Chinatown

Released: June 21, 1974

Studio: Paramount

Genre: drama/mystery/thriller

Box Office (numbers in millions):

Domestic: 29.20 Worldwide: ?

Adjusted for Inflation:

Domestic: 139.40 Worldwide: ?

Directing: Roman Polanski

Screenwriting: Robert Towne

Starring: Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, John Huston

Review:

“Undoubtedly one of the great films of the ‘70s.” ^T95 “Director Roman Polanski, at the peak of his considerable powers, dipped from the well of classic film noir to create a film that was at once an homage to and an improvement over its forebears.” ^TV The movie offers an “atmospheric, subtly-paced, superbly-made neo-noir mystery about a hard-nosed detective uncovering urban corruption in late 1930’s Los Angeles.” ^FS

Screenwriter Robert “Towne based his wonderfully intricate tale…on historical fact;” ^TV it also served as the “definitive allegory of the Watergate era.” ^RS He took $25,000 to write it after turning down “$125,000 to pen the script for The Great Gatsby…[because] he felt he couldn’t do the novel justice.” ^MSN The result was a script “heralded as one of the finest ever written.” ^MSN

“Jack Nicholson became a superstar, Faye Dunaway continued the winning streak she began with Bonnie and Clyde, and John Huston virtually personified political and personal rot.” ^TV “Polanski has an effective cameo as the sadistic hoodlum who gives Nicholson the most famous nose job in Hollywood film history.” ^TV

“Nicholson inhabits the skin” ^T98 of Jake Gittes, a “world-weary gumshoe” ^FS who specializes in infidelity. He’s hired by Evelyn Mulwray (Dunaway) “to investigate the infidelities of her alleged husband, the water commissioner for the drought-stricken city.” ^FS He “gets in way over his head in a case involving” ^FS “deception, greed, and murder” ^VD involving “water rights, land deals and corruption.” ^A07

“After original, complex plot twists, the film ends in an unsettling” ^FS but “thrilling shootout in Chinatown.” ^VD The movie also boasts one of cinema’s greatest reveals when we find out “sinister millionaire Noah Cross (Huston)” ^FS and his “prominent family’s scandalous, long-hidden dark secret.” ^FS “The last scene and the last line (‘Forget it, Jake, it’s Chinatown’) give off an indelible chill.” ^RS