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‘The Tenant’ is a psychological puzzle

The Tenant Directed by Roman Polanski France, 1976 Featuring Roman Polanski’s last major appearance in one of his own films, The Tenant completes the director’s look at paranoid city life, begun  with 1965’s Repulsion. Polanski plays Trelkovsky, a shy man who becomes convinced that his neighbors are scheming to drive him to suicide. Like Rosemary’s …

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‘Knife in the Water’ anticipates Roman Polanski’s creeping dread

Knife in the Water Directed by Roman Polanski Poland, 1962 Certainly a stretch to categorize as horror, Roman Polanski’s debut feature anticipates the creeping dread and tense blocking that will characterize his later, truer films of the genre. Husband and wife Andrzej (Leon Niemczyk) and Krystyna (Jolanta Umecka) pick up a young hitchhiker (Zygmunt Malanowicz) …

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Alone In The Apartment: The Criterion Collection presents ‘Repulsion’

Repulsion (1965) Dir. Roman Polanski United Kingdom – 105 minutes, B&W Criterion Spine # 483 Warning: Here be spoilers. Like flies to the gooping carcass of a skinned rabbit, Repulsion invites a lot of intellectual psychobabbling that usually amounts to the same things being said by different people.  We can all pretty much agree what …

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