The tenant (1976)

I remember what it was like to watch Roman Polanski's The Tenant at the age of 14. I found the movie scary. What I recall most vividly from that viewing experience is the ominous atmosphere of the whole thing. The only images that remained with me were those in which a guy paces around a dark apartment and even that's scary as hell.
A youngish man, Trelkovsky, moves into an apartment whose previous tenant was a girl who committed suicide by hurling herself out from a window. Gradually, Trelkovsky finds his life transforming into hers. He senses that all neighbors are playing some malevolent schemes on him, that the house itself inhabits evil forces. And he gets himself a wig.
The second time around, it's still the atmosphere and style that makes the film; sinister dutch angles of stairs, moody dark colors, Sven Nykvist's cinematography - and lots of weird acting (Polanski himself acts in the leading role). Plenty of scenes that are strange and funny at the same time. In one scene, we see Trelkovsky wandering around in a park. A kid is crying because he has lost his toy boat. What does Trelkovsky do? He slaps the kid. The kid cries some more. 
It's hard to say that The Tenant is "about" anything. If the film has a topic, it is paranoia and some sort of dissolved identity.
I must confess I like this film because Polanski knows how to use simple techniques to evoke Trelkovsky's paranoid world. In plenty of scenes, the viewers sees what Trelkovsky sees. He stands at his window. It's dark outside. We see the toilet across the yard. A man is standing there, motionless. It's scenes like that which give rise to an eerie sense of dizziness, of the world falling apart. Mostly, Polanski is quite successful in doing this. Regrettably, some moments towards the end of the film don't quite match up to the rest - the illusion starts to wear out and the film is transformed into a case-study of psychology instead (plus some of the stuff is too far-out, demons and shit).  
In the end, Polanski makes us uncertain about the identity of lots of the characters. Especially the main ones. There are tons of theories about that, but I am not too sure that makes the film any more interesting ("deep") for me. After all, this film is too trashy to be taken seriously in that way. I don't think there's a set of symbols or hidden meanings here at all. A tooth in the wall is a tooth in a wall, simple as that.
The Tenant is entertaining and wonderfully excessive.