Recommended by Terry Bailey in "What makes a Good Story?" (podcast)

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #17546 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: English, Spanish, German, French, Italian, Portuguese, Swedish, Turkish, Danish, Dutch, Finnish
• 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

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Customer Reviews

A milestone in film noir history.
"Water is the life blood of every community." With this statement, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power's website begins its biography of William Mulholland, the real life model of two of this movie's characters, water department chief Hollis Mulwray (an obvious play on words) and water tycoon Noah Cross. And indeed water, the access to it and the wealth it provides, is what drives everything and everybody in this movie set in the ever-thirsty Los Angeles of the first decades of this century, a budding boom town on the brink of victory or decay ... and whether it will be one or the other depends on the city's ongoing access to drinking water.

"Chinatown"'s story is based on William Mulholland's greatest coup; the construction of the Owen Valley aqueduct which provided Los Angeles with a steady source of drinking water but also entailed a lot of controversy. Splitting Mulholland's complex real-life persona into two fictional characters (the noble Mulwray who thinks that water should belong to the people and who refuses to authorize an unsavory new dam construction project and the greedy, unscrupulous Cross who will use *any* means to advance his personal fortune) creates the movie's one necessary black and white conflict ... other than this, the predominant shades are those of gray.

Into the wars raging around L.A.'s water supply, private eye Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson) is unwittingly thrown when a woman introducing herself as Hollis Mulwray's wife asks him to investigate her husband's alleged infidelity. Before he realizes what is going on he is drawn into a web of treachery and treason, and fatally attracted to the real Mrs. Mulwray (Faye Dunaway), Noah Cross (John Huston)'s daughter. Soon reaching the conclusion that he has been used, he refuses to drop the investigation, and instead decides to dig his way to the source of the scheming he has witnessed - the classical film noir setup.

To say that this movie is one of the best examples of the genre ever made is stating the obvious ... actually, it borders on being superfluous. Few other films are as tightly acted, scripted and directed, from Jack Nicholson's dapper-dressed, dogged Jake Gittes, who like any good noir detective is not half as hard boiled as he would have us believe, to Faye Dunaway's seductive and sad Evelyn Mulray, John Huston's cold-blooded and corrupt Noah Cross, Roman Polanski's brooding direction and Robert Towne's award-winning screen play, so full of memorable lines and the classical noir gumshoe dialogue, yet far more than just a well-done copy. And throughout it all, there that idea of Chinatown - that place where you do as little as possible, and where if you try to help someone, you're likely going to make double sure they're getting hurt.

"Chinatown" was Roman Polanski's return to Hollywood, five years after his wife (Sharon Tate) had been one of the victims of the Manson gang. Polanski and Towne fought hard whether the movie should have a happy ending or not. Polanski won, studio politics were favorable at the time, and the version we all know was produced - with one of the most stomach-churning endings in all of film history. But it is hard to imagine what kind of happy ending would have worked with the movie at all: too sordid are the characters' morals and too deep-rooted their conflicts. Unfortunately, being released the same year as "The Godfather II" robbed "Chinatown" much of the Academy Award attention it would have deserved; of 11 nominations (best movie, best actor - Jack Nicholson -, best actress - Faye Dunaway -, best director - Roman Polanski -, best screenplay - Robert Towne -, best original score - Eliot Goldsmith -, best cinematography, and others), the movie only won the Oscar for Towne's screenplay. Generations of fans, however, have long since recognized that "Chinatown" is a milestone in the history of the film noir and in the professional history of its participants, and one of Hollywood's finest hours.

An American Masterpiece
To my mind this is the greatest American film of all time.A dazzling film full of wonderful performances,superb plotting and dialogue with a stunning sense of the period (L A in the 30's).
Private eye Jake Gittes(Jack Nicholson) gets in way over his head and ends up "drowning"in a sea of murder, incest and a battle over ownership of valuable water rights.Part noir,part character study(with the city itself up there in front),part the ties that bind, this is perfect entertainment.
Faye Dunaway and especially John Huston are magnificent and director Roman Polanski even gives himself a juicy little part.If what makes a great film is a subtle and perfect mix of suspense,romance,horror and even a little comedy allied to an engrossing story then look no further Chinatown is all those things and more.

A true great - a modern-day masterpiece.
I've lost count the number of times I've seen this brilliantly executed period piece. Beautifully photographed and superbly played by all concerned, a director on the top of his game and a screenplay that screams class and pulls you in to the film.

Jack Nicholson plays Jake Gittes, a Private Investigator who gets embroiled in double dealings and deceits in the clammy climate of a pre-war Southern California where the orange groves flourish from the water supply being pumped there in the middle of a drought. He gets hired by a beautiful socialite, Evelyn Mulwray (Faye Dunaway) to investigate her husband's extra-marital affair and to find out who his killer was.

Although this is a wonderful film that is also a gem and a landmark movie in the tradition of film noir, some of the concepts featured in the film can still somehow ring true watching it today. Jack Nicholson has never been so masterful and Faye Dunaway has never looked so sexy and sultry as she does here. It also features stunning support in the shape of film legend John Huston, father of Anjelica Huston.

This is one of those films that should be seen. Many people think that L.A. Confidential is better than this. In my personal view though, this set the standard for other film noir movies to follow. And only L.A. Confidential has been able to come close. This is still the better film in my opinion. It's one of my favourite films of all time.