y audience members with some prior knowledge would understand there is sinister experience lurking under the innocence of the film's opening. Color (pink), camera (soaring flight), characterization (a young woman singing) and music (lullaby) setup a foundation of innocence as the film opens. As John Nesbit (2008) writes of the opening, which contrasts innocence and experience or knowledge:
Rosemary's Baby begins innocently enough as a simple lullaby plays over the pink credits while the camera pans over the New York City skyline, finally panning downward on the Dakota Building on Manhattan's west side. Back in 1968, only the gothic appearance and the knowledge that this story was based on Ira Levin's bestselling book dealing with a Satanic cult would clue a viewer in that the story would take some bizarre twists and turns.
In this sense, the contrast between innocence and experience (i.e. knowledge) pervades the entire film thematically, through characterization, and visually as well. Viewers who lack the above knowledge will be lulled by the innocent opening scenes, where a young couple Guy Woodhouse (John Cassavetes) and his wife Rosemary (Mia Farrow) seem to do young couple things like make love on the floor before their furniture arrives, as Rosemary. In this apartment building with its gothic dark hallways and creepy atmosphere, Rosemary sings a lullaby over the opening. During a dinner with their best friend Hutch, Rosemary begins to acquire the experience that will lead to her horrifying recognition at the film's end. Hutch explains the building was notorious for witchcraft and Satanic rituals decades earlier. One line is underlined in a book he has, that the Trench sisters, former residents, "cooked and ate several young children including a niece" (Polanski, 1968). This foreshadowing begins Rosemary's transition from innocence to experience.
The young couple begins to get establi...