The Tenant (1976)

The Tenant (1976, Fr.) (aka La Locataire)

Director Roman Polanski's suspenseful psychological thriller about insanity and paranoia had many similarities to his two previous films, Repulsion (1965) and Rosemary's Baby (1968) . This third film was considered the last part of his "Apartment Trilogy." The screenplay was written by Polanski with French writer Gerard Bach, based upon Roland Topor's 1964 surrealistic novel with the same name.

It grossed revenue of only 1ドル.9 million.

The Kafka-esque proposed the idea that a new tenant in an apartment felt besieged by his new spiteful and intimidating neighbors, imagining that they were threatening to kill him or coerce him to commit suicide, similar to the fate of the previous tenant. The tagline for the film referred to an available Parisian apartment for rent:

APARTMENT FOR RENT: Quiet bldg. Furnished. 2 rooms. Previous tenant committed suicide.

• shy and aloof bureaucratic clerk, French citizen and Polish-born immigrant Trelkovsky (director Roman Polanski himself, although uncredited), a displaced foreigner and bachelor in the 1970s, moved into a squalid Parisian tenement apartment (without a private bathroom) vacated by a previous tenant, an Egyptologist named Simone Choule; he met the strict landlord Monsieur Zy (Melvyn Douglas), and the unfriendly concierge (Shelley Winters)
• the previous occupant had attempted to commit suicide by jumping through a 3rd story window from the balcony. She was subsequently hospitalized (with a body cast in traction, an almost toothless mouth and bandaged head)
• when Trelkovsky visited her, he met Simone's girl-friend Stella (Isabelle Adjani), who was also at the bedside. The bandaged patient let out a disturbing howl and scream, and died shortly later; after leaving the hospital, Trelkovsky and Stella joined together for a drink and a movie (Bruce Lee starring in Enter the Dragon (1973))
• as the film progressed, Trelkovsky was seemingly viewed with suspicion, hostility and contempt by his apartment neighbors (mostly elderly), who often complained that he made too much noise, or had invited his co-workers over for a party. He seemed to feel guilty about living in the suicidal victim's apartment, and began to suspect a conspiracy amongst the other tenants
• he became preoccupied with the previous tenant Simone's suicidal and self-destructive tendencies as well as her habits. He was compelled to adopt her breakfast choice of chocolate (instead of coffee) and cigarette brand of Marlboros instead of Gauloises. He often saw other tenants standing motionless and staring back at him from the communal bathroom across the way.
• he cross-dressed by wearing one of Simone's dresses discovered in an armoire, with high-heeled shoes and an ill-fitting wig that he had bought
• he found a bloody tooth in a hidden hole in the wall (plugged by cotton) behind the heavy wardrobe - and later discovered that it was a perfect match to a second tooth - the missing molar in his own bloody mouth. He slowly became hostile, paranoid, and demented (and possibly schizophrenic) and obsessively transformed (mentally and physically) into Simone

• when invited over to Stella's apartment after meeting her at a party, the drunken Trelkovsky was sexually inadequate with Stella - reminiscent of Simone's disinterest in men
• Trelkovsky exhibited other disturbing behaviors:
  • for no reason, in a park, he slapped a defenseless child in the face (who had lost his boat in the pond), calling him a "filthy little brat."
  • a bouncing soccer ball outside his window turned into a decapitated human head
  • he watched as the other tenants humiliated another disfavored tenant (wearing a joker hat and his own masked face)
  • he imagined being attacked in the hallway by one of his neighbors Madame Dioz (Jo Van Fleet)
  • he discovered hieroglyphics on the bathroom's wall
  • he stabbed at a hand reaching in through his apartment window, and cut his hand on the glass
  • he began to hallucinate other people transforming into Monsieur Zy

• he feared that other tenants in his apartment building were plotting a conspiracy, persecuting him, and changing his identity into the previous tenant so that he would repetitively follow her behavior and commit suicide:
  • "They forced her to commit suicide, I can prove it, and they're trying to do the same thing to me...They've been trying to turn me into Simone Choule."
• deranged and becoming self-destructive like Simone when he channeled her, he attempted to commit a more successful suicide (as himself and as the cross-dressed previous tenant) by hurling himself from the window. A drum-roll anticipated his leap to the pavement, and he imagined the neighbors applauding him and rabidly encouraging him to hurt himself, as he crashed through a recently-repaired glass atrium that shattered
• Trelkovsky was severely injured and lying on the courtyard's concrete floor; the neighbors were awakened by the commotion, and found him there, wondering whether he was "insane," fixated, had a "brain storm," and was unusually disturbed
• even though he was battered with a broken leg and bleeding, he dragged himself away from them and up the stairs, while calling them a "gang of killers"; he taunted the spectating onlookers and showed disgust, defiance and resolve:
  • "I'll show some blood. You wanted a clean death, didn't you?...It's going to be dirty. It was better last time, wasn't it? Well, I'm not Simone Choule. I'm Trelkovsky!"
• the crowd of onlookers was amazed to see him at his apartment window again - jumping and falling. [Note: At the instant of his death (?), did he imagine himself associated with the mummified 'patient' from the earlier scene?]
• in the next enigmatic, replicated (or mirrored) scene when the story had gone full circle, Trelkovsky was back in the hospital with Stella visiting a bandaged patient - the same scene from the film's beginning
• from the POV of the patient, the two spoke to "Simone"; Stella asked frantically: "Don't you recognize me?" As the patient let out the same disturbing cry (heard when they visited before), the camera zoomed into the blackness of the patient's mouth as the film ended.
• however, one must ask - was the patient Simone - or Trelkovsky? Was Trelkovsky actually Simone, or was he reliving or reidentifying with his earlier hospital visit from Simone's perspective - that of the mummified "patient" looking up at Trekolvsky himself?
• some theorists speculated that Trelkovsky was only an imaginary character created in the mind of the insane, hospitalized Simone