Post by pacinoyes on Dec 28, 2018 14:51:08 GMT
I'd agree with those nominations but would nod Cassavetes in Support and it would win more from me - I think it's the best film of '68 (the best horror film ever too) but specifically I'd like to talk about that adapted screenplay which is wildly assessed incorrectly imo - for 50 years people get this wrong - and also to ask some questions if anybody read the book because my memory is a little fuzzy too.
The screenplay traces the arc exactly of the novel - which is a very celebrated novel but which I hated when I read it - and the reason is, that everything in the film deepens the novel - the acting, direction, setting, atmosphere, camera movement in some ways is the screenplay too. It's been forever since I read it but I don't think the Time magazine of "Is God Dead?" is in the book and just that little insertion recasts everything you are seeing and makes the film staggeringly current - this is my big thing that I often discuss, that American movies are hardly ever about the right now - they always prefer the safety of the past or the allure of the future - and if they are about now it's far more exciting it scores all kinds of narrative points that you can't get any other way.
The dialog is basically all from the book but Polanski frames the dialog in a entirely unique way - in the book what's shrieking or banal, is in the film, measured, precise, horrifying or comically-horrifying.......he also takes Rosemary who is a relatively stupid character from the book and adds multiple feminist layering to her (again, I don't think this is in the book, but the party Rosemary throws and her girlfriends, dismissed by Guy as "bitches" is a masterstroke - even if its in the book(?), the way it's staged/directed/evoked is genius level in what it reveals and connections made to women at the subservience to greedy, cowardly, manipulative men etc.
It's just a remarkable screenplay and shows how directing assists the screenplay sometimes - way too many people are like "oh he just shot the book" and that is stunningly wrong. In 1968 Polanski had directed 3 feminist classics or at least with a feminist POV - Knife In The Water, Repulsion and this and even Cul De Sac has elements of that as well - he was remarkable at infusing ideas and strands of all sorts of things into his work at this time.