SHERDOG MOVIE CLUB: Week 172 - The Tenant

[europe1]

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Here's a quick list of all movies watched by the SMC. Or if you prefer, here's a more detailed examination.

Our Director and Star!
Yellow Basterd

Film Overview

Premise: A newly released prisoner is forced by the leaders of his gang to orchestrate a major crime with a brutal rival gang on the streets of Southern California.

Budget: $???

Box Office: $5.1 million.

​

Trivia
(Courtesy of IMDB)

* Along with Repulsion (1965) and Rosemary's Baby (1968) this film is part of a loose trilogy by Roman Polanski dealing with the horrors faced by apartment and city dwellers.

* Although Roman Polanski plays the leading role in the film, he is given no screen credit as an actor.

* Many of the French actors are dubbed by British equity members in US accents. They were Robert Rietty, David De Keyser, Marc Smith, Sandra Dickinson, David Healy, Annie Ross, Shane Rimmer, and Peter Mariner, among others.

* The source material for this film is the French novel "Le Locataire chimérique" by writer-artist-illustrator Roland Roland Topor, first published in France 1964. The film was made approximately twelve years later.​

Members: @europe1 @MusterX @Cubo de Sangre @FrontNakedChoke @Tufts @chickenluver @Scott Parker 27 @Yotsuya @jei @LHWBelt @moreorless87 @HARRISON_3 @Bullitt68 @HenryFlower @Zer @Rimbaud82

 

[MusterX]

The Tenant is a slow burn thriller that kept me interested enough but it seemed like there were issues with the plot and the payoff. Roger Ebert said of The Tenant, "The Tenant's" not merely bad -- it's an embarrassment. If it didn't have the Polanski trademark, we'd probably have to drive miles and miles and sit in a damp basement to see it." As well as, "The Tenant" might have made a decent little 20-minute sketch for one of those British horror anthology films in which Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing and Vincent Price pick up a little loose change. As a film by Polanski, it's unspeakably disappointing."

I'm not as hard on the film as Ebert but I do see where it had some problems. The Egyptian clues that led nowhere seemed to be a problem. The original tenant of the apartment that committed suicide was reading a history of Egyptology, and there was Egyptian hieroglyphics in the bathroom, but what did it really mean? A red herring? A dead end? Are we just watching a man descend into madness and there was no cult at all? Did he just hallucinate all of it?

If he just hallucinated all of it then how did his tooth get pulled and put in the wall? And then we get that ending where he throws himself out the window while all the other tenants cheer him on while wearing tuxedo's and evening gowns. He then crawls back up the stairs and throws himself out the window a second time, which still doesn't kill him so he ends up in the hospital like the previous tenant, Simone, with the same bandages, same missing tooth, and same scream to end the film. The ending did seem a bit Hitchcockian to me.

Trelkovsky was fucking up no matter how you look at it. He had a nice girl in Stella taking care of him and giving him the business but instead he decided to cross dress and heave himself out a window a couple times.

I liked the film but was also disappointed in the film. It would have been much more satisfying if there was a cult that drove him to madness rather than just the viewer following a character who is slowing descending into paranoia and madness. I'm not even really sure if there was a cult or not.

 

[chickenluver]

I think it's pretty funny (not in a haha way) that in our week where the director is controversial enough to have various members opt out of participating that the winning film is the one where said director also plays the lead character.

Premise: A newly released prisoner is forced by the leaders of his gang to orchestrate a major crime with a brutal rival gang on the streets of Southern California.

Now you're just messing with me

Anyway, I haven't watched this yet, so more to come later.

 

[Zer]

The Tenant is a slow burn thriller that kept me interested enough but it seemed like there were issues with the plot and the payoff. Roger Ebert said of The Tenant, "The Tenant's" not merely bad -- it's an embarrassment. If it didn't have the Polanski trademark, we'd probably have to drive miles and miles and sit in a damp basement to see it." As well as, "The Tenant" might have made a decent little 20-minute sketch for one of those British horror anthology films in which Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing and Vincent Price pick up a little loose change. As a film by Polanski, it's unspeakably disappointing."

I'm not as hard on the film as Ebert but I do see where it had some problems. The Egyptian clues that led nowhere seemed to be a problem. The original tenant of the apartment that committed suicide was reading a history of Egyptology, and there was Egyptian hieroglyphics in the bathroom, but what did it really mean? A red herring? A dead end? Are we just watching a man descend into madness and there was no cult at all? Did he just hallucinate all of it?

If he just hallucinated all of it then how did his tooth get pulled and put in the wall? And then we get that ending where he throws himself out the window while all the other tenants cheer him on while wearing tuxedo's and evening gowns. He then crawls back up the stairs and throws himself out the window a second time, which still doesn't kill him so he ends up in the hospital like the previous tenant, Simone, with the same bandages, same missing tooth, and same scream to end the film. The ending did seem a bit Hitchcockian to me.

Trelkovsky was fucking up no matter how you look at it. He had a nice girl in Stella taking care of him and giving him the business but instead he decided to cross dress and heave himself out a window a couple times.

I liked the film but was also disappointed in the film. It would have been much more satisfying if there was a cult that drove him to madness rather than just the viewer following a character who is slowing descending into paranoia and madness. I'm not even really sure if there was a cult or not.

I haven't rewatched it yet, but I'm a big fan of The Tenant. Definitely though when I first watched it I thought the plot was a huge mess and I didn't really understand it. However I thought it was fascinating in terms of environment and mood where shit just passively gains a momentum without real input from a coherent story.

 

[MusterX]

I haven't rewatched it yet, but I'm a big fan of The Tenant. Definitely though when I first watched it I thought the plot was a huge mess and I didn't really understand it. However I thought it was fascinating in terms of environment and mood where shit just passively gains a momentum without real input from a coherent story.

Yea, its weird in the way that I can say I liked it, despite its shortcomings which appear to be numerous. The interactions between Trelkovsky and the tenants seemed interesting. His unusual infiltration into the previous tenants group of friends was interesting because you just know anytime you do something like that its a bad idea. He didn't tell them that he didn't know or did know Simon, he just let them believe that he did. He parlay'ed that shit into a hook up with Stella but just couldn't keep his shit together. It always circles back to the question of his own lunacy or was he impaired by a cult. If we just caught him at a bad moment in his life when he spiraled out of control then how did his tooth get removed and put in the wall? If he did it to himself I would like to have seen a flashback or something when he remembered doing it. Maybe as he is falling in slow motion out the window.

 

[europe1]

Now you're just messing with me

I swear to God I fixed it this time. Why does this keep happening!? Gaaah!!!

 

[MusterX]

I swear to God I fixed it this time. Why does this keep happening!? Gaaah!!!

Spoiler

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Spoiler

Spoiler

 

[europe1]

Okay, I haven't finished watching this movie yet, but Bellator is on so I'll have to finish it tomorrow.

However... I just feel the need to point something out.

So, at the beginning of this movie, we have a scene where this girl and the main character visit her close friend at the hospital. Said friend has become so damaged and crippled that she has turned into a genuine Egyptian mummy.

So the girl goes to a cafe to have a cry about it. What's the thing she instantly wants to do in a heart-wrenching situation like this?

Go to a freaking Bruce Lee movie with a guy she's just encountered and have torrid cinema-sex with him in the front row!

Right after morning and lamenting the incoming death of her friend!

This is the sort of brilliant insight into the female psyche that I expect out of a Polanski film!<Lmaoo>

I bet if Polanski had made Taxi Driver, then Betsy wouldn't at all have been mortified over Travis Bickle taking her to a porn-theatre on their first date!<45>

I mean, wtf?

 

[MusterX]

Go to a freaking Bruce Lee movie with a guy she's just encountered and have torrid cinema-sex with him in the front row!

Right after morning and lamenting the incoming death of her friend!

This is the sort of brilliant insight into the female psyche that I expect out of a Polanski film!Lmaoo

Funeral is the place to score bruh.

 

[Cubo de Sangre]

I think it's pretty funny (not in a haha way) that in our week where the director is controversial enough to have various members opt out of participating that the winning film is the one where said director also plays the lead character.

For the record, I didn't watch it because I've been on vacation. Art should be taken for art's sake.

 

[Bullitt68]

This movie sucked. Like, a lot. This was a terrible, terrible movie, yet Polanski's direction wasn't the worst part. Far worse was his acting. Jesus Christ, cast a real fucking lead you narcissistic douche.

Anyway, this was interesting to see just based on the similarities with The Shining. Zer, I don't mean to be a dick, but, in my book, The Tenant is to The Shining what Solaris is to 2001: One's amateur hour and the other's a masterclass. If Kubrick got anything from The Tenant besides confidence that he could do this a billion times better then, well, whatever got him to the plate, I guess. There were one or two cool scenes - specifically when he finds the tooth in the wall and when he sees himself spying on himself - but on the whole The Tenant was painfully long and boring and anticlimactic and ultimately pointless. It just felt too disconnected, like why the fuck am I supposed to care about what I'm watching? What was the point? What was supposed to be the takeaway?

If it weren't for the Enter the Dragon handjob scene, I'd say that this was a straight-up dog shit movie, but Bruce Lee being on the screen automatically scored it a couple of desperately needed cool points.

The Tenant is a slow burn thriller

All slow and no burn or thrill, if you ask me.

Roger Ebert said of The Tenant, "The Tenant's" not merely bad -- it's an embarrassment. If it didn't have the Polanski trademark, we'd probably have to drive miles and miles and sit in a damp basement to see it." As well as, "The Tenant" might have made a decent little 20-minute sketch for one of those British horror anthology films in which Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing and Vincent Price pick up a little loose change. As a film by Polanski, it's unspeakably disappointing."

Again, the fact that we get to watch Enter the Dragon at one point keeps me from going this hard. But I'm also not going to disagree.

It would have been much more satisfying if there was a cult that drove him to madness rather than just the viewer following a character who is slowing descending into paranoia and madness. I'm not even really sure if there was a cult or not.

In other words, you would've liked the movie better if there'd been a coherent plot? Count me in on that, too.

I thought it was fascinating in terms of environment and mood where shit just passively gains a momentum

David Lynch can get away with this because he's the mood master. Polanski, not so much. By the end, when he was in full on Caitlyn Jenner mode, I just chuckled my way through to the credits with a bemused WTF expression.

Okay, I haven't finished watching this movie yet, but Bellator is on so I'll have to finish it tomorrow.

However... I just feel the need to point something out.

So, at the beginning of this movie, we have a scene where this girl and the main character visit her close friend at the hospital. Said friend has become so damaged and crippled that she has turned into a genuine Egyptian mummy.

So the girl goes to a cafe to have a cry about it. What's the thing she instantly wants to do in a heart-wrenching situation like this?

Go to a freaking Bruce Lee movie with a guy she's just encountered and have torrid cinema-sex with him in the front row!

Right after morning and lamenting the incoming death of her friend!

This is the sort of brilliant insight into the female psyche that I expect out of a Polanski film!<Lmaoo>

I bet if Polanski had made Taxi Driver, then Betsy wouldn't at all have been mortified over Travis Bickle taking her to a porn-theatre on their first date!<45>

I mean, wtf?

All I was thinking: Should I aspire to getting jerked off while watching a Bruce Lee movie or should I steer clear of the experience? There was some hanky panky involving an ex and a Seagal movie a couple of years back, but if I were watching Enter the Dragon on the big screen and got jerked off like that, I'd be worried about the inevitable post-film/handjob conversation, namely having to lie in response to the question "Did you cum that fast because of me or Bruce Lee?"

Spoiler

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[europe1]

I liked the film but was also disappointed in the film. It would have been much more satisfying if there was a cult that drove him to madness rather than just the viewer following a character who is slowing descending into paranoia and madness. I'm not even really sure if there was a cult or not.

Honestly MusterX. You come off like one of those diplomats who are forced to sound super cordial because the Talibans have kidnapped 500 American citizens and will behead them if you piss them off. ie: sounding nice but clearly thinking about murder.

The original tenant of the apartment that committed suicide was reading a history of Egyptology, and there was Egyptian hieroglyphics in the bathroom, but what did it really mean?

At first, I was guessing that there was going to be some sort of plot concerning the Egyptian notions of the soul (with the girl appearing almost mummified in her bandage being the first hint of this). Those old Pyramid-builders had thought that people had multiple souls, one of which could linger on earth (the Ka). With Polansk starting to adopt some of the previous tenant's mannerisms (to the point of transvestitism) I assumed that the girl's Ka had somehow become embodied in him, and that his visions of the other tenants and behaviour were due to his soul being merged with hers.

But, of course, all that amounted to nothing.

Did he just hallucinate all of it?

Yeah that's the way I'm leaning. But there doesn't really seem to be a reason for his mental breakdown. His descent into crazy town seems so disconnected from anything that's happening. Part of that is no doubt Polanski being such a terrible actor, as @Bullitt68 mentioned.

But honestly, with Polanski directing, writing and staring in this movie... I'm inclined to think that this is a window into his mind and emotions. He's just obsessed with cults and paranoia to the point of delusion. I mean, we're talking about the guy who thinks that there is a conspiracy against him in real life when in reality it's just people hating him for being a sexual predator and getting away with it. He's just fine-tuned to see a conspiracy no matter what's occurring.

Roger Ebert said of The Tenant, "The Tenant's" not merely bad -- it's an embarrassment.

See! Even Mr: "Full Metal Jacket is a thumbs down movie" gets that this is crap!

However I thought it was fascinating in terms of environment and mood where shit just passively gains a momentum without real input from a coherent story.

For the first half, I was kind of on-board with this. He arrives at this apartment-complex and everyone is acting weird and hostile. But then, after a while, you realize that they're just... old and bitter. There is nothing special to it. And then all that mounted tensions evaporate like a fart.

The Tenant is to The Shining what Solaris is to 2001: One's amateur hour and the other's a masterclass.

Oh go and eat a dirty shoe!

Even if you hate Solaris then you can't possibly think that it's as terrible as this piece of crap!

but on the whole The Tenant was painfully long and boring and anticlimactic and ultimately pointless. It just felt too disconnected, like why the fuck am I supposed to care about what I'm watching? What was the point? What was supposed to be the takeaway?

All I was thinking: Should I aspire to getting jerked off while watching a Bruce Lee movie or should I steer clear of the experience? There was some hanky panky involving an ex and a Seagal movie a couple of years back, but if I were watching Enter the Dragon on the big screen and got jerked off like that, I'd be worried about the inevitable post-film/handjob conversation, namely having to lie in response to the question "Did you cum that fast because of me or Bruce Lee?"

You know, Bullitt. When I first made that original post I thought to myself "I should sneak some sort of Bullitt joke into this post". But then I thought. "No! Bullitt is not a stereotype but a human being! He has nuances and facets and a sense of decorum just like the rest of us! He wouldn't dream of having sex during a Bruce Lee film, surely!"

And then you go and prove me the fuck wrong!

 

[Bullitt68]

Oh go and eat a dirty shoe!

Even if you hate Solaris then you can't possibly think that it's as terrible as this piece of crap!

No, Solaris isn't anywhere near as terrible as The Tenant. That analogy was meant to specify a kind of relationship between the two film pairs, not a ratio of quality to lack thereof shared between the two pairs.

I do take my share (and a lot of other people's shares) of shots at Tarkovsky, but I'm not that much of a hater

You know, Bullitt. When I first made that original post I thought to myself "I should sneak some sort of Bullitt joke into this post". But then I thought. "No! Bullitt is not a stereotype but a human being! He has nuances and facets and a sense of decorum just like the rest of us! He wouldn't dream of having sex during a Bruce Lee film, surely!"

And then you go and prove me the fuck wrong!

What can I say? I like to think that I have a little bit of class, that I'm a little distinguished, but, at the end of the day, I'm a man - a man who discovered the wheel, built the Eiffel Tower out of metal and brawn, and wouldn't say no to fooling around during Enter the Dragon.

Spoiler

Spoiler

 

[MusterX]

Honestly MusterX. You come off like one of those diplomats who are forced to sound super cordial because the Talibans have kidnapped 500 American citizens and will behead them if you piss them off. ie: sounding nice but clearly thinking about murder.



At first, I was guessing that there was going to be some sort of plot concerning the Egyptian notions of the soul (with the girl appearing almost mummified in her bandage being the first hint of this). Those old Pyramid-builders had thought that people had multiple souls, one of which could linger on earth (the Ka). With Polansk starting to adopt some of the previous tenant's mannerisms (to the point of transvestitism) I assumed that the girl's Ka had somehow become embodied in him, and that his visions of the other tenants and behaviour were due to his soul being merged with hers.

But, of course, all that amounted to nothing.



Yeah that's the way I'm leaning. But there doesn't really seem to be a reason for his mental breakdown. His descent into crazy town seems so disconnected from anything that's happening. Part of that is no doubt Polanski being such a terrible actor, as @Bullitt68 mentioned.

But honestly, with Polanski directing, writing and staring in this movie... I'm inclined to think that this is a window into his mind and emotions. He's just obsessed with cults and paranoia to the point of delusion. I mean, we're talking about the guy who thinks that there is a conspiracy against him in real life when in reality it's just people hating him for being a sexual predator and getting away with it. He's just fine-tuned to see a conspiracy no matter what's occurring.



See! Even Mr: "Full Metal Jacket is a thumbs down movie" gets that this is crap!



For the first half, I was kind of on-board with this. He arrives at this apartment-complex and everyone is acting weird and hostile. But then, after a while, you realize that they're just... old and bitter. There is nothing special to it. And then all that mounted tensions evaporate like a fart.



Oh go and eat a dirty shoe!

Even if you hate Solaris then you can't possibly think that it's as terrible as this piece of crap!







You know, Bullitt. When I first made that original post I thought to myself "I should sneak some sort of Bullitt joke into this post". But then I thought. "No! Bullitt is not a stereotype but a human being! He has nuances and facets and a sense of decorum just like the rest of us! He wouldn't dream of having sex during a Bruce Lee film, surely!"

And then you go and prove me the fuck wrong!

I'm just going to say this, about all of that ^. I was disappointed with The Tenant. I've seen worse films but it was disappointing nonetheless. The main problem is that the ending was shit. I get that Polanski was showing a man's descent into paranoia and madness, and it was from his perspective that we watched it happen, which pretty much made it unclear what was actually happening. As the viewer, I'm looking for the "Egyptian blood cult" payout and it just never happens and there were too many ambiguous plot points and red herrings that led nowhere. Am I to assume he removed his own tooth? We didn't even get a gnarly flashback of him with a pair of pliers doing the deed on himself.

With Angel Heart we got the opposite sort of ending where at least we got to see Johnny Favorite have flashbacks of the truth when his demise was upon him. We got no such flashbacks with Trelkovsky which revealed the truth.

 

[europe1]

Also, Polanski is a cuck for thinking he could ever top Orson Wells mad room-trashing skillz

 

[JayPettryMMA]

Grief is a power motivator, even for romance. Like the beginning of this film, witnessing your friend in the brink of death, so let's go grab a bite and watch Bruce Lee and get something out of your system. It was the precursor to True Romance, where they fell in love over Sonny Chiba films. Although there wasn't really love, and it quickly turned into something else.

This was not a particularly enjoyable movie. It went on far too long, didn't really go anywhere, the plot was in tatters, Polanski should have actually gotten someone to act instead of trying to do it all himself, and his descent into madness? Don't buy it.

There were some strange and slightly compelling moments, but they were few and far between and didn't make the journey worth it. Why was the tooth in the wall, and what did that symbolize? At this point in the film, I didn't care to know. There was no story to follow. He had overly sensitive neighbors that banged on the walls any time he made a sound.

You know what other apartment film with nasty neighbors I completely and outright hated? Duplex. If that movie were ever nominated I would actually abstain from watching it, and that's saying something because of some of the films we've had to watch along the way like that Hitler "comedy," that Coonskin dreck or that movie where Harry Potter's corpse farts.

I looked the clock a lot during this picture. If I watched it before, it was forgettable enough that it didn't stick with me in any way. It has a few moments where it seems like the precursor to Fight Club, but nothing lands like it should. Was he crazy the whole time, like when he was strangling himself thinking someone else was doing it? Was it a gradual thing? Why were people always staring at the bathroom, until he was watching himself or whatever? Do we care? I don't. One thing's for sure, I did not get the vibe that this was proto-Shining. A few parallels, maybe, but that's to be expected for films in similar genres that came out around the same time (76 to 80).

5/10, and I'm glad it's over.