The Tenant

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