Stunning theatrical publicity shot featuring Roman Polanski (Trelkovsky). Much effect is derived from the absurdity of the fact that all Trelkovsky wants to do is not bother anyone, yet everything Trelkovsky does is seen as an imposition!

The Tenant (French: Le locataire) is a 1976 French psychological horror thriller film directed by Roman Polanski. The film stars Polanski, Isabelle Adjani, Melvyn Douglas, and Shelley Winters. It is based upon the 1964 novel Le locataire chimérique by Roland Topor and is the last film in Polanski's "Apartment Trilogy", following Repulsion and Rosemary's Baby. The film was entered into the 1976 Cannes Film Festival and had a total of 534,637 admissions in France.

In his review of the film for The Regrettable Moment of Sincerity, Adam Lippe writes: "Many would attest that The Pianist is Polanski's most personal work, given the obvious Holocaust subject matter, but look beneath the surface, and when the window curtains are drawn aside, Polanski's The Tenant shines brightest as the work closest to his being."

Like the other two films in Polanski's Apartment Trilogy, The Tenant blurs the line between psychological thriller and horror. It garnered critical comparisons to both its contemporaries Don't Look Now (1973) by Nicolas Roeg and Stanley Kubrick's The Shining (1980). Given its production design, photography, and the bizarre scenario of a group of neighbors that appear to be preying on a new tenant's life and conspiring against him for that purpose, it has also been compared to the black comedy film Delicatessen (1991). The narrative seems to suggest a house as the malevolent source to the sinister deeds of its inhabitants, and is set in a post-apocalyptic future where all animals have died and the people of a remote decaying house resort to eating each of the house's successive new janitors.

Kafka influence
Many critics have noted The Tenant's strong Kafkaesque theme, typified by an atmosphere that is absurdly over-burdened with anxiety, confusion, guilt, bleak humor, alienation, sexual frustration and paranoia. However, the film cannot be viewed as purely driven by a Kafkaesque motif because of the numerous references to Trelkovsky's delirium and heavy drinking. This allows for more than one interpretation.

Most of the action occurs within a claustrophobic environment where dark, ominous things occur without reason or explanation to a seemingly shy protagonist, whose perceived failings as a tenant are ruthlessly pursued by what Trelkovsky himself views as an increasingly cabalistic conspiracy. Minor infringements are treated as serious breaches of his tenancy agreement, and this apparent persecution escalates after he refuses to join his neighbors in a prejudiced campaign to oust a mother with a disabled child.

"The scheming plots over matters of extraordinary pettiness and inexplicable conspiracies that go on among the neighbors to gang up on others make The Tenant probably the first Kafkaesque horror film."