Chinatown (1974)

Chinatown is an American thriller film first released in 1974, directed by Roman Polanski.  The film stars Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, John Huston, Perry Lopez and John Hillerman.  Our overall rating for this film is: excellent.


Jake Gittes is a Los Angeles private investigator who specialises in adultery cases.  He is hired by Mrs Mulwray to provide her with evidence that her husband, who happens to be the head of the city’s water department, is having an affair with a young woman.  Not long after Gittes comes up with the goods, Mulwray is found dead and his wife – who bears no resemblance to the woman who originally hired Gittes – threatens to sue the private eye.  Suspecting he is a pawn in a game of political or corporate intrigue, Gittes begins his own investigation and soon realises that he is up against a dangerous and cunning opponent.  Someone is dumping vast amounts of precious water from the city’s reservoirs.  But why...?

Whilst the 1970s is usually considered to be the decade that taste forgot, it did furnish one or two notable cultural achievements.  One of these was the rebirth of the American gangster film and with it the emergence the neo-noir style of thriller, inspired by the distinctive look of the classic film noir films of the 1940s.  Names such as Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese and Robert Altman immediately spring to mind when one considers the most significant examples of the genre in this decade.  However, perhaps the best thriller of this kind was Roman Polanski’s Chinatown, which has to be one of the sleekest, most seductive and most perfectly constructed crime thrillers of all time.

Prior to Chinatown, Polanski had made several highly acclaimed films, of which the best known was the chilling psychological horror thriller Rosemary’s Baby (1968).  Following the brutal murder of his wife, Sharon Tate, in 1969, the director abandoned his career in Hollywood and went into exile in Europe, where he made some intensely dark films.  He was reluctant to return to the United States but the promise of Chinatown proved too strong to resist.  Not only did he have a first rate script but he had a great cast, which included Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway and John Huston.  The latter, of course, is the director of many a film noir classic, including the legendary The Maltese Falcon (1942).  

Chinatown is the quintessential American noir thriller but it also has a distinctive European art house quality that makes it not just a highly entertaining film but also a stylish piece of cinematic art.  The brooding mood and grim air of fatalism that hang over the film are undercut by some strained sardonic humour (the fact that Polanski chose to play the character who disfigures Jack Nicholson is one of the best film in-jokes ever).  There is a poignant lyrical quality, which emerges partly from Nicholson’s darkly introspective performance, partly from the subtle irony in the story, but mainly from John Alonzo’s hauntingly beautiful cinematography which is highly evocative of the era in which the film is set.

Most, if not all, of Roman Polanski’s films have dark undercurrents that suggest hidden, all-powerful forces lurking in the shadows, beneath the floorboards and, sometimes, at the back of the fridge.   Chinatown is a perfect illustration of this, and there is a sense of something sinister in virtually every shot.  The appropriation of the first person narrative, the paucity of action scenes and the deliberate, slow pace of the film all serve to heighten the tension as the drama builds, gradually and inexorably, towards its bleak and horrifying climax.  A stunning film – and Polanski’s finest achievement.

© James Travers 2008

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