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''The Tenant'' () is a 1976 French
psychological horror Psychological horror is a genre, subgenre of horror fiction, horror and psychological fiction with a particular focus on mental, emotional, and Mental state, psychological states to frighten, disturb, or unsettle its audience. The subgenre freque ...
thriller film Thriller film, also known as suspense film or suspense thriller, is a broad film genre that evokes excitement and suspense in the audience. The suspense element found in most films' plots is particularly exploited by the filmmaker in this genre. ...
directed by and starring
Roman Polanski Raymond Roman Thierry Polański (; born 18 August 1933) is a Polish and French filmmaker and actor. He is the recipient of List of awards and nominations received by Roman Polanski, numerous accolades, including an Academy Award, three Britis ...
from a screenplay he co-wrote with
Gérard Brach Gérard Brach (23 July 1927 – 9 September 2006) was a French screenwriter best known for his collaborations with the film directors Roman Polanski and Jean-Jacques Annaud. He directed two movies: ''La Maison'' and ''The Boat on the Grass, Le B ...
, based on the 1964 novel of the same name by
Roland Topor Roland Topor (7 January 1938 – 16 April 1997) was a French illustrator, cartoonist, comics artist, painter, novelist, playwright, film and TV writer, filmmaker and actor, who was known for the surrealism, surreal nature of his work. He was of Po ...
. The film also stars
Isabelle Adjani Isabelle Yasmine Adjani (born 27 June 1955) is a French actress and singer of Algerian and German descent. She has received various accolades, including five César Awards and a Lumière Award, along with nominations for two Academy Awards. ...
,
Melvyn Douglas Melvyn Douglas (born Melvyn Edouard Hesselberg, April 5, 1901 – August 4, 1981) was an American actor. Douglas came to prominence in 1929 as a suave leading man, perhaps best typified by his performance in the romantic comedy '' Ninotchka'' ( ...
,
Jo Van Fleet Jo Van Fleet (December 29, 1915"The Birth of C ...
, ic]"">"The Birth of C ...
, Bernard Fresson">ic]"">"The Birth of C ...
, Bernard Fresson, Lila Kedrova, Claude Dauphin and Shelley Winters">Claude Dauphin (actor)">Claude Dauphin and Repulsion'' (1965) and ''Rosemary's Baby (film)">Rosemary's Baby'' (1968), it was Polanski's last film before being Roman Polanski sexual abuse case">accused of sexual assault in 1977, and then leaving the United States.


Plot

Trelkovsky, a quiet and unassuming man, rents an apartment in
Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...
whose previous tenant, Egyptologist Simone Choule, attempted suicide by throwing herself out of the window and through a pane of glass below. Before moving in officially, he meets the concierge, who shows him the apartment and the spot where Simone fell. Nobody knows the reason for the suicide attempt. Trelkovsky visits Simone in the hospital but finds her entirely in bandages and unable to talk. Whilst still at Simone's bedside, Trelkovsky meets her friend, Stella, who has also come to visit. Stella is overwhelmed with emotion and begins talking to Simone, who looks towards her visitors and screams monstrously. The matron insists they leave, having already informed Trelkovsky that he may not speak to Simone. Trelkovsky tries to comfort Stella but dares not say that he never knew Simone, instead pretending to be another friend. They leave together and go out for a drink and a movie, where they fondle each other. Outside the theatre, they part ways. Later, Trelkovsky calls up the hospital to enquire about Simone and is told she has died. As Trelkovsky occupies the apartment, he is chastised repeatedly by his neighbors and landlord, Monsieur Zy, for hosting a party with his friends, apparently having a woman over, making too much noise in general and not joining in on a petition against another neighbor. Trelkovsky attempts to adapt to his situation but is increasingly disturbed by the apartment and the other tenants. He frequently sees his neighbors standing motionless in the toilet room (which he can see from his own window) and discovers a hole in the wall with a human tooth stashed inside. He discusses this with his friends, who do not find things strange and belittle him for not standing up to his neighbours. He visits the apartment of one of his work friends, who plays a marching band record at a spitefully loud volume. A neighbour politely asks him to turn down the music, as his wife is ill and trying to sleep. Trelkovsky turns the record down, but his friend tells the neighbour that he will play his music as he wants, and that he does not care about his sick wife. Trelkovsky receives a visit from one Georges Badar, who secretly loved Simone and has believed her to be alive and well. Trelkovsky updates and comforts the man and spends the night out with him. He receives a postcard that Badar had posted before realising Simone had died. Frequenting the nearby café which Simone also patronised, he is recognized as the new tenant of her apartment. The owner pressures him into having Simone's regular order, which is then always given to him without being ordered, against his preferences. They are always out of his preferred choice of cigarette,
Gauloises Gauloises (, "Gaulish" eminine pluralin French; ''cigarette'' is a feminine noun in French) is a brand of cigarette of France, French origin. It is produced by the company Imperial Tobacco following its acquisition of Altadis in January 2008 ...
, so he develops a habit of ordering Marlboros, which Simone used to order. Trelkovsky becomes severely agitated and enraged when his apartment is robbed, while his neighbors and the concierge continue to berate him for making too much noise; Zy warns him not to inform the police of the burglary. Suffering from fever and bad dreams, Trelkovsky wakes up one morning to find his face made up. He buys a wig and women's shoes and goes on to dress up (using Simone's dress, which he had found in a cupboard) and the viewer realizes that no one is standing still in the opposite bathroom in front of his window. The next morning, he realizes that one of his front teeth is missing and finds it in another hole in his apartment. He suspects that Zy and the neighbors are trying to subtly change him into the last tenant, Simone, so that he too will kill himself. He becomes hostile in his day-to-day environment, and his mental state progressively deteriorates. He has visions of his neighbors playing football with a human head; finding the toilet covered in
hieroglyphs Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs ( ) were the formal writing system used in Ancient Egypt for writing the Egyptian language. Hieroglyphs combined ideographic, logographic, syllabic and alphabetic elements, with more than 1,000 distinct characters.I ...
; and looking across the courtyard, seeing himself standing at his apartment window, looking into the bathroom with binoculars. He runs off to Stella for comfort and sleeps over, but in the morning after she has left for work, he concludes that she too is in on his neighbors' plot and proceeds to vandalise and burgle her apartment before departing. At night, Trelkovsky is hit by an elderly couple driving a car. He is not injured too seriously but receives a sedative injection from the doctor due to his odd behavior – he perceives the elderly couple as Zy and wife, accusing them of trying to murder him. The couple returns him to his apartment. A deranged Trelkovsky dresses up again as a woman and throws himself out of the window in the manner of Simone, before what he believes to be a clapping, cheering audience composed of his neighbors. The suicide attempt wakes up his neighbors, who call the police and attempt to restrain him. He crawls away from them back to his apartment and jumps out the window a second time moments after the police arrive. In the final scene, Trelkovsky is bandaged up in the same fashion as Simone, in the same hospital bed. From his perspective, his and Stella's visit to Simone is shown. Trelkovsky then lets out a monstrous scream as Simone did in the earlier scene.


Cast


Themes and interpretations


Overview

In his review of the film for ''The Regrettable Moment of Sincerity'', Adam Lippe writes: "Many would attest that '' The Pianist'' is Polanski's most personal work, given the obvious
Holocaust The Holocaust (), known in Hebrew language, Hebrew as the (), was the genocide of History of the Jews in Europe, European Jews during World War II. From 1941 to 1945, Nazi Germany and Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy ...
subject matter, but look beneath the surface, and when the window curtains are drawn aside, Polanski's ''The Tenant'' shines brightest as the work closest to his being."Lippe, Adam
''The Tenant''
, The Regrettable Moment of Sincerity, 21 January 2009 Like the other two films in Polanski's Apartment Trilogy, ''The Tenant'' blurs the line between psychological thriller and horror. It garnered critical comparisons to both its contemporaries ''
Don't Look Now ''Don't Look Now'' () is a 1973 English-language thriller film directed by Nicolas Roeg, adapted from the 1971 short story by Daphne du Maurier. Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland portray Laura and John Baxter, a married couple who trav ...
'' (1973) by
Nicolas Roeg Nicolas Jack Roeg ( ; 15 August 1928 – 23 November 2018) was an English film director and cinematographer, best known for directing ''Performance (film), Performance'' (1970), ''Walkabout (film), Walkabout'' (1971), ''Don't Look Now'' (1973) ...
and
Stanley Kubrick Stanley Kubrick (; July 26, 1928 – March 7, 1999) was an American filmmaker and photographer. Widely considered one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, Stanley Kubrick filmography, his films were nearly all adaptations of novels or sho ...
's '' The Shining'' (1980).Del Valle, David (2010)
''Wig of a Poet: Un Polanski Rorschach''
, ACIDEMIC: Journal of Film and Media, 2010 Given its production design, photography, and the bizarre scenario of a group of neighbors that appear to be preying on a new tenant's life and conspiring against him for that purpose, it has also been compared to the
black comedy Black comedy, also known as black humor, bleak comedy, dark comedy, dark humor, gallows humor or morbid humor, is a style of comedy that makes light of subject matter that is generally considered taboo, particularly subjects that are normally ...
film ''
Delicatessen A delicatessen or deli is a grocery that sells a selection of fine, exotic, or foreign prepared foods. Delicatessens originated in Germany (contemporary spelling: ) during the 18th century and spread to the United States in the mid-19th centur ...
'' (1991). The narrative seems to suggest a house as the malevolent source to the sinister deeds of its inhabitants, and is set in a post-apocalyptic future where all animals have died and the people of a remote decaying house resort to eating each of the house's successive new janitors. While the main character is clearly paranoid to some extent, the film does not entirely reveal whether everything takes place in his head or if the strange events happening around him exist at least partially, contrary to the previous entries in Polanski's "Apartment Trilogy".


Kafka influence

Many critics have noted ''The Tenant''s strong Kafkaesque theme, typified by an atmosphere that is absurdly over-burdened with anxiety, confusion, guilt, bleak humour, alienation, sexual frustration and
paranoia Paranoia is an instinct or thought process that is believed to be heavily influenced by anxiety, suspicion, or fear, often to the point of delusion and irrationality. Paranoid thinking typically includes persecutory beliefs, or beliefs of co ...
. However, the film cannot be viewed as purely driven by a Kafkaesque motif because of the numerous references to Trelkovsky's delirium and heavy drinking. This allows for more than one interpretation. Most of the action occurs within a claustrophobic environment where dark, ominous things occur without reason or explanation to a seemingly shy protagonist, whose perceived failings as a tenant are ruthlessly pursued by what Trelkovsky himself views as an increasingly cabalistic conspiracy. Minor infringements are treated as serious breaches of his tenancy agreement, and this apparent persecution escalates after he refuses to join his neighbours in a prejudiced campaign to oust a mother with a disabled child. "The scheming plots over matters of extraordinary pettiness and inexplicable conspiracies that go on among the neighbours to gang up on others make ''The Tenant'' probably the first Kafkaesque horror film."Scheib, Richard
''THE TENANT (Le Locataire)''
, Moira: Science Fiction, Horror and Fantasy Film Review "Much effect is derived from the absurdity of the scenario where all Trelkovsky wants to do is not bother anyone, yet everything Trelkovsky does is seen as an imposition."Lorefice, Mike (2003)

, Raging Bull Movie Reviews, 8 December 2003 Critics have speculated that the film's Kafkaesque atmosphere must be in part a reflection of Polanski's own
Jew Jews (, , ), or the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group and nation, originating from the Israelites of ancient Israel and Judah. They also traditionally adhere to Judaism. Jewish ethnicity, religion, and community are highly inte ...
ish experiences within a predominantly
anti-Semitic Antisemitism or Jew-hatred is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who harbours it is called an antisemite. Whether antisemitism is considered a form of racism depends on the school of thought. Antisemi ...
environment. Trelkovsky is viewed with suspicion by almost every other character simply because he has a foreign name. For example, when he tries to report a robbery to the French police he is treated sceptically and told that as a foreigner he should not make trouble. Both the director and the protagonist are outsiders who strive ineffectually for acceptance in what they see as a corrupt and mysterious world.
Vincent Canby Vincent Canby (July 27, 1924 – October 15, 2000) was an American film and theatre critic who was the chief film critic for ''The New York Times'' from 1969 until the early 1990s, then its chief theatre critic from 1994 until his death in 2000. ...
wrote in ''
The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...
'': "Trelkovsky exists. He inhabits his own body, but it's as if he had no lease on it, as if at any moment he could be dispossessed for having listened to the radio in his head after 10 P.M. People are always knocking on his walls." According to Ulrich Behrens of ''Der Mieter'' (translated from the German):


Doomed cycle, loss of self, and social assimilation

''The Tenant'' has been referred to as a precursor to Kubrick's ''The Shining'' (1980), as another film where the lines between reality, madness, and the supernatural become increasingly blurry (the question usually asked with ''The Shining'' is "Ghosts or cabin fever?") as the protagonist finds himself doomed to cyclically repeat another person's nightmarish fall. Just like in ''The Shining'', the audience is slowly brought to accept the supernatural by what at first seems a slow descent into madness, or vice versa: "The audience's predilection to accept a proto-supernatural explanation '' ..' becomes so pronounced that at Trelkovsky's break with sanity the viewer is encouraged to take a straightforward hallucination for a supernatural act." In his book ''Polanski and Perception'', Davide Caputo has called the fact that in the end, Trelkovsky defenestrates himself not once, but twice, "a cruel reminder of the film's 'infinite loop'" of Trelkovsky becoming Simone Choule and meeting Trelkovsky shortly before dying in the hospital, a loop not unlike ''The Shinings explanation that Jack Torrance "has always been the Overlook's caretaker". Timothy Brayton of ''Antagony & Ecstasy'' likens this eternally looping cycle of ''The Tenant'' to the film's recurring
Egyptian ''Egyptian'' describes something of, from, or related to Egypt. Egyptian or Egyptians may refer to: Nations and ethnic groups * Egyptians, a national group in North Africa ** Egyptian culture, a complex and stable culture with thousands of year ...
motifs: Steve Biodrowski of ''Cinefantastique'' writes: "THE TENANT is short on typical horror movie action: there are no monsters, and there is little in the way of traditional suspense. That's because the film is not operating on the kind of fear that most horror films exploit: fear of death. Instead, THE TENANT's focus is on an equally disturbing fear: loss of identity." In his review of the film for ''The Regrettable Moment of Sincerity'', Adam Lippe writes of Trelkovsky's surroundings sinisterly shaping him into an echo of the past: "Coming from a Nazi-occupied childhood, Polanski no doubt uses his character's identity crisis to illustrate society's ability to shape and mold the uniqueness of its members, whether they like it or not." Similarly, Dan Jardine of ''Apollo Guide'' writes: "Polanski seems to be studying how people, in our isolating world, increasingly mould themselves to their environment, sometimes to the point where their individual identity is absorbed into the world around them. The longer he is in the building, the more Trelkovsky begins to lose sight of where his internal sense of his 'self' ends, and his social identity begins." Because of how little we get to know of Trelkovsky's life prior to his applying for the apartment and moving in, only to become an echo of former tenant Mademoiselle Choule because of his frail, almost inexistent personality's weak resistance to either her ghost or his bullying neighbors as if he has always been Mademoiselle Choule and always will be, the film has also been referred to as an early precursor to ''
Fight Club ''Fight Club'' is a 1999 American film directed by David Fincher and starring Brad Pitt, Edward Norton, and Helena Bonham Carter. It is based on the 1996 novel ''Fight Club (novel), Fight Club'' by Chuck Palahniuk. Norton plays The Narrator (F ...
'' (1999), a film where the final twist reveals it to be about a case of split personality.


Isolation and claustrophobia

A recurring theme with Polanski's films, but especially pronounced in ''The Tenant'', is that of the protagonist as a silent, isolated observer in hiding. As Brogan Morris writes in ''Flickering Myth'': "One of Roman Polanski's recurring motifs has always been the horror of the apartment space. It was as recently as his last film, '' Carnage'', and in a crucial sequence of his masterful ''The Pianist'': it's from an apartment window which Szpilman can do nothing but watch atrocities unfold outside. The fascination is there most obviously, though, in Polanski's 'Apartment Trilogy' '' ..'. And ''The Tenant'', a blackly comedic meta-horror, is perhaps Polanski's ultimate use of the apartment as a claustrophobic, paranoid zone of terror."


Sexual deviance and repression

Related to the aforementioned Kafkaesque guilt and the theme of identity loss, another theme that appears throughout the film is that of sexual deviance and Trelkovsky's increasing trespassing of traditional
gender role A gender role, or sex role, is a social norm deemed appropriate or desirable for individuals based on their gender or sex. Gender roles are usually centered on conceptions of masculinity and femininity. The specifics regarding these gendered ...
s, as he more and more turns into an echo of former tenant Mademoiselle Choule.
German German(s) may refer to: * Germany, the country of the Germans and German things **Germania (Roman era) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizenship in Germany, see also Ge ...
reviewer Andreas Staben writes: "And again, '' olanski' tells of sexual repression, and in Polanski's astounding, unpretentious performance, Trelkovsky's escape into the identity of Simone Choule appears as a consequential closure of all three films '' f the Apartment Trilogy'. Other than was maybe the case still with ''Repulsion'', there can be no talk whatsoever of a psycho-pathological case study anymore: Here, the individual is entirely wiped out and all that remains is the horror of facing a pure void."


Production


Development

Although typically labelled as the third part of Polanski's so-called "Apartment Trilogy", this came about more by luck than by design. The film adaptation was originally to have been made by British director
Jack Clayton Jack Isaac Clayton (1 March 1921 – 26 February 1995) was an English film director and producer, known for his skill directing literary adaptations. He was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Director for his feature-length debut, Room a ...
, who was attached to the project around seven years before Polanski made it. According to Clayton's biographer Neil Sinyard, Clayton originally tried to make the film ca. 1969 for
Universal Studios Universal Studios may refer to: * Universal Studios, Inc., an American media and entertainment conglomerate ** Universal Pictures, an American film studio ** Universal Studios Lot, a film and television studio complex * Various theme parks operat ...
, from a script by
Edward Albee Edward Franklin Albee III ( ; March 12, 1928 – September 16, 2016) was an American playwright known for works such as ''The Zoo Story'' (1958), ''The Sandbox (play), The Sandbox'' (1959), ''Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?'' (1962), ''A Delicat ...
, but this version never made it into production after the relationship between Albee and the studio soured. Paramount bought the rights on Clayton's advice in 1971. Clayton returned to the project in the mid-1970s, and a rough draft script by
Christopher Hampton Sir Christopher James Hampton (born 26 January 1946) is a British playwright, screenwriter, translator and film director. He is best known for his play Les Liaisons Dangereuses (play), ''Les Liaisons Dangereuses'' based on the Les Liaisons da ...
was written while Clayton was preparing ''
The Great Gatsby ''The Great Gatsby'' () is a 1925 novel by American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. Set in the Jazz Age on Long Island, near New York City, the novel depicts first-person narrator Nick Carraway's interactions with Jay Gatsby, a mysterious mi ...
''. By the time Clayton had delivered ''Gatsby'' to Paramount in March 1974, he had learned from
Robert Evans Robert Evans (born Robert J. Shapera; June 29, 1930 – October 26, 2019) was an American film producer who worked on ''Rosemary's Baby (film), Rosemary's Baby'' (1968), ''Love Story (1970 film), Love Story'' (1970), ''The Godfather'' (1972), ...
that Polanski was interested in the project and wanted to play the lead role. While Clayton was occupied preparing foreign language versions of ''Gatsby'' for the European market, Paramount studio head
Barry Diller Barry Charles Diller (born February 2, 1942) is an American billionaire businessman. He is chairman and senior executive of IAC and Expedia Group and founded the Fox Broadcasting Company with Rupert Murdoch and USA Broadcasting. Diller was ind ...
began negotiations with Polanski. Although Clayton later insisted that he was never specifically asked if he was still interested, and never said "no" to it, Diller wrongly assumed that Clayton had lost interest and transferred the project to Polanski, without asking Clayton. When he found out, Clayton called Diller in September 1974, expressing his dismay that Diller had given another director a film which (Clayton insisted) had been specifically purchased by the studio for him, and for doing so without consultation.


Filming

The film was shot on location in
Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...
, France.


Dubbing

The film was shot partly in English and partly in French, depending on which language the actors were more comfortable performing in. In post-production, several versions of the film were created in different languages. Some of the cast dubbed themselves in both the English and French versions, while the remaining French characters were dubbed by American actors. Polanski dubbed himself in three different languages: the English, French, and Italian versions of the film. Isabelle Adjani did not dub herself in English for the version released in English-speaking markets.


Release

The film was entered into the
1976 Cannes Film Festival The 29th Cannes Film Festival took place from 13 to 28 May 1976. American author Tennessee Williams served as jury president for the main competition. American filmmaker Martin Scorsese won the Palme d'Or, the festival's top prize, for the drama ...
and had a total of 534,637 admissions in France.


Critical reception

''The Tenant'' was poorly received on its release, with
Roger Ebert Roger Joseph Ebert ( ; June 18, 1942 – April 4, 2013) was an American Film criticism, film critic, film historian, journalist, essayist, screenwriter and author. He wrote for the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' from 1967 until his death in 2013. Eber ...
declaring it "not merely bad – it's an embarrassment". Gene Siskel likewise called it a "psychological thriller without the thrills" and criticized the characters for lacking motivation. Since then the film has become a cult favorite. The film holds an 84% rating on
Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review aggregator, review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee ...
with 37 reviews and an average score of 7.8/10.


References


External links

* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Tenant, The 1976 films 1976 horror films 1976 LGBTQ-related films 1970s English-language films 1970s French films 1970s horror thriller films 1970s psychological horror films 1970s psychological thriller films 1970s supernatural horror films Cross-dressing in French films English-language French films Films about sexual repression Films about suicide Films based on French novels Films directed by Roman Polanski Films scored by Philippe Sarde Films set in apartment buildings Films set in Paris Films shot at Epinay Studios Films shot in Paris Films with screenplays by Gérard Brach Films with screenplays by Roman Polanski French horror thriller films French LGBTQ-related films French psychological horror films French psychological thriller films French supernatural horror films French supernatural thriller films LGBTQ-related horror thriller films Paramount Pictures films Roland Topor Films about landlords English-language horror thriller films