7.5 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 4.5 | |
Overall | 4.5 |
A quiet and inconspicuous man rents an apartment in France where the previous tenant committed suicide, and begins to suspect his landlord and neighbors are trying to subtly change him into the last tenant so that he too will kill himself.
Starring: Roman Polanski, Isabelle Adjani, Melvyn Douglas, Shelley Winters, Lila KedrovaForeign | 100% |
Horror | 86% |
Psychological thriller | 38% |
Surreal | 25% |
Drama | Insignificant |
Mystery | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Mono (48kHz, 24-bit)
French: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Mono (48kHz, 24-bit)
EN: 1571 kbps, FR: 1568 kbps
English SDH
Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A (locked)
Movie | 4.5 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 5.0 | |
Extras | 5.0 | |
Overall | 4.5 |
After directing Chinatown to great acclaim in 1974, Roman Polanski was trying to get his swashbuckler Pirates off the ground but couldn't reach an agreement with either Paramount or United Artists to get it made. Fortunately, he came across Le locataire chimérique, a novel by Roland Topor originally published in Paris in 1964. In a new interview on this Scream Factory disc, Polanski says the book had been optioned by Paramount nearly a decade earlier under the title The Tenant. The novel indeed received an English translation and was published by Doubleday in 1966. Polanski, who co-wrote the screenplay with his frequent collaborator Gérard Brach, developed the production with Paramount's then-new CEO Barry Diller.
The Tenant, Polanski's ninth feature, is the third in his so-called "Apartment Trilogy," following Repulsion (1965) and Rosemary's Baby (1968). He often prefers to make his films in either confined settings or fixed locales and The Tenant is no different. The movie is set inside an old Parisian apartment building and courtyard built inside the studio in Epinay. Trelkovsky (played by Polanski) is a draughtsman who wants to rent a flat previously occupied by Simone Choule, an Egyptologist who inexplicably jumped through her window and plunged through a pane of glass below. Trelkovsky goes to the hospital to visit the all-bandaged Simone and also meets her friend, Stella (a de-glamorized Isabelle Adjani). Trelkovsky and Stella go out for drinks and to the local cinema to see Enter the Dragon. Back at his flat, Trelkovsky hosts a party with some rowdy friends. After another tenant complains about loud noise, Trelkovsky sends them off. In the days following, the curmudgeonly landlord Monsieur Zy (Melvyn Douglas) informs Trelkovsky that's he received additional complaints from other tenants about more noise coming from his flat. But something is adrift. Trelkovsky hasn't had many guests since and his unit has been quieter. Trelkovsky finds a hole in the wall with a long tooth. He has trouble sleeping and has visions of Zy, the Concierge (Shelley Winters), Madame Dioz (Jo Van Fleet), and others from the apartment confronting him and giving him sweaty fits. Is Trelkovsky merely hallucinating or are his experiences a byproduct of an apartment with a curse on it?
Scream Factory's release presents The Tenant in its original theatrical aspect ratio of 1.85:1 on this MPEG-4 AVC-encoded BD-50. It's a welcome sight to have the film back in its native ratio since the 2003 Paramount DVD and their European counterparts (all bare bones) were framed in 1.78:1, as was the Shock Blu-ray in Australia. While not a 4K restoration, this 2K transfer was prepared from what must have been a recent scan. The image is saturated with a drab palette dominated by browns and grays. Black levels are dense and the picture shows off a thick texture. There are some white speckles in the first reel but very few artifacts thereafter. Scream encodes the feature with an average video bitrate of 27993 kbps.
Scream provides a dozen scene selections for the 125-minute movie.
Scream supplies a English DTS-HD Master Audio Dual Mono (1571 kbps, 24-bit) and a French DTS-HD Master Audio Dual Mono (1568 kbps, 24-bit). My research indicates that The Tenant was filmed and recorded in English. Isabelle Adjani delivered her lines in English but since they came out awkwardly, they were later dubbed by Kathryn Leigh Scott. I listened to both tracks and the restored monaural mixes sound very clear and crisp. Treble is sharp.
Philippe Sarde composed an unusual score that's strikingly effective. He wrote for wooden bass flutes, a string orchestra sans violins, and a solo clarinet. In the liner notes to Spanish label Quartet Records' soundtrack album, Sarde explains how he conceived the glass harmonica as a new instrument: It's made up of "a large mahogany trough full of empty glasses that the musician causes to vibrate after wetting his fingers." The music is often foreboding and dissonant, with the small orchestra holding long notes to ringing effect. The non-diegetic cue "Church" that Sarde wrote gets inside Trelkovsky's tortured mind and holds it as the camera cuts from a close-up of Trelkovsky to subjective images that flicker and then cuts back to his reaction. Sarde also wrote source music that's played at a party ("Dance at Robert's"). According to QR, the music was recently remixed and re-mastered from the original multi-track tapes for the album release and the score also sounds fresh on these two lossless tracks.
I'd been wanting to see The Tenant ever since Paramount first put it out on DVD but held off till a superior edition arrived. The wait was well worth it as Scream Factory's unofficial special edition easily tops the SD versions and Australian BD. The 2K transfer replicates the film's intended look and delivers two mono tracks that sound very clean to my ears. Bonus materials are at the level of Criterion's. I'm hoping that one day we'll receive a Director's Cut of Pirates (1986) and a US release of Death and the Maiden (1994). VERY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.
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