The Tenant 4K 1976 Ultra HD 2160p

Story Movie

A modest office clerk Trelkovsky decides to change his place of residence and move to a new place. He rents an apartment in a dilapidated building with unfriendly neighbors. He learns from the concierge that the previous tenant, Simona, committed suicide by throwing herself out of the window. As time passes, Trelkovsky begins to think about her more and more, trying to find out as many details as possible. Soon he begins to blame the neighbors for her death.

Review 4K Movie

If 'Chinatown' has become a golden classic of cinema known to the masses, 'The Tenant' has a less high-profile fame, but has also become a classic. Unlike the neo-noir detective shot in America, the French chamber production 'The Tenant' has a more refined tasteful filling, inherent in Europeans multi-layered subtext and inherent Polanski devilishness. If the American tape involved overseas filmmakers and glued it together, in general, by Hollywood standards, then 'The Tenant' - pure European movie, close to the style of British cinema 'young angry'. The contingent of the crew are people who have worked with great directors, making classics, which is true of Bergman's cameraman Sven Nykvist and composer Philippe Sarde.

But in essence it is one of the best examples of a Polanski thriller, in which we still find the Hitchcockian tradition of atmosphere, but even more so the Polanski's own style of filming and editing. Here his artistic style is formed, it has acquired integrity, convincing, color, montage rhythm (the golden mean, so necessary for this story), music that hits the nerves, and, of course, the chaos and logical inexplicability of what is happening on the screen.

Hero. This time the main role went to the director himself. A certain emigrant, whom we know only by the surname Trelkovsky, an ordinary, almost Chekhov-like, little man. He has come to France, works in an obscure place, and rents a room in a large house inhabited by 'respectable' tenants. The movie is devoted to the metamorphosis of the hero, who acquires paranoid tendencies, persecution mania, and through the prism of schizophrenia-affected consciousness we observe the disintegration of his character's personality. It is worth adding, while trying not to pick up a contagion and not to cringe from the disgust caused by visions of Trelkovsky and his asocially inadequate (mentally unbalanced) behavior.

Wednesday. The city of Paris, in which the action of the picture takes place, is not at all the same as we are used to seeing it on tourist postcards. It is a stone city with mossy brick foundations of houses, one of which is the habitat of Trelkovsky. In the opening shot of the picture, in a long panoramic view, the camera shows us the courtyard of this house with the windows of the occupants. Trelkovsky has no sympathy for them, but it is a very cozy apartment, a good living space (although the toilet is at the other end of the floor and the piping is not all right - but this is a trifle). They themselves, these gloating old Puritans, are very afraid of noise and are ready to make a scandal about any illegal manifestation of it, so Trelkovsky has to obey the landlord with his henchmen concierges and burbling old women, and walk on tiptoe. Isn't it the latter circumstance that drives him crazy?

The atmosphere of this paranoid thriller with surrealistic tendencies is like the air of a play in a small hall of the theater of the absurd. The madness of the protagonist is conveyed by the numerous details and hints that permeate the movie, and therein lies something creepy that makes you want to run away from the screening. These are Egyptian badges, a book about mummies, a brand of cigarettes, chocolate in the morning, a nymphomaniac girlfriend, red tongues, and the devil's fire in the eyes of the inhabitants of the house in the delirium of the hero (with a tribute to 'Rosemary's Baby'). The final loop of the plot with the beginning of the tape is not only scripted but also visual (in one of Trelkovsky's last visions, the camera again gives a circular plan of the courtyard); it is also expressed in sound (the scream of horror from the lips of Simone Schul, who is wrapped in plaster), which creates the effect so beloved by Nabokov - the effect of the circle. The work acquires absolute finality and distance from the viewer, giving rise to a multitude of interpretations: was Simone really there or was it a figment of Trelkovsky's inflamed imagination? Was Trelkovsky himself or did he really always live in Simone Schul's body? The answer is up to you!