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Film Description
A tale of urban paranoia and loss of identity in which Polanski plays a new tenant who takes on the rental of a flat in which the previous tenant committed suicide. Fine psychological cinema.
Very occasionally there are films which despite all their flaws exert a hermetic fascination and many years after seeing a typical 1980s rental version I was greatly a... more >
Very occasionally there are films which despite all their flaws exert a hermetic fascination and many years after seeing a typical 1980s rental version I was greatly anticipating this DVD of Polanski’s most sombre work. Perhaps only Liliana Cavani’s The Nightporter reveals something quite as faded, an imagination this repressed…? And, certainly, the credit sequence with its lace curtains, ghostly faces and creepy music lures one immediately into the aged grandeur of a Parisian tenement building. Polanski, too, is outstanding as the nervous, almost old-fashioned tenant gradually consumed by the ill-fated previous occupant; while the new transfer is immaculate, imparting an antique lustre to Sven Nykvist’s photography. But the European ambience so central to the narrative is undermined by some awful dubbing, with background characters (the well-played Monsieur Zy excepted) uttering ludicrous Americanisms!, an error of judgement that almost renders absurd the Tenant’s sepia spell. Otherwise, Polanski has assembled a puzzle so intriguing one desperately wishes he could become a Tati-like perfectionist and re-dub the offending parts into a more gallic-accented English. < less
