The Tenant

The Tenant (Le Locataire) is a 1976 French psychological horror thriller directed by and starring Roman Polanski, from a screenplay he wrote with Gérard Brach, adapted from Roland Topor's 1964 novel Le Locataire chimérique. Trelkovsky, a quiet Polish immigrant, rents a Paris apartment whose previous occupant, Simone, threw herself from the window and lies in a coma. After visiting her in hospital and learning of her death, he becomes fixated on her fate; strange happenings around the building gradually unravel his sanity until he finds himself drawn toward the same suicidal edge.

The supporting cast includes Isabelle Adjani, Melvyn Douglas, Shelley Winters, Jo Van Fleet, Lila Kedrova and Claude Dauphin. Closing Polanski's unofficial "Apartment Trilogy" after Repulsion (1965) and Rosemary's Baby (1968), the film premiered in competition at the 1976 Cannes Film Festival. Though early critical reactions were largely hostile, it has since come to be regarded as a cult classic.