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THE TENANT (1976)
Paramount DVD (region 1, 4)
d. Roman Polanski; pr. Andrew Braunberg; scr. Gerard Brach, Roman Polanski; novel. Roland Topor; ph. Sven Nykvist; m. Philippe Sarde; ed. Francoise Bonnot; cast. Roman Polanski, Isabelle Adjani, Melvyn Douglas, Jo Van Fleet, Bernard Fresson, Rufus, Shelley Winters (126 mins)
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ORIGINAL MOVIE POSTER ART
Conspiratorial Fatalism, Apartment Living & Statutory Rape Charges
Roman Polanski is one of the most esteemed of contemporary European directors, and a man whose unusual personal life is for many viewers and critics inevitably woven into his numerous films, particularly his 1970s work.
The Tenant was the director’s last American-sponsored film before he fled the USA for refuge in Paris to avoid criminal prosecution on charges of statutory rape. It was also for the longest time his most reviled and ridiculed movie, with most critics and viewers unsure of how to react to its bizarre tonal games except as another of the director’s meditations on what had been termed contemporary “apartment living” (explored in his previous works Repulsion and Rosemary’s Baby, both films being balances of horror and psycho-drama). Still others have reacted to the despairing comedy of this remarkable film as reflective of Polanski’s own psychological troubles after the brutal murder of his wife Sharon Tate by members of the Manson Family, although, sadly, the easy temptation is to see all of his 1970s films in that context. Certainly The Tenant contributed to the notion that the director was repeatedly intrigued by what might be termed “conspiratorial fatalism”. Today, the film has been duly re-appraised as one of his most under-rated works, although it remains perhaps the most obscure of his American period, almost his segue back into a European sensibility.
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TRAILER
Synopsis (contains spoilers)
The Tenant tells the story of a quiet and unassuming man (played by Polanski himself) who rents an apartment in a complex. He soon finds that the previous tenant, a woman, attempted to commit suicide by jumping out of the window and is now in hospital.
He visits her, ostensibly to see if she will die and he can thus keep the apartment, and there meets a woman (Isabelle Adjani) and attempts to become sexually involved with her. Moving into the apartment, he soon discovers that the other tenants frequently refer to the suicide victim. He holds a party for his friends but is told to keep the noise down and in his timid fashion asks his friends to leave rather than upset his new neighbors. Soon he reluctantly becomes involved in disagreements between the increasingly bizarre tenants. People seem to treat him as if he has merely taken the previous tenant’s place and ever so slightly, he begins to adopt her habits, smoking the same cigarettes and even drinking the same drinks in the neighborhood café. The landlady (Shelley Winters) gives him mail for the previous tenant. He suspects that there is something odd about the building and its inhabitants although cannot quite ascertain what that strangeness is. Soon, he feels that these people have a most diabolical plan in store for him and he becomes obsessed with the activities and even the potential mindset of the previous tenant.
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Masochism & Psycho-Sexual Identity Dissolution
The Tenant is an extraordinary film about a most unusual reactive psychosis, and a fine study of a timid personality who succumbs to a perverse need for victimization that in effect makes him want to believe he is someone other than himself.
It is a fascinating blend of black comedy and bizarre psychodrama concerning the fragility of the personality. Once the new tenant feels that the others are treating him like the suicide victim, he comes to believe that they want to effectively turn him into her. Almost masochistically, he accepts this imposition on his own individuality and in his obsession, succumbs to the paranoid belief that he is becoming someone other than himself, by literally being in her dwelling place. In some way, he arguably wills it. Thus, the film explores the most macabre possibilities of its premise. It is almost as though by taking her place, the new tenant has set up a process of psychological transformation, resulting in a breakdown of the individual ego. His paranoia, and hence the source of his projection, is that this psychological transformation is willed on him by outsiders, rather than a reflection of his own insecure nature. As potentially solemn as this is as psychodrama, the mastery of The Tenant is that in its sense of the psychological uncertainty of identity, it remains intensely and knowingly amusing, one of the most tonally complex of films to emerge in this genre.
The character Polanski plays seems so dissatisfied with himself, and so introspective, that he seeks refuge in the assumed personality of another.
Rather than admit his own (sexual) insecurities, he retreats into paranoia and hallucination, the film thus becoming an essay in psychotic breakdown and reformation. Yet, Polanski is clever enough as a filmmaker to balance this psychodramatic interpretation with the more macabre, sinister suggestion that this fragile man may be correct in his assertions and that these tenants are indeed trying to break down his ego and transform him into another, whose physical absence they deny. The interplay between the two interpretations results in an unusual and sinister view of what might be termed psychological masochism: as much as it torments the character, he indulges it at every turn, again almost willing his own breakdown as he thinks they may wish him to. His failure to perform sexually with Adjani implies that this subsequent breakdown is a kind of reactive psychosis – indeed, Polanski’s character seems to live his life in complete reaction to the people around him and the resultant subservience only re-enforces what seems his un-articulated pre-occupation with his own weak-will. The horror in this film thus comes from the character’s realization that in his own mind, “he” is ceasing to exist. Thus, as a comedy of reactive personality dissolution, The Tenant is truly exceptional.
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EXTRACTS
The Subtle Effects of Psychosis on Visual Perception
The 16:9 enhanced widescreen transfer is quite effective, nicely preserving the wandering, restless camera and the idea of introspective stillness within the apartment itself.
Motifs of confinement are apt. Featuring a skilful use of deep focus photography, the film establishes a distinctive, even profound, sense of interior spaces affecting the individual. The building and apartment are rendered in the wryly colorful, atmospheric nuances of cinematographer Sven Nykvist (best known for his work with director Ingmar Bergman): it thus manages to be both authentic and increasingly sinister, charting the character’s own heightened perceptions as he enters his private psychosis (eventually extending to some horrifically comical hallucinations). Set design is captivating: the mystery of place runs through this film. The presence of items from the previous tenant implies the idea of traces from one life might remain in such a place. Small details (e.g. cigarette brands) enhance the film’s sense of psychological transformation and contribute to Polanski’s changing appearance as he seemingly doubts his own gender in ways both comical and alarming. There is also a subtle sense of weather changing from hot to cold and an increasingly bleak intensity of color and shadow. Wide angle lenses are used for added disorientation, conveying just how psychosis affects visual perception until the final fusion of the real and the psychotic.
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From Naturalism to stylization within a Controlled Diegesis
The sound transfer is available in Dolby Digital mono only, although this does not detract from the film.
Indeed, both the oddness and the authenticity in the sound design are well preserved, from the opening Parisian street atmosphere to the small, delicate sounds in the building and apartments, through to the hallucinatory finale. Much of the film works from an absence of score, using only diegetic sounds to build a creepy naturalism then increasingly stylized. The sense of uncanny, mounting unease is present throughout. The chilling scream of the hospitalized victim is used for ironic effect, as is Polanski’s own soft-spoken voice. The score is mostly used when Polanski is alone in a place formerly occupied by another, implying a personality transformation tied to introspective failures. There are long silences with only low-key details in the journey from stillness to instability and transformation. Although the authenticity of the environs is conveyed, the significance of small details is always called into question as the film wonders just what Polanski hears and sees may mean in his own mind. Small sounds thus take on disconcerting importance however low-key they seem. Voices are crisp and forceful or delicate when needed, despite some unconvincing dubbing. The clever, often quiet mix rewards the attention to detail, for the nuances of the spoken word and the implications in dialogue make for a weirdly cumulative paranoia.
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