Although The Tenant has never been one of the most popular features in Roman Polański’s oeuvre, it is one of the director’s most unforgettable. Horror meets psychological drama in a story about a descent into madness, combined with a narrative about a cursed apartment, one that possesses its tenants.
The Tenant tells the story of Trelkovsky (Roman Polański), a young immigrant who moves to an apartment in a tenement house in Paris. It is not an ordinary flat – Simone Choule, its previous occupant, recently jumped out of a window and is now fighting for her life in the nearby hospital. Trelkovsky moves into the apartment, in which the would-be suicide’s belongings are still lying around, and suspicious events soon start to occur around him. With each day, Trelkovsky feels increasingly overwhelmed by his neighbours – the tenement house’s owner Monsieur Zy (the excellent Melvyn Douglas), the peevish concierge (Jo Van Fleet), and the eccentrics living next door. He will soon understand that his neighbours want to force him to taking his own life. Or perhaps it is all just the delusions of a sick mind, the next stage of a psychological illness haunting the young protagonist?
In his trademark style Polański does not give an explicit answer to this question. As he did before in Repulsion and Rosemary’s Baby, he brings a stranded character to life, one who doubts the reality surrounding him more and more with every minute. It does not matter if the quandary is the product of a delusion – what matters is the protagonist’s subjective feelings. Polański looks over his shoulder at the progressing illness. As Miłosz Drewniak writes in an essay about The Tenant:
Polański fulfils the role of a psychiatrist who locks up his patient, the main character, in a four-walled apartment and observes him, diagnosing a psychological illness.
For the film, Polański used the motifs of Roland Topor’s novel Le Locataire Chimérique. The director of Chinatown must have felt a sort of connection with Topor. They were both descendants of Polish Jews, both moved to Paris and exhibited a discernible fascination with surrealism and dark humour in their art.
The Tenant was an exceptional film in Polański’s output. After the success of Chinatown, the director opted for a more modest production process, and in exchange for a big budget he gained creative freedom. It was even more valuable because of the fact that while working on The Tenant, he could be in the company of the people he trusted the most.