Chinatown

Director: Roman Polanski Roman Polanski

Overview

"You may think you know what you're dealing with, but believe me, you don't," warns water baron Noah Cross (John Huston), when smooth cop-turned-private eye J.J. "Jake" Gittes (Jack Nicholson) starts nosing around Cross's water diversion scheme. That proves to be the ominous lesson of Chinatown, Roman Polanski's critically lauded 1974 revision of 1940s film noir detective movies. In 1930s Los Angeles, "matrimonial work" specialist Gittes is hired by Evelyn Mulwray (Faye Dunaway) to tail her husband, Water Department engineer Hollis Mulwray (Darrell Zwerling). Gittes photographs him in the company of a young blonde and figures the case is closed, only to discover that the real Mrs. Mulwray had nothing to do with hiring Gittes in the first place. When Hollis turns up dead, Gittes decides to investigate further, encountering a shady old-age home, corrupt bureaucrats, angry orange farmers, and a nostril-slicing thug (Polanski) along the way. By the time he confronts Cross, Evelyn's father and Mulwray's former business partner, Jake thinks he knows everything, but an even more sordid truth awaits him. When circumstances force Jake to return to his old beat in Chinatown, he realizes just how impotent he is against the wealthy, depraved Cross. "Forget it, Jake," his old partner tells him. "It's Chinatown." Reworking the somber underpinnings of detective noir along more pessimistic lines, Polanski and screenwriter Robert Towne convey a '70s-inflected critique of capitalist and bureaucratic malevolence in a carefully detailed period piece harkening back to the genre's roots in the 1930s and '40s. Gittes always has a smart comeback like Humphrey Bogart's Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe, but the corruption Gittes finds is too deep for one man to stop. Other noir revisions, such as Robert Altman's The Long Goodbye (1973) and Arthur Penn's Night Moves (1975), also centered on the detective's inefficacy in an uncertain '70s world, but Chinatown's period sheen renders this dilemma at once contemporary and timeless, pointing to larger implications about the effects of corporate rapaciousness on individuals. Polanski and Towne clashed over Chinatown's ending; Polanski won the fight, but Towne won the Oscar for Best Screenplay. Chinatown was nominated for ten other Oscars, including Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, Cinematography, Art Direction, Costumes, and Score.

Product Details

Release Date:	01/01/2013
UPC:	0883929303519
Original Release:	1974
Rating:	R
Source:	Paramount Catalog
Presentation:	[Wide Screen]
Sound:	[Dolby Digital Mono, Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround]
Language:	English
Time:	2:10:00

Special Features

Closed Caption; Theatrical trailer; Retrospective interviews with Roman Polanski. Robert Towne and Robert Evans

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Jack Nicholson	J.J. Gittes
Faye Dunaway	Evelyn Mulwray
John Huston	Noah Cross
Perry Lopez	Escobar
Diane Ladd	Ida Sessions
John Hillerman	Yelburton
Roman Polanski	Man with Knife
Darrell Zwerling	Hollis Mulwray
Roy Jenson	Mulvihill
Richard Bakalyan	Loach
Joe Mantell	Walsh
Bruce Glover	Duffy
Claudio Martinez	Boy on Horseback
Jerry Goldsmith	Composer,Actor
Nandu Hinds	Sophie
James O'Rear	Lawyer
James Hong	Evelyn's Butler
Beulah Quo	Maid
Jerry Fujikawa	Gardener
Belinda Palmer	Katherine
Roy Roberts	Mayor Bagby
Noble Willingham	Councilman
Elliott Montgomery	Councilman
Rance Howard	Irate Farmer
George Justin	Barber
Jim Burk	Farmer in the Valley
Doc Erickson	Customer,Customer
Fritzi Burr	Mulwray's Secretary
Charles Knapp	Mortician
Frederico Roberto	Cross's Butler,Cross' Butler,Cross' Butler
Allan Warnick	Clerk
Burt Young	Curly
Elizabeth Harding	Curly's Wife
John Rogers	Mr. Palmer
Cecil Elliott	Emma Dill
James O'Reare	Lawyer
Paul Jenkins	Policeman
Lee de Broux	Policeman
Bob Golden	Policeman
John Holland	Farmers in the Valley
Claudio Martínez	Boy on Horseback
Jesse Vint	Farmers in the Valley
Jim Burke	Farmers in the Valley
Denny Arnold	Farmers in the Valley
Jack Nickolson	Actor
John Alzono Alzono	Actor
Robert Towne	Actor
John A. Alonzo	Actor

Technical Credits

Robert Towne

Roman Polanski

Robert Towne	Screenwriter
Robert Evans	Producer
Jane Feinberg	Casting
Mike Fenton	Casting
Logan Frazee	Special Effects
Bud Grenzbach	Sound/Sound Designer,Sound/Sound Designer
Larry Jost	Sound/Sound Designer
Jim Burk	Stunts
Roman Polanski	Director,Screenwriter
Clint Althouse	Sound Effects

Scene Index

Disc #1 -- Chinatown
1. Chapter 1
2. Chapter 2
3. Chapter 3
4. Chapter 4
5. Chapter 5
6. Chapter 6
7. Chapter 7
8. Chapter 8
9. Chapter 9
10. Chapter 10
11. Chapter 11
12. Chapter 12
13. Chapter 13
14. Chapter 14
15. Chapter 15
16. Chapter 16

Menu

Disc #1 -- Chinatown
   Chinatown: Chapters

Editorial Reviews

A dark Hollywood jewel from the 1970s, Chinatown remains among the most aggressively visceral experiences of evil ever committed to film. There's a lot to keep track of in Chinatown, and it all flows through Jack Nicholson, in one of his most potent performances. The dialogue is wonderfully sharp, courtesy of screenwriter Robert Towne. But what makes Chinatown so bracingly powerful and fresh is its genuine American malignancy. Chinatown's Los Angeles is a city born of a greedy desire to conquer a forbidding desert, a place where power excuses all perversion. Nicholson grafts flesh, bone, and soul onto the character of private eye Jake Gittes, a man familiar with compromise and rationalization who doesn't even realize his inner goodness until he confronts true evil --the wealthy land developer Noah Cross (a memorably wicked John Huston). Faye Dunaway, as the woman who draws Gittes into a complex mystery involving L.A.'s water supply, has never been more beautiful, or more haunted. And director Roman Polanski provides the perfect subverting eye for Chinatown, a beautiful sun-bleached dream built upon a soft bed of malignant criminality.

Barnes & Noble - Dave Roth

By 1974, a lingering national malaise spawned by the killing of John F. Kennedy and fed by the national debate over the Vietnam War, the continued wave of political assassinations, and the sudden rise and slow collapse of the counterculture movement had finally come to a head with the revelations of the Watergate scandal. Chinatown, a glossy variant on the hard-boiled film noir detective pictures of the 1940s, suggested that none of this was new, and that ugly battles over power and profit touched every area of our lives...even the water we drink. In Chinatown, elected officials are the easily purchased pawns of corrupt power brokers whose appetites know no check or balance (ranging from simple greed to the violation of natural law through incest), and the closest thing we have to a honest and moral guide through this fallen world is a private detective -- a man whose career dictates that his loyalty can be purchased for a relatively small fee. While Roman Polanski's expert pacing and the superbly modulated performances of Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, and John Huston would have made Chinatown memorable regardless of its political and cultural contexts, the intelligent but relentless cynicism of Robert Towner's screenplay reflected the dark tone of '40s noir while updating it for a California-fed '70s culture.

All Movie Guide - Mark Deming