetes bore a grudge about Polanski’s power and celebrity, and disliked the way in which his own role in the film faded as it went on. The anger racked up. The two men argued about the movie and they argued about love. As he would often do, Cassavetes was likely using contention and strife to deepen his performance. Moreover, in a film about manipulation and suppression, Cassavetes was rather aptly voicing a protest about being directed at all.
Fraker reports that: One day we were working and all of a sudden we heard this screaming and hollering, and John came out from behind the set and started walking away to the stage door. He was screaming, ‘There are no stars in this goddamn picture. You’re the star.’ And Roman stuck his head out from behind the set and said, ‘You better believe it!’
Eventually, Cassavetes lost his grip completely, and there was screaming, fury, and the two men fought it out, until cast and crew separated them.
Afterwards Cassavetes would prove intriguingly equivocal about the movie and Polanski. He could at times suggest that the film was not art, merely a ‘dictated design’, but, despite their conflict on set, he consistently praised Polanski and even declared that he would like to work with him again.
On the other hand, Polanski became increasingly dismissive of Cassavetes; soon after the film was finished, he remarked in an interview that Cassavetes ‘was not a filmmaker – he’s made some films’; worse, he was a twisted, overwrought actor (tres tordu), but that he’d been punished or purged (châtié) by the editing.
In December 1967, the cast and crew returned to New York to film the Christmas scene out on Fifth Avenue. It was 6 December, and it was the last scene they shot.
BFI Film Classics has a new look and a number of new additions, such as Rosemary’s Baby. Head over the website to find them all.
