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Chinatown

Chinatown

Roman Polanski


  • Country: USA
  • Year: 1974
  • Language: English
  •  
  • Runtime: 130 min.

As bitingly contemporary as it ever was, Roman Polanski and screenwriter Robert Towne's seamlessly retro salute to the classic private-eye film blends an impeccable recreation of the past with Watergate-era evocations of endemic political and societal corruption.

Cinematheque

screening times

    • Thursday November 4
    • 6:30:00 PM
    • Tiff Bell LightBox 3

Note: indicates Premium Screening.

official description

As bitingly contemporary as it ever was, Roman Polanski and screenwriter Robert Towne's seamlessly retro salute to the classic private-eye film blends an impeccable recreation of the past with Watergate-era evocations of endemic political and societal corruption. In sun-blasted, bone-dry 1930s Los Angeles, snappily-dressed "professional snoop" J.J. Gittes (Jack Nicholson) takes on a seemingly run-of-the-mill adultery case, only to find himself a pawn in a murder plot. Teaming up with the dead man's well-to-do widow Evelyn Mulwray (Faye Dunaway), Gittes uncovers a byzantine conspiracy revolving around the city's precious water resources involving Evelyn's powerful father Noah Cross (John Huston)—a conspiracy which intertwines both public and private sins. Forgoing the shadowy photography and canted angles of film noir, Chinatown finds the heart of darkness in bright sunlight, where evil is simply business as usual—an evil so pervasive that even the classic figure of the lone male hero might be helpless to stop it. With never-better performances from Nicholson, Dunaway and the scintillatingly corrupt Huston under the masterful, cunningly measured direction of Polanski, Chinatown is perhaps the greatest film to emerge from the "New Hollywood" of the 1970s.

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