Written by Robert Towne, vaguely inspired by the Richard Nixon/Watergate scandal and about which hangs an elusive aura of the savage murder of the director’s wife, Chinatown fancifully conjures an instance of municipal corruption in Los Angeles in the late 1930s. Jack Nicholson plays J. J. Gittes, a private detective whose adolescent egotism periodically helps get his clients killed. “Jake” evidences an incapacity to learn from his own past, while the father of a mysterious client whose husband has been murdered, Noah Cross (John Huston, whose 1941 The Maltese Falcon provides a model instance of film noir), represents another quintessentially American trait: a sense of entitlement.
One of his most popular films, Chinatown is also among Roman Polanski’s worst. It isn’t the director’s fault, as Polanski navigates nimbly and wittily the fiendishly convoluted goings-on. John A. Alonzo’s magnificent color cinematography is another definite asset. Alas, Towne’s script reduces a hidden case of family incest to a point of plot, and Faye Dunaway’s stiff acting as Cross’s imperious/vulnerable daughter also contributes to the film’s disarray.
Nonetheless, Polanski pulls off a heart-walloping finish that encapsulates the film’s theme of moral blindness: the shooting out of a woman’s eye.
Please see my piece on a much better film noir made the year after Chinatown, Dick Richards’ Farewell, My Lovely, which you will find elsewhere on this site, filed under Hollywood film reviews.
CHINATOWN (Roman Polanski, 1975)
Written by Robert Towne, vaguely inspired by the Richard Nixon/Watergate scandal and about which hangs an elusive aura of the savage murder of the director’s wife, Chinatown fancifully conjures an instance of municipal corruption in Los Angeles in the late 1930s. Jack Nicholson plays J. J. Gittes, a private detective whose adolescent egotism periodically helps get his clients killed. “Jake” evidences an incapacity to learn from his own past, while the father of a mysterious client whose husband has been murdered, Noah Cross (John Huston, whose 1941 The Maltese Falcon provides a model instance of film noir), represents another quintessentially American trait: a sense of entitlement.
One of his most popular films, Chinatown is also among Roman Polanski’s worst. It isn’t the director’s fault, as Polanski navigates nimbly and wittily the fiendishly convoluted goings-on. John A. Alonzo’s magnificent color cinematography is another definite asset. Alas, Towne’s script reduces a hidden case of family incest to a point of plot, and Faye Dunaway’s stiff acting as Cross’s imperious/vulnerable daughter also contributes to the film’s disarray.
Nonetheless, Polanski pulls off a heart-walloping finish that encapsulates the film’s theme of moral blindness: the shooting out of a woman’s eye.
Please see my piece on a much better film noir made the year after Chinatown, Dick Richards’ Farewell, My Lovely, which you will find elsewhere on this site, filed under Hollywood film reviews.
Tags: Roman Polanski
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