FauxNixon

Roman Polanski’s 1974 masterpiece is not really something terribly easy to review more than thirty years later, but I’ll make an attempt because I recently saw it and might as well share my impressions. The plot is easily summarizable and is quintessentially film-noir almost because this movie itself changed film-noir into what it is today: J. J. Gittes (Jack Nicholson) is a private detective with a decent reputation in Los Angeles at some time before the war. A woman claiming to be Mrs. Mulwray hires Gittes to investigate her husband–head of the Water and Power board made infamous for his tenure during a severe drought. Gittes investigates, but a few days later the real Mrs. Mulwray (Faye Dunaway) shows up and threatens to sue Gittes. When Mr. Mulwray dies shortly afterward, Gittes pursues the investigation and uncovers an unsettling, corrupt underbelly in Los Angeles county.

Jack Nicholson is in his prime, playing a character as well as one can be played with a script that’s exceptionally well-written, a great supporting cast, and a compelling and interesting story that shows that there is a way to have a lot of plot twists in a movie without it feeling long, feeling contrived, being cliched, or otherwise negatively affected.

Faye Dunaway is captivating and exudes a feminine control over herself and other people that seems to have been lost with time for better or worse. She plays off of Nicholson very well and the two develop a chemistry, though one can’t help feeling that she is leading Nicholson’s character ahead just a little bit throughout the movie; and for good reason.

Polanski directs this movie and almost remakes film noir in doing so. With the emergence usually associated with Touch of Evil, in Chinatown it is as if the genre is updated. The seediness of the pre-war era, the corruption of local government officials, the power wielded by the newly rich land-owners, the importance of water to what was then very dependent upon farming, themes of innocence and naivety being lost again and again, and the stark, gritty texture that the filming seems to have imparted are all present and all quite intentional.

There is nothing apologetic about the movie and very little true tragedy as most of the characters finding trouble seem quite deserving of it to whatever extent that can be the case. The setting, events, twists, personas, politics, and assorted details of the filming all seem to present what can only be a much more honest look at what Los Angeles may have been like at this time. During a time period when Hollywood had only recently emerged, and the strict morality codes and societal norms prevented society from really examining itself, it seems that Polanski has done this, though about half a century afterward.

If you are one who doesn’t often watch movies that aren’t contemporary and is often bored with older movies for whatever reason, Chinatown is something I can very safely assure you is worth the time and effort to find and watch. All but the worst Michael Bay fans will see it and probably find themselves as immersed in a story as they have ever been.