Roman Polanski’s The Tenant (1976)
The Tenant isn’t the first film I think of when the name Roman Polanski is mentioned. The director’s 1976 film strikes me more as a curiosity. Does its central character, Trelkovsky, out of all the characters in Polanski’s films, most represent the the real Roman Polanski? Parallels are easily drawn; it seems certainly a strong case of a filmmaker’s identification with a character. And that’s The Tenant’s attraction. We could well be watching a surreal impression of Polanski’s timorous life. On this episode of the Diabolique Webcast, J. P. Ouillette joins David Kleiler and me to discuss The Tenant (which will hopefully someday be released on Blu-ray; until then, there’s Paramount’s 2002 DVD release).