Ever since Knife in the Water, [Roman Polanski's] career has largely gravitated round the problem of reconciling certain formal interests with the more 'saleable' sides of his artistic persona (principally black humour and a taste for Grand Guignol). It is significant that What?, the film where his formal concerns are probably most evident, might well be the least critically and commercially successful of his efforts to date; if satire, according to George S. Kaufman, is what closes in New Haven, formalism in 'mainstream' cinema can't even hope for an East Orange preview unless it sneaks in under another label, usually stylistic or thematic. In the case of Polanski, this taboo seems to have brought about a kind of schizophrenia no less troubling than some of his disordered characters—a sense of cross-purposes that finally splits The Tenant into virtually dissociated sections.

Film No. 1, roughly the first half, exhibits...