The Tenant.

Some films have moments that are like passcodes or answer keys, scenes that are giveaways for intent and design, scenes that reveal in one clear moment the artist's interior like an open robe can show you a flash of a naked body. In The Tenant this happens when Polanski himself, the star of Polanski's The Tenant, arrives in the middle of the night at his semi-girlfriend's apartment. He's a mess of distress and paranoia. He's seeking shelter from the immensely bizarre and claustrophobic psychological drama that's everyday escalating in his home space, and the semi-girlfriend says yes you can stay here with me, and Polanski is so grateful that he kisses the girl. They fall back on the bed together. The girl returns the kiss. Polanski begins to cry. Cut to Polanski asleep in her bed, curled in a defensive sleeping position, and the girl moments from leaving for work, and she's explaining to Polanski that he can stay as long as he needs to.

From then to the end The Tenant is devastating. It's harrowing, it's operatic, it's comic, macabre, absurd, riveting, intense, inevitable, just and unjust, crazy and comprehensible, cinematic and powerful.

It begins with a man entering an apartment building. The first moment is a tour of a vacant room. Polanski wants to rent the room. The manager is obliging: he can have the room on the condition that the former tenant dies. She'd thrown herself out of a window - this window right here, look you can see the broken glass - and she's in the hospital now. What if she recovers? Don't worry she won't. Polanski visits the disturbingly broken body of this suicide attempt at the hospital, and this is the scene in which he meets the woman who will be his semi-girlfriend, a demented roar of pain from a hospital bed leading to a Enter the Dragon handjob and boobgrab.

I've heard The Tenant described as predictable. I'd say sometimes predictable means formulaic, but in this instance predictable means well developed and hard earned. I've heard the beginning described as slow. I'd say sometimes slow means aimless and difficult, but in this instance slow means assured and patient. So patient, and that patience, under Polanski's control, is what draws me into this film. It's what makes The Tenant stand above the thriller type that only cares about shocking the audience. I mean sometimes a quickie is nice, but sometimes a tease is incredible. And I think in The Tenant Polanski gives you a real two hour fuck, and the end of the film is one dilated, glorious orgasm of frantic and compelling horror histrionics. And the truth is that if a movie was called Man Buys Bread: The Story of a Man Who Does Nothing but Buy Bread, and the story of a man purchasing bread was explained to me in every grand and minor detail, so that I could feel and understand the passion of this bread-purchaser, and I could see the bread the way he sees the bread, and I could want the bread the ways he wants the bread, then I would love that film too. So don't tell me that The Tenant's structure is a flaw, because my white-knuckles at the end of this film are real.

The film was d.p.'d by Sven Nykvist. Polanski and Nykvist fit so well together I wish they'd formed a parallel partnership to Nykvist/Bergman. I would use the adjective 'liquid' to describe the visual aesthetics. The Tenant has the same stylistic imprints of other Polanski films from the period, but I kind of think Repulsion is like Plato, Rosemary's Baby is Socrates, and The Tenant is Aristotle. The Tenant is a learned, cumulative work that builds on Polanski's previous ruminations, and while some might prefer the rawness of Repulsion, or the courage of Rosemary's Baby, I prefer the maturity and confidence of The Tenant. I think Polanski was making The Tenant for himself, based on his tastes and likes/dislikes, he was at a point in his career where he could do that, and that this is when talented filmmakers with strong voices are able to do their best work. It makes sense. Hithcock in the 50s-60s (what if I had written to the end w/o mentioning Hitchcock? You wouldn't have taken me seriously! And while I'm being parenthetical, let's name another name that needs named: Mario Bava. Bava!), Hawks' Rio Bravo, Ford's The Searchers and The Man Who Shot Liberty Vance, Huston's Fat City, and I submit this one too, Polanski's The Tenant.