The experience of cinema--people
in a dark room losing collective touch with reality via a glowing screen--is part of the mystery at the core of human behavior.
Sometimes we can even experience fear and dread at what we see on that screen and remember it for the rest of our lives.
The poster art for Le Locataire and the English version The Tenant (1976) display the same quote: "No one does
it to you like Roman Polanski." A veiled reference to the director's infamous sexual prowess, it also suggests his ability
as a director to create suspense within the framework of his well-crafted films.
This is to my mind the last of his masterpieces prior to what many have described as "his decline from the success of Chinatown
(1974) and Rosemary's Baby (1968). The Tenant was not well received when it was originally released, but it
has aged exceedingly well and now critics have added it to what they like to call Polanski's "apartment trilogy" alongside
Repulsion (1965) and Rosemary.
A film sublimely French in it's execution and theme, The Tenant's source novel, Roland Topar's novel Le Locataire
Chimerique (1964) is steeped in surrealism and a direct product of the Panic Movement; a group of theater performers,
writers and artists inspired by the mythic "great God Pan," the Movement was an artistic rejection of all that culturally
came before in the visual arts, preferring to champion irrational behavior and obscenity, subverting classical iconography.
It is no wonder this material attracted Polanski, long an admirer of surrealism from his early days in Poland.
Polanski is a past master of translating novels to film-- his adaptation of
Rosemary's Baby is perfection, following
every word in Ira Levin's book--so when it came to adapting Topar's novel into a screenplay he attempted a similar adherence,
but the problem is that in the novel the protagonist, Trekovsky, doesn't really exist. the ambiguity of the novel is very
difficult to translate to the language of film. Polanski adapted the material faithfully however, still allowing us plenty
of clues, especially towards the end when we must determine if he's paranoid or the other tenants are really out to kill him
or drive him insane. The final moments in the hospital may be the last word in film absurdity.
The film is at face value a study of alienation and displacement since Trekovsky is a Pole living in Paris. He is a little
man, a man who will suppress his feelings to make other people comfortable; he is also a fool. It is to his ultimate folly
in believing he is somehow a Parisian just becuase he has adjusted himself into a lifestyle in which he never truly belongs
It shares a similar landscape with
Last Tango in Paris as far as using the unnerving experience of apartment hunting
in Paris as a launch for strange encounters. Both films display a very different aspect of Paris than the one's we've grown
acustomed to in American films, i.e. rather than flowers and sunshine, we get pre-war plumbing, prostitutes, and despair.
One of the flaws even Polanski recognized in making the film was the short period of time in which we are watching Trelkosky
(played by the director) before he abruptly descends into absolute paranoia. Polanski needed more situations to explain the
behavior, whereas the novel has the power to relate all this in a fashion film simply cannot. This is why I see this film
as Polanski's Rorschach test since the spectator has many options in interpating whether or not this is delusional or--as
I like to believe--an occult encounter involving spirits of ancient Egypt, hinted at in the novel but under Polanski's direction
and cameraman Sven Nykist's intense focus allowed to infuse every shadow in that spidery building with ancient evil. The forlorn
toliet as viewed from Trelkosky's window is filled with all manner of oddities from a severed head to a full figured mummy.
Trelkosky is not unlike Jack Torrence in Kubrick's
The Shining, hallucinating phantoms in an equally isolated enviorment
wherein we have no idea what's real and what's vividly imagined by the crazed characters. The Egyptian themes are not without
interest as we pursue the idea of souls being transmigated from body to body. Maybe Simone Chule left enough of herself behind
to bring the next tenent full circle into her hospital room making as all tenant's in a parasitic society.
Trelkosky as played by Polanski reminds me of a protagonist in Sartre--or better still Camus--since he is tragic on one level
and profondly funny at the same time. The French during periods following war seem to find humor in the most absurd places
and so does Polanski in this film. He is darkly comic while he is in drag checking himself out in the mirror voicing the
idea "I look like I am pregnant" with jungle red nails and lipstick. Even his very hard to watch death scene is filled with
silly bits that prevent us from taking in the utter morbidity of his visions involving conspiracy among the apt dwellers to
cause his death. Are they devils mocking his fall into the pit? Or is he hallucinating a private hell for his own perverse
enjoyment?
There is a sublime moment in
Repulsion, where Carol (Catherine Deneuve) is sitting in on a bench, watching the sunlight
streaming in on the bench across from her. After a moment she reaches over and tries to brush the light away, the sort of
thing one might observe someone doing in a park and instantly know there's something not quite right behind this pretty blonde
surface. A similar parkside scene occurs in
The Tenant where, having had enough of a nearby screaming child, Polanski
walks over and does the most policitally incorrect thing possible and slaps the kid. That the one agressive act by his character
in the whole film turns out to be against a child is shocking and uproariously funny.
The film uses some locations in and around Paris (even though the main set the Parisian quartier was recreated on a soundstage)
and the atmosphere is decidely bleak and grey. Paris is a melting pot of races where your class determines how you are going
to be treated. Trelkovsky is tolerated by Paris only while he has money it can drain. The feeling of being an outsider here
in a city packed with alienated souls never leaves us, or him.
A mood piece that has stood the test of time, Polanski has admitted that
The Tenant has its flaws, yet the more one
views the film the more its poetry manifests. After one gets used to seeing Isabelle Adjani looking less than stellar -- rather
frumpy actually, she becomes one of the only likeable characters in the film. Shelley Winters is way over the top but it
works in context with the other malevolent figures on the landscape, with Melvin Douglas as sour as they come with a forked
tongued {literally!} to draw even more parallels with
Rosemary's Baby and the tenants of the Bramford, i.e. the Dakota
in New York.
One thing that did occur to Polanski while filming was that he fell in love all over again with Paris. He has lived there
off and on ever since. I think this and his
Fearless Vampire Killers are remarkable films, considering Polanski had
to be both an actor losing himself in the role, forgetting about the camera and crew long enough to create a character, but
never losing the edge that only a world class director can accomplish.
So remember: "Nobody does it to you like
Roman Polanski."
David Del Valle is a film historian, TV reporter and all-around institution for
weird cinema. Camp David is his acclaimed column at Films in Review.
