Chinatown

Rating:
Summary: THE CHILDREN OF NOAH
Review: In my opinion, CHINATOWN is the last masterpiece presented by polish director Roman Polanski. After this 1973 movie, Polanski will shoot good if not excellent movies that nevertheless won't match such references as REPULSION or CUL-DE-SAC directed in the sixties.

CHINATOWN is the one-time gathering of a director, a producer and a screenwriter who joined for creating a common project. This situation would hardly happen nowadays ; cinema is becoming so dependent on economic issues that movies all look the same and hardly translate into images the genuine vision of a director. Just think that under the severe studio laws of the 30's, 40's and 50's, such talented directors as Alfred Hitchcock, Vincente Minnelli or Fritz Lang were able to create a personal cinematographic world notwithstanding the studio pressures. On the contrary, less than ten american directors in activity can be considered today as authors-directors. And, for the most of them, they are growing very old.

Even if you are not particularly fond of the film noir genre, you cannot neglect CHINATOWN and its story of a private detective Jack " Jake Gittes " Nicholson searching for the truth in a Los Angeles sweating corruption and hidden sins. He will have to face another Hollywood giant - John Huston - before giving up in a pessimist finale à la ... Huston.

A DVD for your library.

Rating:
Summary: Intense Film Noir
Review: Chinatown was inspired by the great film noir genre that was popular in the 1940's. The film not only draws inspiration from those films, it outdoes them and is the best film noir ever made. Jack Nicholson stars as J.J. Gittes a small time, Los Angeles P.I. He is investigating the goings on with the water problem in the L.A. area. Along the way he becomes entangles with Evelyn Mulwray (Faye Dunaway). Robert Towne's brilliant screenplay has numerous plot twists and the ending is completely unexpected. Mr. Nicholson is superb as the put upon Gittes and Ms. Dunaway is luminous and mysterious as the femme fatale. John Huston is sinister as Evelyn's father and director Roman Polanski leads us through the plot with aplomb. A true movie making benchmark and one the 70's brightest movie moments.

Rating:
Summary: One of the oldest stories: water + deserts = big money
Review: A great period piece about a struggle many desert areas have encountered over the years - who should get the water. Many towns in CA, and Idaho, have gone through similar big-bucks struggles. Chinatown has aged wonderfully, like some fine piece of art deco.

Rating:
Summary: Forget "The Pianist" and buy Polanski's masterpiece...
Review: With all the Oscar hoopla this past year around director Roman Polanski's sprawling, if flawed "The Pianist," one would think that it's the only Polanski movie out there. Well, if you've seen "The Pianist," you've seen a Holocaust movie like the rest of 'em. Take a trip back to Polanski's 1974 movie "Chinatown" and forget all you know.
Who knew a movie about a water conspiracy would be so nail-bitingly intriguing, and who'd a thought that screenwriter Robert Towne could take an old, dying genre (the "gumshoe" movie) and turn it into arguably the best screenplay this side of "Citizen Kane" and "All About Eve"? It's all here, with Jack Nicholson as smooth private eye Jake Gittes, and Faye Dunaway as the cryptic Evelyn Mulwray. Look closely, though. As "Chinatown" unfolds, it looks like it's going to be the typical detective movie, but twists and turns in the film's complicated narrative turn a simple San Fransisco water conspiracy into a twisted, perverse, nightmare that reeks of the Electra complex.
Yes, "The Maltese Falcon" has the style that set a trend, and "The Big Sleep" juggles plot strands like a sideshow freak, but "Chinatown" adds a tragic depth to its narrative that was never seen in such a movie and has never been seen since. Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway are no Nick and Nora Charles - there's a deep secret lying beneath it all that makes the movie a haunting and unforgettable experience. Dunaway hides the film's tragedy well, revealing it in an infamous scene that proves this is the finest work she's ever done. And Nicholson. Drawn slowly into a twisted web of corruption and deceit, he seems almost too smart for it, but Towne's script proves that there is a heart beneath his inquisitive glare, and it, along with all of ours, is broken in the film's devastating finale.
If you're into gumshoe flicks, this is the best one out there, but it also stands as one of the finest American films of all time. Just look at the film's ending - though "American," it carries a tragic, "European" touch that was no doubt a product of the painful history of Polanski. In a way, this movie relays the torture and pain of his Holocaust experience in a better fashion than "The Pianist." Even without digging into director's intentions, the final product of the movie is haunting, tragic, and won't get out of your head for days. One of the great lines of the film is "Forget it, Jake, it's Chinatown." Fortunately, forgetting "Chinatown" is something anyone that ever sees it will never be able to do.

Rating:
Summary: Takes classic film noir detective story to new heights
Review: This 1974 film takes the classic film noir detective movie to new heights. Yes, there is murder, scandal and lots of lies. But yet Jack Nicholson, cast as a private eye, is a sympathetic character. There's one scene in which the director, Roman Polanski, playing a bit part as a thug, rips open Nicholson's nose with a knife. This is the kind of wound that makes the audience grimace every time someone refers to it in the film. Faye Dunaway is cast as the femme fatale. She's beautiful, of course, and it's hard to take our eyes off of her. She's a woman of mystery, but little by little we glimpse her humanity. And by the time her secret is revealed, she's won everyone's heart.

Based on a real life scandal in Los Angeles in 1908, another underlying theme is about water and power in this desert city. The action takes place in the 1930s, and the details of that period of time are well portrayed, right down to Faye Dunaway's shaved and penciled eyebrows. The screenplay won an Academy Award and I can understand why. It was tightly written and revealed details that moved the plot forward at just the right pace. I sat there fascinated, not wanting to take my eyes off the screen, trying to figure out what would happen next and constantly surprised by the next twist and turn. John Huston is cast in the role of a wealthy landowner with a huge secret of his own. He's a fine actor and his presence on the screen added depth to the whole production.

The DVD has a special interview with the writer, Robert Towne, as well as Roman Polanski. This added to my enjoyment of the film and provided further insight about its production. Definitely recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Forget it, Jake! It's Chinatown!
Review: The final last words off a legendary film. Before self-bannishment, Roman Polanski developed this classic who done it. Jack Nicholson continued to give one great performance after another during the early 70's with this one setting the stage for an Academy Award the next year. Another great performance was John Huston as the sinister father. This is one movie I could continue to watch over and over and over. It's great filmaking!

Rating:
Summary: No superlative can do it justice
Review: A wonderfully brooding, suspenseful revisitation of the land of film noir, Chinatown is not only one of the greatest detective films, but one of the most perfectly constructed of all films. With Polanski's brilliant direction, Towne's intricate screenplay, and Nicholson's and Dunaway's tour de force performances, the film stands as one of the best of the 1970s.
The plot revolves around Gittes (Nicholson), a Chandleresque private eye who specializes in the most distasteful of detective enterprises--snooping after straying spouses. After being duped by a woman pretending to be the wife of the city water commissioner, Gittes meets the man's real wife, Evelyn Mulwray (Dunaway), but before long she ends up a widow.

Drawn into these strange goings-on, Gittes follows a jigsaw puzzle of clues that leads to Mulwray's father, Cross (Huston). Cross has involved himself in the "future" of Los Angeles by engineering a plot to divert the city's water supply for his own gain. Besides telling a gripping story involving incest and political graft, Chinatown recaptures the atmosphere of Los Angeles, 1937-the cars, clothes, and buildings, right down to the barber chairs (kudos to production designer Richard Sylbert and costumer Anthea Sylbert).

The tone and flavor of this film evoke strong memories of b/w noir mysteries, yet it stands singularly on its own merits. Even the muted color cinematography (normally antithetical to the tenets of noir) is evocative and apppropriate. Interestingly, Towne's script included not a single scene set in Chinatown--initially a metaphorical state of mind rather than a specific place.

Look for director Polanski as the thug who pokes a switchblade up Nicholson's nostril while uttering the infamous line, "You know what happens to nosy fellows? They lose their noses." Another highlight: Dunaway's "sister... daughter... sister... daughter" routine, a camp classic much parodied since. Chinatown earned 11 Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, but only Towne took home a statuette for his cynical screenplay.

Rating:
Summary: THIS IS WHAT FILM IS SUPPOSED TO BE
Review: The mid-1970s saw a spate of "government conspiracy" films, all with liberal themes that emanated from Watergate. None of them were about Kennedy stealing the 1960 election. Hmm.
"Chinatown" (1974) may be the best screenplay ever written. A historical look at 1930s Los Angeles, it actually condensed events from the 1900s with events that, uh, never happened but made for good drama. Written by L.A. native Robert Towne, directed by Roman Polanski, produced by Evans and starring Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunnaway and famed director John Huston, it told the story of how Los Angeles became a metropolis. In Towne's version, Huston "owns" the L.A. Department of Water & Power with a character based on actual L.A. City engineer William Mulholland. Mulholland had orchestrated the political deal which built the aqueduct that brought water from the Owens Valley into the L.A. Basin, allowing millions of Southern Californians to keep their lawns green to this day.
The Mulholland character is "sacrificed" at the altar of greed, embodied by Huston, who secretly buys the San Fernando Valley, knowing that once the water deal is set, it will be incorporated into the city, making him a gazillionaire. It is rather cynical, although nobody suggests the L.A. "city fathers" were boy scouts. The same old theme is that capitalism and American political power are corrupt. To make sure the audience is convinced the corruption is beyond redemption, Huston is in the end found out be an insatiable, incestual monster. He plays the role so well it brings up minds-eye imagery of his real daughter, Angelica. The film is utterly beyond any criticism, regardless of political colorization. For decades, film students and screenwriters have studied it. It spawned an artistic quest to lace the screen with symbols, metaphors, backstory, and twists.
"Chinatown" seems to be the apex of the American film period, the mid-1970s. The period from 1960 to 1979 is unparalleled, but the backstory of the people who created these classics is a telling tale of why the genre leans to the Left. In the 1960s, film schools became popular. Four schools emerged, and have held their place as the place to learn the craft. In Los Angeles there was the USC School of Cinema-Television. Their first big alumnus was "Star Wars" director George Lucas. UCLA combined their film school with their drama program, so as to bring actors, writers, directors and producers together. Coppola went to UCLA along with a future rock star named Jim Morrison, who would form The Doors with another UCLA film alumnus, keyboardist Ray Manzarek.

STEVEN TRAVERS
AUTHOR OF "BARRY BONDS: BASEBALL'S SUPERMAN"
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Rating:
Summary: The Last Great Noir Film
Review: If it wasnt for Noah Cross, the San Fernando Valley would be farming areas versus what it is today, a large metropolitan area of L.A. "you can bring L.A. to the water" he says to Jake Gittes, and that is the centerpiece of "Chinatown" starring Jack Nicholson and directed by Roman Polanski. Probably the last great film noir movie in my opinion, its also a faboulous mystery and detective story. The film takes place in 1930s L.A. where water is a premium and a drought is taken its toll on the city. Private-eye J.J. Gittes, a matrimonial gumshoe is hired by the wife of the head of water and power to see if he is having an affair. All is not how it seems and Gittes is thrown into one big political mess filled with lies, scandal, a murder and incest. This film is a timely classic that will leave you wanting to see it over and over again.

Rating:
Summary: Perfect.
Review: From its opening scene to the infamous ending, (I refuse to spoil it, and shame on the reviewers who have the audacity to do so)Chinatown ranks alongside All About Eve and Citizen kane as the best screenplay ever written. The cinematography and art direction is enought to drool over, and Nicholson's and particularly Dunaway's performance are perfect examples flawless dedication to characterization.
I cannot express enough in words how important it is for a person to go out and at least put effort into seeing this timeless masterpiece. It is Polanski's crowning achievement, and to this day I am baffled that it recieved only one Oscar (guess for which category), and the fact that John Huston's menacing performance was not even a contender in the supporting actor category.Nevertheless, a gem in Classic Cinema and perhaps the best film noir ever concieved. Flawless.