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France · 1976
Rated R · 2h 5m
Director Roman Polanski
Starring Roman Polanski, Isabelle Adjani, Melvyn Douglas, Bernard Fresson
Genre Drama, Horror, Thriller
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Trelkovsky has just begun renting apartment in Paris after its previous tenant died following a suicide attempt. When he encounters extreme hostility from the landlord and neighbors, Trelkovsky finds himself identifying with the dead tenant in terrifying ways. Could these people be turning him into their next dead tenant?
Everything except the dubbing of the French supporting cast is a model of craftsmanship, but as the plot escalates into increasingly arbitrary excesses of fantasy and heads for the predictable pay-off, the movie looks more and more like a potboiler.
The end result is somewhere between Franz Kafka and William Castle, but still worth seeing.
Polanski brilliantly evokes an evil society’s almost supernatural ability to recognize weakness in others and to punish all that is good.
it may be the director's quintessential movie. It's an exercise in urban paranoia and mental disintegration that echoes or anticipates everything from "Repulsion" and "Rosemary's Baby" to "Bitter Moon" and "The Pianist."
Chicago Tribune by Michael Wilmington
Terrifying and darkly funny. [13 Jun 2004, p.C4]
Though the result is too slow and curious, with a weak lead performance by the writer-director, The Tenant's tone of abstracted anxiety is distinctive, and its central message, that the obnoxious define the world for everyone else, provides another tile in Polanski's career mosaic of paranoia and power brokerage.
Chicago Sun-Times by Roger Ebert
The Tenant's not merely bad -- it's an embarrassment. If it didn't have the Polanski trademark, we'd probably have to drive miles and miles and sit in a damp basement to see it.
The New York Times by Vincent Canby
The film is superbly acted by Mr. Polanski, Mr. Douglas and Miss Winters, who might not be entirely convincing as a Parisian concierge in a realistic film, but who fits into this nightmare perfectly.
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