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Chinatown (1974)

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4 reviews

Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

The hard-boiled private eye coolly strolls a few steps ahead of the audience. The slapstick detective gets everything wrong and then pratfalls first over the finish line anyway. Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson) is neither - instead he's a hard-boiled private eye who gets everything wrong. Jake snaps tabloid-ready photos of an adulterous love nest that's no such thing. He spies a distressed young woman through a window and mistakes her for a hostage. He finds bifocals in a pond and calls them Exhibit A of marital murder, only the glasses don't belong to the victim and the wife hasn't killed anyone. Yet when he confronts ostensible black widow Evelyn Mulwray (Dunaway) with the spectacular evidence, the cigarette between his teeth lends his voice an authoritative Bogie hiss. Throughout, Gittes sexes up mediocre snooping with blithe arrogance and sarcastic machismo. It's the actor's default mode, sure, but in 1974 it hadn't yet calcified into Schtickolson, and in 1974 a director (Polanski), a screenwriter (Towne) and a producer (Evans) could decide to beat a genre senseless and dump it in the wilds of Greek tragedy. 'You see, Mr Gits,' depravity incarnate Noah Cross (Huston) famously explains, 'most people never have to face the fact that, at the right time and the right place, they're capable of anything.' As is Chinatown. The last gunshot here is the sound of the gate slamming on the Paramount lot of Evans' halcyon reign, and as the camera rears back to catch Jake's expression, the dolly lists and shivers - an almost imperceptible sob of grief and recognition, but not a tear is shed. JWin.

Author: JWin

Time Out Film Guide

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User reviews of this film

Ray said...

Posted on Nov 26 2010 17:00 In my opinion the original reviewer wasnt a fan of Nicholson and this impinged on their enjoyment of the picture. In my opinion he is in early 70's Jack mode and me having the benefit of hindsight I would have to say its excellent to watch him consume Gettes with his fierce appetite. But in this perspective shall we look back in forty odd years about DiCaprio's showing in Shutter Island? its unlikely...
Polanski was never better than this, no question...at the risk of sounding obvious check out Peter Biskind's piece about the film in his book Easy riders raging bulls, I read it again the other day and almost shed a tear for the lost days of Towne and his glorious indulgences.
Five stars...six if they had them

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Jeff said...

Posted on Mar 29 2010 19:23 About as perfect a screenplay as was ever made. 35 years after its release as a "sort of" Noir film, it now defines that genre's perfection. Every role is cast perfectly. Every scene concise and flawlessly positioned. With the soundtrack, you really feel like you're living in 1930's Los Angeles watching events unfold!

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Technoguy said...

Posted on Oct 21 2008 17:16 The Rating,of course!

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Technoguy said...

Posted on Oct 21 2008 12:04 Chinatown
This is a remarkable film, possibly the best work of it’s director, Polanski, it’s leading actor, Nicholson, and it’s screenwriter, Towne. The film is bathed in sun-drenched landscapes suggesting dehydration and water scarcity. This film works at leisurely
pace and is a loving recreation of 30s noir.Jake Gittes is a well-dressed private eye
who has a dark past as a Chinatown cop he’d rather not talk about. As played by
Nicholson he is a cynical, cool operator with a hint of vulnerability and makes enough to hire two co-workers. He works in the field of divorce and adultery. The title
is more about a state of mind: everybody does as little as possible and if you help people you make sure you hurt them. But the film ends in Chinatown. The main subject is water shortages and the corrupt diversion of water supplies from the LA
populace to irrigate orange groves. There is also land theft going on: bought cheaply and sold at enormously inflated prices. Against this public corruption there is a story
of incest and sexual scandal, all coming together in the figure of Noah Cross(Huston)
played malevolently with great swaggering malice. He “owns” the future and pulls all the strings, leading to murder of Hollis Mulwray, his business partner and chief engineer of the LA Water Department . Hollis’s wife, Evelyn(Dunnaway), sets Gittes
on the trail of what happened. She is a very alluring femme fatale with many secrets
which she slowly reveals to Gittes. She is Cross’s daughter and she seems to know
about the young woman her husband was supposed to be having an affair with. We
see Nicholson change from a dapper,witty , charming teller of jokes to a man who
gets in over his head and becomes bloodied,bowed but doggedly determined to
unravel the whole sorry mess.
The cinematography is excellent with low horizon wide screen vistas of muted colours and radiant light. We are between the desert and the sea with low slung
architecture and nothing to blot out the sunlight but shadow.The music is jagged and
drawn out. This is Polanski’s first Hollywood film since the murder of his wife
Sharon Tate in 1969. It was also with the forthcoming sex trial going to be his last.
We see what his future might have been. He also imbues the film with Greek Tragedy
giving it the darkest(and best) ending possible,taking your breath away. He plays a mean cameo role as the midget who slices Nicholson’s nose. Faye Dunnaway is
remarkable in the role of a patrician lady with a dark vulnerability. Nicholson never
acted better, with ‘The Passenger’ and ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’ ahead.
The script is lean, tight and full of witty lines(it went on to win Oscar for screenplay).
This is real noir without one cliché and real backbone and bite. Polanski’s personal
tragedies have a great bearing on the crushing despondency of the outcome.

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