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Alfred Hitchcock turned down the offer to direct Rosemary's Baby?

posted 6 months ago by [deleted]
1 reply | jump to latest

French filmmaker Francois Truffaut claimed that Alfred Hitchcock was first offered the project, but turned it down due to lack of interest in the material, as noted in a 3 Jul 1968 Var article.

https://catalog.afi.com/Film/23669-ROSEMARYS-BABY?sid=eef7be26-f267-450e-9c0c-53e84863967f&sr=11.93155&cp=1&pos=0

I feel like this is one of the only times I'm glad Hitchcock didn't direct something. I'm sure his Rosemary's Baby would have been great like most of his work but this movie is pretty much perfect as is.

[–] Daf (153) 5 months ago

Likewise, this is one I don't see Hitchcock pulling off without making some significant adjustments to the script. There aren't what you'd call "set pieces" aside from the climax, and the whole thing relies on a low-key naturalism while Hitchcock was all about being a technician of suspense.

You could say Hitchcock had already made his own variation of a "neighbor paranoia thriller" with Rear Window; different as that movie is, you could see it as something of an optimistic, Hitchcockian cousin to Rosemary's Baby.