The Tenant

The Tenant (1976) is about a quiet man who moves into a Paris apartment. The previous tenant threw herself from the window. The neighbours complain about noise, the landlord lays down rules, and he slowly comes to believe he is being pushed the same way. It is the last of Polanski's apartment trilogy. With Repulsion and Rosemary's Baby, all three take place in an enclosed home where the character's mind and the building start to merge. Polanski plays the lead himself. Trelkovsky is a Polish immigrant whose French carries an accent, and the character's exclusion comes directly out of that. The source is Roland Topor's novel. It competed at Cannes in 1976 and was not well received at the time; critics found it overwrought. Its standing rose later, as the trilogy came to be seen as a whole. It runs 126 minutes. Good for: psychological horror, paranoia constructed step by step, and Polanski's cinema of enclosed spaces. Less good for: the pace is slow and almost nothing happens in the first hour. The final section breaks from reality entirely and turns grotesque, a shift many viewers dislike. The director's own history cannot be set aside.