The Tenant (1976) - Roman Polanski
Related: Roman Polanski - horror film - 1976 - Roland Topor - psychological horror
The Tenant (1964) - Roland Topor
[Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]Roland Topor's The Tenant chronicles a harrowing, fascinating descent into madness. The novel was adapted to film by Roman Polanski in 1976.
Polish film poster for Le Locataire
Isabelle Adjani and Roman Polanski watching a kung fu film in Le Locataire
The apartment from Le Locataire
Description
Repulsion, Rosemary's Baby and The Tenant are all part of an unofficial but deliberate trilogy on the subject of apartment-dweller paranoia.
After the triumph of Chinatown, Roman Polanski's The Tenant marked an unsettling return to the horrifying psychodrama of Repulsion and Rosemary's Baby. As in those previous films, Polanski explores a descent into madness with subtle, deliberate pacing and keen attention to accumulating details. Cannily casting himself in the title role, Polanski plays the mild-mannered occupant of a Parisian flat previously rented by a woman who committed suicide by leaping from her upper-floor balcony. The woman's leftover belongings and the harsh attitudes of disapproving neighbors (including Melvin Douglas and Shelley Winters) begin to grate on the new tenant's psyche; his paranoia shifts from simmering anxiety to full-blown psychosis, until fate itself seems to run in a complete, tragically tormenting circle. Polanski masters the material as only he could, and despite some critical drubbing at the time of its release, The Tenant has earned a place among Polanski's finest films. -- Jeff Shannon for amazon.com
The Tenant was adapted from a novel by Roland Topor, Le Locataire Chimerique (1964)]
The disabled girl is played by Eva Ionesco
Based on a novel by Roland Topor
Le Locataire Chimerique is the tale of Monsieur Trelkovsky, an ordinary man, against whom apparently ordinary circumstances conspire until he is enmeshed in an extraordinary and terrifying situation. It portrays a nightmare world which is only separated from everyday life by a sliver of sanity.
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