Back in Europe after CHINATOWN, Polanski played to his strengths with a REPULSION-like study of urban anxieties and mental disintegration, casting himself as the timid protagonist who rents a Parisian apartment vacant after the previous tenant’s suicide. Nothing can dispel his mounting paranoia about hostile neighbours, and loneliness turns into nightmare… The hallucinatory mood is beautifully served by Sven Nykvist’s camera and the director’s own immaculately nuanced performance.