The Tenant

After the triumph of <I>Chinatown</I>, Roman Polanski"s <I>The Tenant</I> marked an unsettling return to the horrifying psychodrama of <I>Repulsion</I> and <I>Rosemary"s Baby</I>. 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, <I>The Tenant</I> has earned a place among Polanski"s finest films. <I>--Jeff Shannon</I>