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Film Madness: The Uncanny Return of the Repressed in Polanskl's "The Tenant"

1981; University of Texas Press; Volume: 20; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/1224833

1527-2087

Linda Williams,

Art, Politics, and Modernism

Roman Polanski's 1976 film, The Tenant, like his earlier Repulsion, is another study of the psychic alienation and rampant paranoia of a foreigner living in a cold and hostile environment. But where the French Catherine Deneuve's descent into madness seemed inexplicable, almost exotic, culminating in the irrational murder of her landlord, the Polish protagonist of The Tenant, played by Polanski himself, is an almost comic figure whose descent into madness entails an extremely awkward transformation into a woman. Trelkovsky's paranoia is more ridiculous than exotic, his symptoms are more understandable, and the final outburst of violence at the end seems altogether less terrifying if only because its sole victim is Trelkovsky himself. My purpose in what follows is to address two issues related to what could be called the filmic aesthetics of madness. The first addresses the broad question of how to situate The Tenant within the diverse tradition of films about madness; the second addresses the more specific issue of how to read the particular text of madness as it operates in this film.