Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #6690 in DVD
• Released on: 2000-10-02
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: Anamorphic, Dubbed, PAL, Widescreen
• Original language: English, French
• Subtitled in: Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish
• Dubbed in: German, Italian, Spanish
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 125 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
Roman Polanski's brooding film noir exposes the darkest side of the land of sunshine, the Los Angeles of the 1930s, where power is the only currency--and the only real thing worth buying. Jack Nicholson is J J Gittes, a private eye in the Chandler mould, who during a routine straying-spouse investigation finds himself drawn deeper and deeper into a jigsaw puzzle of clues and corruption. The glamorous Evelyn Mulwray (a dazzling Faye Dunaway) and her titanic father, Noah Cross (John Huston), are at the black-hole centre of this tale of treachery, incest and political bribery. The crackling, hard-bitten script by Robert Towne won a well-deserved Oscar, and the muted colour cinematography makes the goings-on seem both bleak and impossibly vibrant. Polanski himself has a brief, memorable cameo as the thug who tangles with Nicholson's nose. Chinatown is one of the greatest, most completely satisfying crime films of all time. --Anne Hurley

Amazon.co.uk Review
Roman Polanski's brooding film noir exposes the darkest side of the land of sunshine, the Los Angeles of the 1930s, where power is the only currency--and the only real thing worth buying. Jack Nicholson is JJ Gittes, a private eye in the Chandler mould, who during a routine straying-spouse investigation finds himself drawn deeper and deeper into a jigsaw puzzle of clues and corruption. The glamorous Evelyn Mulwray (a dazzling Faye Dunaway) and her titanic father, Noah Cross (John Huston), are at the black-hole centre of this tale of treachery, incest, and political bribery. The crackling, hard-bitten script by Robert Towne won a well-deserved Oscar, and the muted colour cinematography makes the goings-on seem both bleak and impossibly vibrant. Polanski himself has a brief, memorable cameo as the thug who tangles with Nicholson's nose. One of the greatest, most completely satisfying crime films of all time. --Anne Hurley, Amazon.com

Special Features
2.35 Anamorphic Wide Screen
DVD 9
French\German\Hungarian\Italian\Spanish
English
English
Region 2
Dolby Digital 5.1 English\Dolby Digital Mono French German Hungarian Italian Spanish
Dolby Digital 5.1
Dolby Digital Mono
Theatrical Trailer
A Retrospective Interview With Roman Polanski Robert Towne And Robert Evans
Danish\Dutch\English\Finnish\French\German\Italian\Norwegian\Portuguese\Spanish\Swedish\Turkish

Customer Reviews

Turgid period detective film
Sorry to buck the trend of generally positive reviews for "Chinatown" , but this film just didn't do it for me. Despite good acting performances from Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway, I found this film to be slow moving, overlong and dull. The storyline itself was fairly mundane; one of businessmen siphoning off water to irrigate land they have invested in against a background of a murder and a somewhat incongruous incest subplot. The film drags on interminably as Jack Nicholson's private eye slowly puts together the pieces of the jigsaw. It would be inaccurate to describe "Chinatown" as a thriller as there are few exciting scenes and little or no action. Even the title of the film is a misnomer as the only thing that takes place in Chinatown is the anti climactic ending. I found "Chinatown" to be an unremarkable and uninteresting film and I don't understand the widespread critical acclaim it has received at all.

Nice widescreen cinematography; shame about the story
Made in 1974, 'Chinatown' emerged just before 'Jaws' heralded the blockbuster era which we continue to inhabit. For modern tastes, the pace is slow and there is little high-octane action. The widescreen photography is really good at times, both indoors and outdoors. What bugs me about the film is that the water story and the incest story don't mesh particularly well together, and neither is explored in sufficient detail. We learn almost nothing about the back-story of Jack Nicholson's character, except that he used to work as a cop in Chinatown. And indeed that reference, and the fact that the final scene happens in Chinatown, are the only justifications for the movie's name. Very oblique. Nicholson is very good, as ever, but Dunaway isn't universally perfect -- she's unconvincing when trying to be an unconvincing liar.

The choice of locations is wonderful -- how did Polanski, even in 1973, manage to find so many places with such an authentic pre-war feel? And the sound is brilliant for being able to exclude so much of today's L.A. noise.

Polanski's film-noir tribute
(Warning: violence is mild, but has a dark tone including one vicious scene, so please be careful if you wish to view this)

Chinatown is noted both as the comeback film for Parisian Roman Polanski and also his last made in the States.

JJ. Gibbs is a LA private-eye detective, that is assigned a case by a woman known as Eleven Cross, who wishes for him to investigate what exactly happened to her now deceased husband and how he came to be murdered at the main waterworks, but Gibbs finds himself stumbling behind with the case with answers to questions he never thought about......

Chinatown was an epic film, made just as profanity was being more widely accepted in the early 1970s, it was the height of the power, the ripe of the freedom. Set out in it's mission to undercover all the dirt and sleaze of 1940s detective films the way they couldn't be made due to the strict regulations of the Motion Pictures board running at the time, but also being a metaphor hence the title has little action inside an actual chinatown, where the word has been used to describe the corrupted case. The material written by Oscar winner Robert Towne saw the work of private eye detectives in focus, the outlying of the job by lonely men who need love and feel the desire to protect their clientants with too much attachment. Huston is quite simply the standout performance and should have of been given more acclaim with an Oscar win to boot.

Nicholson's performance, was one step behind his role of Randall Patrick McMurray for Cuckoo's Nest, playing J.J. Gibbs as a man eager to find the truth, but never finding much sense from his findings. Faye Dunaway protrays Evelyn Cross, an uptight woman hiding her past with a smokey lair, always stuttering and keeping it uptight and to herself. You would never believe how well John Huston fits in to the role of Nolan Cross, a man you want to feel sorry for who moves around with a stick, but he gives the impression of suspicion amongst us, but also secretive when asked about his former business affairs, harsh nature especially with his known disgust of women, a certain wariness over behaviour including sudden depective attitudes, willingless to slag off others and also using his interests as a money laundering facility.

Jerry Goldsmith, provides the music here, which is unforgetable, jagged, distant and longing, dominated by the trumbone and piano, plus a full brass orchestra, especially when you consider he was only given ten days to complete the score.

Regarded very highly, be warned, it is slow and might not appeal to everyone given it's nature to be controversial and bleak vision about the times, but something that managed to fit in all the right slots and away it went.