1976 ‘Le locataire’ Directed by Roman Polanski
A quiet and inconspicuous man (Trelkovsky) rents an apartment in France where the previous tenant committed suicide, and begins to suspect his landlord and neighbors are trying to subtly change him into the last tenant so that he too will kill himself.
Roman Polanski Isabelle Adjani Melvyn Douglas Bernard Fresson Shelley Winters Gérard Jugnot Josiane Balasko Raoul Guylad Lila Kedrova Jo Van Fleet Claude Piéplu Rufus Romain Bouteille Jacques Monod Patrice Alexsandre Jean-Pierre Bagot Jacky Cohen Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu André Penvern Albert Delpy Louba Guertchikoff Claude Dauphin
Wanted to revisit this film (after not having watched in over 30 years) for Sven Nykvist's incredible work. Every shot is gorgeous. And production design by Pierre Guffroy (The Unbearable Lightness of Being) is so rich in detail. I see fewer and fewer modern films achieving this level of craft.
Part of Hoop-Tober
“What if she gets better?” “Don’t worry, she won’t get better.”
Nature, it is said, abhors a vacuum. If my cat’s reaction to my Dyson is any indication, this axiom is unimpeachably true. The maxim is usually attributed to Aristotle (in the appealingly macabre form of “horror vacui”), who believed that any theoretical void would be filled by surrounding material, instantly wiping it out. Nothing—the absence of something—cannot really exist, for something will always take nothing’s place.
This ancient principle underlies Roman Polanski’s The Tenant, the third and final entry in his so-called “Apartment Trilogy” (after Repulsion and Rosemary’s Baby). Each of the trilogy's films brilliantly explores the disadvantages and incipient paranoia of close-quarters city dwelling (paranoia…
I'm so tired of crossdressing being depicted as a sign of insanity. How would you like it if every fucking film you watched had, I dunno what you are, but whatever you are as a sign of insanity? Fucking hell.
October count: 26/31.
Roman Polanski's The Tenant builds a myriad of psychological layers around the director cast in the central role of Trelkovsky. It is a film often grouped together with Rosemary's Baby and Repulsion under the 'apartment trilogy' banner although this film develops into far more mysterious and complicated film than the other two.
His decision to cast himself as the films protagonist is an odd one given his lack of prominence infront of the lens previously. Only twelve months later he would face a life defining moment with accusations of rape reshaping his artistic approach. As such it is suggested that The Tenant is heavily autobiographical.
Polanski makes it crystal clear that this timid newcomer to the building is struggling to…
An intricately plotted & skilfully layered study of urban paranoia & mental disintegration, the third & final entry in Roman Polanski's Apartment Trilogy is a highly ambiguous & utterly mystifying psychological thriller that utilises all the elements prevalent in the previous entries of this unofficial trilogy but may also polarise its viewers due to its drowsy pace & lack of transparency.
The Tenant (also known as Le Locataire) tells the story of a quiet, timid & inconspicuous man who moves into a Parisian apartment after its previous occupant commits suicide but soon finds himself being unreasonably reprimanded by his landlord & neighbours and begins suspecting that they are all plotting a scheme to transform him into the last tenant so that he too will follow her fate.…
so here's a strange story.
i watched this today assuming that i had never before seen "the tenant", but i wanted to finish polanski's "apartment trilogy," especially because i love "repulsion" and "rosemary's baby."
at first i found "the tenant" unfamiliar - and to be honest, kind of dull - but then it began getting weirder...more uncanny.
which is to say, more familiar in its unfamiliarity.
something (may have?) clicked.
when polanski reveals the tenant, trelkovsky, to be a cross-dresser (posing as a former tenant), i realized that this is a film that may've haunted me for years.
i saw a similar movie on t.v., probably when i was about 12 or 13, and i have never forgotten its manic…
Roman Polanski acts in this one. And he was good. Of all the movies in the apartment trilogy, this one has the craziest nut job ending.
There's a French girl who I adored. Her character added a layer of sensuality to this story. Much like that chick in taxi driver. She was gorgeous too.
And much like taxi driver, we are dealing with a disturbed character. This is taxi driver in an apartment and in Paris.
"She had heard all about excluded middles; they were bad shit, to be avoided; and how had it ever happened here, with the chances once so good for diversity? For it was now like walking among matrices of a great digital computer, the zeroes and ones twinned above, hanging like balanced mobiles right and left, ahead, thick, maybe endless. Behind the hieroglyphic streets there would either be a transcendent meaning, or only the earth [...] Ones and zeroes. So did the couples arrange themselves. [...] Another mode of meaning behind the obvious, or none. Either Oedipa in the orbiting ecstasy of a true paranoia, or a real Tristero."
Ce film me rappellera toujours la nouvelle L'Araignée de Hanns Heinz Ewers. La claustrophobie des lieux, les voisins étranges, la paranoïa. Isabelle Adjani est splendide avec ses lunettes et Polanski on aurait envie de l'achever pour qu'il souffre moins. La dent, la dent.
Isabelle Adjani is smoking HOT in this
But rather than just objectifying the undeniable fuckable-ness of the bespectacled, frizzy haired minx, I find this film to always captivate me
Its less about a descent into madness, and more about the possibility of supernatural forces at work - kind of like what you leave in a place you’ve lived, and how it affects the next inhabitant(s) but with a sprinkling of ancient magick, care of the department of Egyptology
And on another level, it’s about identity. What makes us who we are, as separate entities from other people. Is it what we wear? Our personal rituals? Our teeth? Often there is very little difference between ourselves and others. I think this film asks all of these questions
Delicious wickedness from Polanski—the man has an evidently troubled soul (and I make a point to never conflate the art with the artist).
Wanted to revisit this film (after not having watched in over 30 years) for Sven Nykvist's incredible work. Every shot is gorgeous. And production design by Pierre Guffroy (The Unbearable Lightness of Being) is so rich in detail. I see fewer and fewer modern films achieving this level of craft.
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