The Movie Forums Top 100 of All-Time Refresh: Countdown

I'm kind of hesitant to check out Salo as it looks like it will be a hard watch. Is it worth it?

Eternal Sunshine is definitely one of my favourite films. Innovative, surprising, moving, memorable, heartbreaking, heartwarming.


I think it just missed out on my list. Very surprised to see it ranked this low. 25 films is not enough dammit!


We should each submit our top 100 and have an epic countdown of the Top 500 Films! It would only be a few more lines on the Excel spreadsheet; easy right?

Tomorrow's Hint:

Wrinkly, but strangely cute.

Rosemary’s Baby

(1968)

Roman Polanski conceives a masterpiece for the mainstream and the avant-garde sensibilities in this tour-de-force of horror-cinema.

Coming from a background of the experimental and the avant-garde in his native Europe; Roman Polanski entered Hollywood with a unique spin and style to Classical Hollywood narrative—and Rosemary’s Baby captures this blend superbly.

What makes Rosemary’s Baby unique as a horror film is the “horror” itself is done so indiscreetly that—should one miss the “horror’s” cues—you’d think you were watching a well-crafted melodrama with an ending that comes completely out of left-field. In other words, to have true enjoyment of a cinema like this, it requires the viewer to be an “active” participant in its undertaking—not “passive” one. One must think and think, and put the cues and the pieces of this visual puzzle together all along the way. And, when this puzzle has been assembled appropriately by the films end; it’s not so much “horror” we feel by that point—that perhaps was felt as you put the pieces together—but instead we feel a strange sense of intellectual beauty and accomplishment. That of a well-crafted work by a master of his own craft.

Truth be told, I can’t say I felt much fear or terror in my experience of watching Rosemary’s Baby. Such fear and terror was perhaps felt in another Polanski work, Repulsion. In either case, these films are not so much about the narratives they tell or the genres they adhere to—well, at least, not in themselves—but how they tell their narratives and the experiences they bring to the table.

In regards to breaking Classical Hollywood conventions and the ushering in of the “experiences” of more European sensibilities. One need to look no further than one of the most noticeable sequences in the film—a purely “avant-garde” surrealist- “dream” segment in which Rosemary is inseminated by Satan. (Rule of thumb here, good surrealism will always confuse you on initial glace—but good surrealism “reveals” itself in reflection, in memory, of putting it all together.) So what did this particular sequence mean in the film?

We start off in which Rosemary is drugged and then placed on her bed, she “dreams” that she is on her bed—but her bed is now floating on the ocean shore. From there this bed becomes a yacht on the docks, and she and others—both familiar and unfamiliar to us—are on the boat. (We then cut to outside her dream, someone is cutting off her clothes) —her nakedness transfers to her dream. We now see her being lifted up toward the paintings on the ceilings of the Sistine Chapel. Then she is back on the yacht, she is away from the docks now and the Sistine Chapel walls, and there’s terrible storm, she’s asked by the sailor to “go down below” —and now she’s in Hell. The rest of this sequence is very self-explanatory as she’s seeded by the beast.

So let’s look instead at what this sequence meant, with the oceans and the yacht and the Sistine Chapel.

The oceans represent her “drugged” state of mind that of what one might feel when they are drunk—but the yacht and the Sistine Chapel sequences are in tandem. Earlier on in the film there are two brief moments in which Rosemary’s faith in Catholicism is questioned, one in another minor “dream” sequence about the insensitivities of her nuns and yet another over a small conversation with Roman, Minnie, and Guy over dinner. This “small conversation,” (if paid attention to), is a “questioning” of her belief in God. The yacht is a representation of her life and of her faith in God—and exile from which. Why do I say this? After we move away from the famous paintings of the Sistine Chapel, (her faith in God), we find ourselves on this same yacht again—only in troubled seas to which the sailor in the dream commands her to “go down below” and from then on she’s in Hell—both metaphorically in the dream and literally in reality. She will birth the Antichrist and the witches needed someone who wasn’t a believer to be his mother.

Another European sensibility is how Rosemary’s Baby unravels its horrors and tells its narrative. Most of the chills and horrors themselves are done completely off-screen and any real association to them are done in aftermath. Unless paid close attention to detail, these can be large—and rather problematic—gaps to our understanding. For a person not actively “watching and listening” to the cues the film is providing, the film may seem to “skip” from one random event to the next—but these events are far, far from random. In fact, the film is rather deliberate in the ways it wants you to figure it out.

I’m hesitant to give such examples in this matter because truly the enjoyment of the film itself is paying close attention to these cues the film provides, which become pieces of a cinematic-puzzle, and the act of putting all these cues/pieces together to “form” an image of what the film was. Or rather, what it was alluding to.

Again I say, Rosemary’s Baby—like many “arthouse” films of its kin—demand a more “active” audience. If you go in to these films to be “swept away” or to leave your mind at the ticket booth—you will end up being rather disappointed, and perhaps frustrated and confused. These films are made to demand a deeper and keener awareness—again too I say, not a “passive” audience. Viewer beware.

Re the 2010s, I suspect I am virtually alone in that the most recent movie on my list came out in 2001,

Tomorrow's Hint:

Wrinkly, but strangely cute.

My first thought to that clue was the Shar-Pei:

Tomorrow's Hint:

Wrinkly, but strangely cute.

Sorry to break it to you but you're the only person who voted for it.

Robin Hardy is an amazing director/writer... I love his films.. The Wicker Man, The Wicker Tree and Forbidden Sun.

Thats why I like movies like Midsommar and Hereditary directed by Ari Aster...

It is true that a film can be pretentious. The issue is that this word is rarely ever used correctly. It's usually used to dismiss any weird/unconventional film simply for being weird.

Pretentious = I don't understand it and don't really want to.

From the movie's point of view...
Pretentious = Don't want you to understand it, but it'll get you on the internet talking about it.