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Critical Essay by Martin Amis
The first hour of The Tenant could have gone on to become Polanski's most telling study to date of mental imbalance. Neurosis, anyway, is banal; and it is often wincingly funny: the nauseous cowering with which the neurotic reacts to the huff-and-puff of daily life can, as Polanski shows, make for a very intimate kind of dramatic irony…. Polanski's most sophisticated look at the horror genre was in the comedy Dance of the Vampires, where the conventions were reversed: frightful things are happening all about you, if only you'd turn the right way. In The Tenant, as to some extent in Cul de Sac, Repulsion and Rosemary's Baby, the baseless fears of distraught minds, once established, are abruptly given vulgar, tangible shape in the observed world. Psychosis is replaced by skull-football: this is the real banality behind a director who never quite dares to trust his wit. (p. 287)
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