Tonight I’m (again) watching Chinatown, Roman Polanski’s masterpiece which begins as a standard private-eye pulp and ends up much, much darker.
Polanski himself pops up as a vicious little rat who gives Jack Nicholson’s smart-mouthed gumshoe an impromptu nosejob at the end of a switch-blade.
John Huston, father to Nicholson’s then partner Angelica and himself one of Hollywood’s greatest directors also pops up in the role of Noah Cross, a particularly nasty piece of work who thinks money can buy anything. The events of the movie do little to disabuse him of the idea.
The main female part is played by Faye Dunaway as an elegant, cool but world-weary sophisticate. Dunaway was on a roll of great movies from Bonny and Clyde to Network via The Thomas Crown Affair but she’s never been better than she is here. Terrifyingly beautiful but vulnerable she was deservedly oscar-nominated, losing out to Ellen Burstyn in “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore”. I can only say that must have been one hell of a performance.
Nicholson too was on a hot streak. In a period of five years he also starred in Easy Rider, Five Easy Pieces, The Last Detail and One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest. Any one of those would be a career maker for an actor but Nicholson seemed to rattle them off like shelling peas. His Jake Giddes is a wonder to behold. Central to every scene he carries the movie with his portrayal of a sharp dressed, quick witted, hard-nosed but decent man. He’s the archetype for every acid-tounged detective since just as Humphrey Bogart was before Jack came along and remade the mould in his image.
It’s difficult not to view Polanski’s work through the prism of his previous and later life. This is a man who survived the Polish ghetto, whose pregnant wife, Sharon Tate, was murdered by members of the Manson family and who was himself later arrested for rape and pled guilty to unlawful sex with a minor. Since fleeing bail in 1974 he has been unable to return to the US.
Putting all of that aside however this is a stunning movie where all the moving parts come together to make an incredible satisfying whole.
The Robert Towne screenplay became legendary as the hottest property in Hollywood and it’s clear to see why. The film’s only oscar-winner there’s not a wasted scene nor a bad line of dialog to be had. Inspired by the “California Water Wars” fought over land and water rights from the 1910s through to the 1920s the story starts out as a straight-forward whodunnit, takes a left when our hero Giddes finds he’s been duped into blackening a man’s reputation and then plunges into a dark-twisting rabbit hole of betrayal and incest. To call it film noir is understating it.
Polanski, without the aid of steady-cam technology manages to shoot the entire movie from Giddes viewpoint, seemingly tracking his every step from behind his coat-tails.
Apparently done using hand-held Panaflexes Polanski keeps the camera at Giddes eye-level so we the audience are discovering things and watching events unfold just add Giddes does. It was a simple idea but a masterstroke making us as curious and as inquisitive as Nicholson’s private-eye.
And John Alonso’s photography is some of the best that’s ever been put into celluloid. He apparently used “chinese tracing paper to shift the light and color so that it turned beige and gold” to capture that elusive washed-out almost monochrome golden-hour look that has become the cliche for all California set movies since. Often imitated but never matched its a stunning movie to look at.
Both Alonzo and Nestor Almendros (cinematographer on the glowingly gorgeous “Days of Heaven”) spent their early Hollywood careers working on low budget Roger Corman B-Movies. Something must have stuck as they became masters of the art of making visions of light.
One of my favorite films from the opening shots of the cocky Nicholson delivering the bad news of his wife’s infidelity to Burt Young right through the the shockingly downbeat, unresolved ending.
That’s Chinatown Jake.
Eat see hear Cardiff 