Even without reading the book this film is based on, you can tell that the existential dread & modern paranoia in Roland Topor’s novel are secondhand goods, lifted to varying degree from Dostoevsky, Gogol, Kafka, Camus . . . you know the list. But if the novel is less than original, Roman Polanski’s first-rate film adaptation certainly is, possibly the best of his lesser known works. (Polanski’s last two for Paramount were ROSEMARY’S BABY/’68 and CHINATOWN/’74; imagine the consternation when this showed up!) Polanski stars in an unnerving study as an everyman figure who takes over the apartment of a female suicide victim only to find himself helplessly falling into the spirit & ways of the former tenant. Surrounded by a building’s worth of living gargoyles (disturbingly/amusingly cast with Supporting Oscar winners: Shelley Winters; Lila Kedrova; Jo Van Fleet; Melvyn Douglas), he politely, but ineffectually fights against the inevitable loss of self when not attempting to discover the mystery of the communal toilet directly across from his window. What are those people doing there, standing for hours and staring at him. And when he does go to investigate, his doppelgänger stares back. No Exit. (Sorry, Sartre.) As a friend of the tenant who becomes a new girlfriend, Isabel Adjani overworks her inner Diane Keaton, but everyone else is spot on, especially at a ghastly housewarming party with Polanski’s awful office mates as noisy guests. Ignore the tag ending, something Fritz Lang might have arranged, but until then, this is thrillingly good. Plus Philippe Sarde’s score and Sven Nykvist’s miraculously subtle/expressionistic lighting.
DOUBLE-BILL: Kafka/Welles’ THE TRIAL/’63; Camus/Visconti’s THE STRANGER/’67; Melville/Friedman’s BARTLEBY/’70 - all on similar wavelengths.
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