Rosemary's Baby (1968)

and the Woman Nobody Believed

A horror film about a woman drugged, violated and told for months that she was imagining things, by her husband and her doctors. What it teaches about the drink that tasted wrong, the excuse of being "a little bit loaded," pain dismissed, the threat of being called mad, and a woman who was right about everything.

Rosemary’s Baby (1968). Written and directed by Roman Polanski, from Ira Levin’s 1967 novel. Mia Farrow as Rosemary Woodhouse, John Cassavetes as Guy Woodhouse, and Ruth Gordon as Minnie Castevet, with Sidney Blackmer as Roman Castevet and Ralph Bellamy as Dr. Sapirstein.

“Pain like this is a warning something’s wrong.”

Rosemary Woodhouse.

A note before you read. This page discusses a horror film in which a woman is drugged and raped while unconscious, her husband takes part, and her fears about her own body and pregnancy are dismissed by the people around her. Nothing is described in detail. If something like this happened to you, whatever you called it at the time, RAINN is there any hour at 1-800-656-4673. Every current number is on the Resources page.

This page belongs to Plot Twist. It is one of the older films in the series, from 1968, and it is here because no other film shows so clearly a pattern many women know from ordinary life: being told, again and again, by the people closest to you, that what you feel isn’t real. In this film, she was right about everything.

Like every entry on the Plot Twist page, it reads a story for the pattern it teaches, and makes no claim about anyone’s diagnosis. The witches are the film’s horror, and this page leaves them there. What it reads is the husband, the doctor, and the long, patient work of convincing a woman she’s imagining things.

The Story

Guy and Rosemary Woodhouse, newlyweds, rent an apartment in the Bramford, a grand old New York building with a dark history. Their elderly neighbors, Minnie and Roman Castevet, befriend them. Guy, a struggling actor, grows fond of them; Rosemary finds them meddlesome.

Guy lands an important role after the actor who had it inexplicably goes blind. Now he wants a baby. On the night they plan to conceive, Minnie brings them chocolate mousse. Rosemary says hers has a chalky “under-taste,” and Guy scolds her for complaining. She eats a little, secretly throws the rest away, and passes out. She has a nightmarish vision of being raped by something inhuman while Guy and the neighbors watch. In the morning she is covered in scratches. Guy tells her he had sex with her while she was unconscious, because he didn’t want to miss the night.

Rosemary gets pregnant. The Castevets insist she see their friend Dr. Sapirstein instead of her own doctor. She is in severe pain for months and grows gaunt; Sapirstein says it will pass. Her old friend Hutch is alarmed by how she looks, researches the building, and falls into a mysterious coma before he can tell her what he found. At a party, her women friends see her pain and tell her to get a second opinion. She stops drinking Minnie’s daily “health drink.” When she tells Guy she wants to see her own doctor, he gets angry.

Hutch dies, but leaves her a book on witchcraft and a clue. Rosemary works out that Roman is the son of a notorious Satanist, and that the Castevets want her baby. Guy throws the book away. She finally goes to her own doctor, Dr. Hill, and tells him everything. He decides she’s delusional and calls Sapirstein, who comes with Guy to take her home. The coven sedates her, and she gives birth. They tell her the baby died.

It didn’t. Through a hidden door, she finds them all gathered around a cradle. Roman tells her the child’s father is Satan. Guy tells her they’re getting so much in return. She spits in his face. Then the baby cries, and she goes to rock him.

The Story Before the Story

The film was Polanski’s first American film, made for Paramount, and it closely follows Ira Levin’s novel. It is widely admired, and Mia Farrow’s performance was acclaimed.

It is also impossible to read this film honestly without one fact about the man who made it. In 1977, Roman Polanski was arrested in Los Angeles on charges involving a 13-year-old girl, including rape by use of drugs. He pleaded guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor, and in 1978, before sentencing, he fled the United States. This page makes no other claim about him. It notes that a film about a woman drugged and violated, and disbelieved, was made by a man who pleaded guilty to a crime against a drugged child, and it leaves that with you.

What It Gets Right

A great deal, as a picture of disbelief. It takes a woman’s fear seriously from the inside. It shows how slowly, and how politely, she is surrounded. It lets her women friends be the ones who see her pain and tell her to trust it. And it proves her right.

What It Teaches

1. The chalky under-taste

The first warning is small. Rosemary tastes something wrong in the dessert Minnie brought, and says so. Guy scolds her for complaining. She eats a little to be polite, and throws the rest away in secret.

The Decoder’s Card S-2, Lowering Your Defenses, is “Using your intoxication to extract compliance.” Minnie says it outright, later, to the others: “As long as she ate the mousse, she can’t see nor hear.” Many women have had a drink that tasted wrong, or was stronger than it should have been, and been told they were being difficult for noticing. Noticing was right.

2. “I was a little bit loaded myself”

The next morning, Rosemary tells Guy she dreamed someone was raping her. He tells her he had sex with her while she was passed out, because he “didn’t want to miss the night.” And then the excuse: “I was a little bit loaded myself, you know.”

The Decoder’s Card S-1, The Substance Shield, is “Intoxication as a get-out-of-jail-free card.” Sex with someone who is unconscious is not sex. It’s rape, whatever the relationship, and being “a little bit loaded” doesn’t change that. The film knows it. Guy is lying, and far worse is true. But the everyday version of this conversation, the one where a partner explains away the night with a drink, is one many women have had, and been expected to accept.

3. “Pain like this is a warning”

For months, Rosemary is in terrible pain. Her doctor says it will pass. Her husband says the doctor is the best. When she wants a second opinion, Guy says he “won’t let” her, because “it wouldn’t be fair to Sapirstein.”

“Not fair to Sapir - what about what’s fair to me?”

The Decoder’s Card 26, Energy Invalidation, is “Dismissing your intuition”: “You’re imagining things.” “You’re being paranoid.” Guy’s later explanation is the whole card in one phrase: she had “the pre-partum crazies.” Many women have had their pain, their pregnancies and their instincts about their own bodies dismissed by the people who were supposed to take them most seriously. Rosemary’s friends at the party knew better, in one evening: “Pain like that is a warning that something isn’t right.”

4. “You don’t want that, do you?”

When Rosemary finally tells her own doctor everything, he calls the man she’s fleeing, and Sapirstein arrives with Guy to take her home. At one point Sapirstein tells her: “Come with us quietly, Rosemary. Don’t argue or make a scene. Because if you say anything more about witches or witchcraft, we’re gonna be forced to take you to a mental hospital.”

That’s Card 16, The Gaslight Loop, with a threat attached: if you keep saying what you know, we’ll prove you’re mad. The horror in this film isn’t only the coven. It’s that every institution she turns to, a husband, a doctor, a second doctor, sides with the calm men against the frightened woman.

5. What he traded

At the end, Guy tries to comfort her: “They promised me you wouldn’t be hurt and you haven’t been...really... And we’re getting so much in return, Ro.”

He traded her body for his career, and he wants her to see it as a good deal. She spits in his face. It’s the only answer the film gives her, and it’s the right one.

6. She was right

Everything Rosemary suspected was true. The drink, the doctor, the neighbors, her husband. The people who called her paranoid were the ones doing it.

The film ends in horror, with her rocking the cradle. But for the women watching, its lesson was never the devil. It was this: when something feels wrong in your body, in your home, in the drink you’ve been handed, and everyone around you says you’re imagining it, you are allowed to keep believing yourself.

Believe Him, or Believe Her, Side by Side

	Fatal Attraction (1987)	Rosemary’s Baby (1968)
Whose fear the film asks you to share	The man’s	The woman’s
Who is called unstable	The other woman	The wife
What the ending proves	Reshot so the wife kills the other woman	Everything she suspected was true

Two films about fear inside a marriage, nineteen years apart. The later one asked its audience to believe the man. The earlier one asked them to believe the woman, and proved she was right.

If You Grew Up on This

Many of us saw this late at night, too young, and remembered the fear for years. Nothing on this page asks you to stop finding it frightening. The useful thing is to look at it clearly from where you stand now.

Some questions to sit with:

Has something tasted, felt or seemed wrong, and you were told you were being difficult for saying so?
Has anyone explained away something they did with “I’d had a few”?
Has your pain, or your sense of your own body, been dismissed by someone who should have listened?
Who were the friends who said, “That’s not right, go get a second opinion”?
What do you know right now, that you’ve been talked out of?

Rosemary was right about the drink, the doctor, the neighbors and her husband. The people who called her paranoid were the ones doing it.

You’re the audience now. You’re allowed to believe yourself.