The Tenant (1976)

Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

THE TENANT comes as a dark and spellbinding surprise for a viewer who previously encountered Roman Polanski's REPULSION and found it somewhat overrated. THE TENANT has a similar feel, setting, and unnerving atmosphere to it, but it turns out to be much closer to the kind of film that I love to watch. It's a slow-burning suspense story all about the atmosphere and psychology of the situation, the kind of tale where you're never quite sure whether the protagonist is going mad or if there is indeed a conspiracy plot against him. Polanski does some very strong work here, both as director and as the everyman protagonist, playing an essential cypher for the viewer. There are some stark and violent moments but this is mainly about an evocation of unease, of the mildly sinister, and I found it worked a treat.

I wanted to love The Tenant. I truly did. It's one of those films you hear about whenever classic horror films are being discussed. But I feel like I watched a different movie than everyone else.The first half of the movie is very slow and somewhat boring, which would be worth it if the second half paid off. At first, it seems like it will. When the movie hit the halfway point it started getting exciting. It was like, "Yes! This is what I've been waiting for!" I mean, you have teeth in the wall, a head being tossed around like a football, creepy tenants standing completely motionless in the window across from Trelkovsky's apartment. Trelkovsky begins acting strange and unlike himself. Polanski' acting became better (although I feel someone else could've been a better fit for the role). And then I don't know what happened. The rest of the ending fizzles out and you're left with a detachment from the character's situation. Suddenly it all becomes so absurd. I can appreciate the paranoia of our MC, even if it's all in his head, but in my opinion it was executed so poorly. The sound editing was not very good either. At times sound effects were so ear-piercing I had to lower the volume, yet other times the voices were so low or spoken strangely that I had to turn on subtitles just to know what was being said. The dubbing is so distracting in this movie. Just like in Suspiria, the dubbing is awful and it creates a disconnect from the story. Suddenly you're pulled back to reality; these are just actors, badly delivering their lines while another voice is not matching AT ALL. I will never understand this style of filmmaking. It comes across as lazy.I went into this movie thinking it was a psychological horror film, but On IMDb it is tagged as a black comedy. Was this a black comedy when it was released? Or do people think it's a black comedy because of how poorly it's done? Who knows.I honestly believe that if this had been a film by anyone other than Polanski it would not be considered such a masterpiece. I think this is one of his worst films.

A meek Polish man, Trelkovsky, rents an apartment where the previous tenant, Simone Choule, committed suicide by throwing herself from the third floor window. As the days pass, Trelkovsky becomes convinced that the other tenants, the concierge (Shelley Winters), and his landlord Monsieur Zy (Melvyn Douglas) are conspiring to drive him to kill himself as well.The opening credits for The Tenant appear over a breathtaking Louma crane shot that crawls around the exterior of a Paris apartment complex (reminding me of a similar sequence in Dario Argento's Tenebrae): it's an impressive way to begin a film, but sadly very little about the rest of Roman Polanski's '76 psycho-drama comes close to matching it.For much of the time, very little of interest happens, the film detailing the trivialities of Trelkovsky day-to-day life, all at a snail's pace. Polanski uses these scenes to drip-feed us clues as to what is happening to his character (Trelkovsky gradually assuming the habits of Simone); in this way, The Tenant is similar in style to Polanski's earlier psychological drama Repulsion, where a very measured pace was also employed, but the director (taking the lead role) is no Catherine Deneuve (although he does dress up in drag for part of the film), and his script is far less evolved. The result is boredom instead of intrigue.At over two hours long, The Tenant is a real test of one's resolve, with the quite frankly ridiculous sight of Polanski in full make-up and woman's attire making the film impossible to take seriously. Even the presence of French beauty Isabelle Adjani (as Simone's friend Stella), and some more impressive Louma work, don't help matters much. One just wishes that Trelkovsky would hurry up and chuck himself out the window (which he eventually does, not just once, but twice—talk about over-egging the pudding!).3/10—a real disappointment.

The Tenant is one of the finest psychological Drama film among other Polanski's work's. Just like Chinatown(1974) in this film much emphasis given to the protagonist so that the audience would follow the delusion journey of the character(Polanski himself) since he witness the screaming of the woman at the hospital till his own demise. The main reason I love about Psychological themed movies is they are so realistic and compelling that they convince us we might face this situation in a walking life. In terms of this film Trelkovsky felt paranoid after he discover tooth in the wall hole, despite his concern for it he avoid to tell the truth to the landlord. Instead he chooses to figure out by himself. This type of story telling is also the essence of thrillers.