Chinatown (1974)

A private detective investigating an adultery case stumbles on to a scheme of murder that has something to do with water.

Director:

Roman Polanski

Writer:

Robert Towne

Stars:

Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, John Huston

Top 250 #85 | Won 1 Oscar. Another 20 wins & 22 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Jack Nicholson	...	J.J. Gittes
Faye Dunaway	...	Evelyn Mulwray
John Huston	...	Noah Cross
Perry Lopez	...	Escobar
John Hillerman	...	Yelburton
Darrell Zwerling	...	Hollis Mulwray
Diane Ladd	...	Ida Sessions
Roy Jenson	...	Mulvihill
Roman Polanski	...	Man with Knife
Richard Bakalyan	...	Loach (as Dick Bakalyan)
Joe Mantell	...	Walsh
Bruce Glover	...	Duffy
Nandu Hinds	...	Sophie
James O'Rear	...	Lawyer (as James O'Reare)
James Hong	...	Evelyn's Butler

Storyline

JJ 'Jake' Gittes is a private detective who seems to specialize in matrimonial cases. He is hired by Evelyn Mulwray when she suspects her husband Hollis, builder of the city's water supply system, of having an affair. Gittes does what he does best and photographs him with a young girl but in the ensuing scandal, it seems he was hired by an impersonator and not the real Mrs. Mulwray. When Mr. Mulwray is found dead, Jake is plunged into a complex web of deceit involving murder, incest and municipal corruption all related to the city's water supply.

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Plot Keywords:

water | detective | murder | corruption | private detective | 

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Genres:

Crime | Drama | Mystery | Thriller

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Certificate:

TV-14

Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English Cantonese Spanish

Release Date:

20 June 1974 (USA)

Also Known As:

Barrio Chino

Filming Locations:

1315 South El Molino Drive, South Pasadena, California, USA

Box Office

Budget:

$6,000,000 (estimated)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Paramount Pictures, Penthouse

Technical Specs

Runtime:

130 min

Sound Mix:

Mono

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

The El Macondo Apartments are named after the imaginary city in Gabriel García Márquez's novel "One Hundred Years of Solitude".

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Goofs

When Gittes visits the orange grove and crashes into the tree, you can see that a steel plate has been placed around the tree to protect it.

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Quotes

[first lines]
Jake Gittes: All right, Curly. Enough's enough. You can't eat the Venetian blinds. I just had them installed on Wednesday.

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Connections

Referenced in Shuffle & Cut (A Question for Godard) (2010)

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Soundtracks

"I Can't Get Started"
Lyrics by Ira Gershwin
Music by Vernon Duke
As recorded by Bunny Berigan and His Orchestra
Courtesy of RCA Records.

User Reviews

Marvelous

There is a word, impossible to spell, that describes the alignment of solar bodies like the planets when they all fall into place together. A similar word would describe this film. Everything about it is right. Polanski never directed a better movie. The performers, down to the lowest atmosphere person, are superb. The editing, the score, the sound, the decor, the dialog, all are just about flawless. The photography is peerless. The white garden apartments, the terra cotta roof tiles, the palms and desert sand are all painted with a faint gold, faintly ripe with false promise, like the oranges that bounce from Gittes' desperately speeding car in the northwest Valley.

Polanski deserves much of the credit. When Gittes surprises Evelyn Mulwray in her car, after he follows her to her daughter's house, her face slumps forward and beeps the horn briefly. Then, so faintly, we hear a few dogs bark in the background. Not only is the scene itself exquisitely done but it prefigures the ending, as does Gittes' remark earlier to Evelyn that she has a flaw in her iris. The movie is too good to deserve much dissecting. It stands repeated watching. If there is anything wrong with it, it is the serious and tragic ending that Polanski always insists on tacking on. Robert Towne was right and Polanski wrong in this case. Everything came together on this film. It's not only the best detective movie ever made; it's one of the best movies ever made -- period. A marvelous job by everyone concerned.

I have to add (6/27/05) that the word I mentioned in the first sentence is spelled "syzygy." Man, did I get enlightening email on that. I might as well add two other impressive features of this movie. (1) Polanksi takes his time. Example: Gittes sneaks into Hollis Mulwray's office and begins to go through the drawers of his old-fashioned wooden desk. As he slides each drawer out, Polanksi gives us a shot of their humdrum contents (checkbooks, magnifying glass, and so forth) and we can almost smell the heat and the odor of shellac and sawdust emanating from the wooden containers. The contents reveal nothing of importance in this case. But (2) sometimes irrelevant information crops up that resonates later in the film with its own echo. The detail might be just a word ("applecore") or an ordinary object (a pair of spectacles found in a pond, immediately after Gittes imitates the Japanese gardener's remark that the water is bad for the "glass.") Some of the references may be so consistent as to constitute a theme (water). None of this hits you over the head with its significance. It's all very neatly stitched together.