Bernard Fresson

Director Roman Polanski casts himself in the lead of the psychological thriller The Tenant. Trelkovsky (Polanski) rents an apartment in a spooky old residential building, where his neighbors — mostly old recluses — eye him with suspicious contempt. Upon discovering that the apartment's previous tenant, a beautiful young woman, jumped from the window in a suicide attempt, Trelkovsky begins obsessing over the dead woman. Growing increasingly paranoid, Trelkovsky convinces himself that his neighbors plan to kill him. He even comes to the conclusion that Stella (Isabel Adjani), the woman he has fallen in love with, is in on the "plot." Ultimately, Polanski assumes the identity of the suicide victim — and inherits her self-destructive urges. Some critics found the movie tedious and overdone; others compared it to Polanski's early breakthrough, Repulsion. The film was based on Le Locataire Chimerique, a novel by Roland Topor.

Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle (Gene Hackman) is back after narrowly escaping the clutches of Alain Charnier in the first film, and Doyle's out for revenge. Taking his quest to Charnier's home turf, Doyle is determined to bring down Charnier's heroin ring and he enlists the help of the gendarmes.

During the Second Napoleonic Empire, Etienne Lantier finds employment as a coal miner in the northern French town of Montsou. He immediately encounters misery and degradation in the apalling conditions of the mine. There he meets men as unscrupulous as Chaval and, conversely, as generous as Maheu. In fact a whole range of suffering humanity, labouring under the curse of capitalism.

'Popeye' Doyle travels to Marsailles to find Alain Charnier, the drug smuggler that eluded him in New York.