The Uncanny Otherness in Polanski's Apartment Trilogy

Abstract

Auteur Roman Polanski uses metaphors and motifs repeatedly in his cinema to express his artistic personality. Polanski's Jewish identity and otherness phenomenon have significantly impacted his cinema. The Apartment trilogy comprises the films Repulsion (1965), Rosemary's Baby (1968), and The Tenant (1976), which deal with identity marginalization in Polanski's cinema. The identity of “other” in Polanski's Apartment Trilogy has been examined through auteur criticism. Characters with an identity different from the dominant culture experience the uncanniness, otherness, insecurity, loneliness and disgust of modernism in metropolitan spaces. As an auteur director, Polanski handles the Freudian uncanny and Kristevan abjection in the context of the characters' marginalization within the dominant culture.