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Le Locataire
1976 Thriller / Comedy / Horror
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Credits
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Director: Roman Polanski
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Script: Gérard Brach, Roman Polanski, based on a novel by Roland Topor
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Photo: Sven Nykvist
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Music: Philippe Sarde
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Cast: Roman Polanski (Trelkovsky),
Isabelle Adjani (Stella),
Melvyn Douglas (Monsieur Zy),
Jo Van Fleet (Madame Dioz),
Bernard Fresson (Scope),
Lila Kedrova (Madame Gaderian),
Claude Dauphin (Husband at the
accident),
Claude Piéplu (Neighbor),
Rufus (Georges Badar),
Romain Bouteille (Simon),
Jacques Monod (Cafe Owner),
Patrice Alexsandre (Robert),
Jean-Pierre Bagot (Policeman),
Josiane Balasko (Office Worker),
Michel Blanc (Scope's Neighbor),
Florence Blot (Madame Zy),
Louba Guertchikoff (Wife at accident),
Jacques Chevalier (Patron),
Gérard Jugnot (Office Clerk),
Héléna Manson (Head Nurse),
Maïté Nahyr (Lucille)
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Country: France
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Language: French
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Runtime: 125 min
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Aka: The Tenant
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Summary
Trelkovsky, a modest office clerk, takes up lodgings in an old apartment block in Paris.
When he learns that the previous tenant tried to kill herself by jumping from an upstairs
window, he feels compelled to visit her in hospital. At the bedside of the dying
woman he meets Stella, an attractive young woman who claims to be her friend. Returning
to his apartment, Trelkovsky is warned by his landlord not to make noise during the night.
The tenant does everything he can to oblige but still his neighbours continue to treat
him with contempt and hostility. Then he starts to notice some bizarre things.
He sees the other tenants standing motionless in the toilet room opposite his apartment.
He finds a tooth concealed in a hole in the wall. And he becomes fascinated by the
dead woman’s clothes in the wardrobe. Trelkovsky is now convinced that his
neighbours are determined to kill him by driving him insane, and that Stella is in on
the act…
Review
Following Repulsion
(1965) and Rosemary's Baby (1968),
Roman Polanski completed his masterful trilogy of social isolation and paranoia with The
Tenant (Le Locataire) in 1974.
In essence, all three films tell the same story – that of a seemingly well-balanced
individual, a loner, who is driven to insanity through an increasing fear of those around
him or her. Repulsion is by far the best
of the three films, but its two successors are equally as disturbing and amply demonstrate
Polanski’s genius as a filmmaker. The Tenant
is particularly interesting in that Polanski himself stars in the film, playing
the role of the character who undergoes the progressive mental disintegration. This
might suggest that, by making these three films, Polanski is somehow attempting to exorcise
his own personal demons, perhaps the scars of his Hellish war-time experiences.
(We would have to wait until his monumental 2002 film, The
Pianist, to see just how deep these scars ran.)
The first half of The Tenant is faultless.
With the skill of a master storyteller, Polanski draws us into the world of his ill-fated
hero and prepares us for the nightmarish intrigue that lies ahead. Anyone who has
rented an apartment will sympathise with Trelkovsky’s situation. Who hasn’t
at some point in his life had to put up with unsociable or downright hostile neighbours?
Polanski develops this familiar experience in two ways, first as a black comedy, and simultaneously
as a psychological thriller. The anodyne situation gradually takes on a surreal
appearance and before you know it we are caught up in some kind of mad Kafkaesque fantasy
in which the central character has lost the ability to communicate and suspects everyone
around him of plotting his destruction. This is Polanski at his most brilliant.
If only, like Kafka, he had left the work unfinished instead of attempting to resolve
it…
Alas, the second half of the film fails to match up to the brilliance
of its first half. When Trelkovsky finally flips it is a struggle to take seriously
anything which subsequently happens. The problem that Polanski has set himself is
an impossible one. How can insanity be portrayed convincingly on screen?
Distorted images that flitter between the real and the surreal is as good a way as any
other but somehow it just doesn’t work here. Polanski was much more successful
in Repulsion, probably because he felt less need
to rationalise what was happening. In The Tenant
, there is the sense that the director wanted to be more explicit about the mental
collapse of his hero, demonstrating his irrationality by showing both what he sees and
what is really there. For a spectator, the film would have had far greater coherence
if things were shown from one point of view, that of Trelkovsky, instead of dipping in
and out of his mind every few seconds.
Whilst The
Tenant is not totally satisfying, it is unquestionably a daring piece of cinema
which is, in places, technically stunning. The way in which Polanski depicts his
hero’s breakdown is both terrifying and an artistic feat (although, for reasons
already given, dramatically flawed). It’s a pity that Polanski had to
use a mixture of English-speaking and French-speaking actors, because in both the English
and French language versions the film appears very
badly dubbed. If you overlook this blemish it is difficult not to be impressed
by the director’s art. Here is such stuff as nightmares are made on…
© James Travers 2004
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