This masterpiece qualifies as a ‘period neo-noir’ despite being produced before the noir craze found traction. The murder of a city commissioner reveals a dark, greedy chapter in the history of Our City of the Angels. Robert Evans’ studio production found a perfect roster of collaborators for Robert Towne’s screenplay. Romantic and suspenseful, it’s a crowning achievement for stars Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway, and very much a Roman Polanski movie … don’t hold your breath waiting for a happy ending. Terrific music by Jerry Goldsmith.

Chinatown
4K Ultra HD (only)
Plus The Two Jakes (1990) (Blu-ray only)
Paramount Presents
1974 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 130 min. / Street Date June 18, 2024 / Available from Amazon / 39.99
Starring: Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, John Huston, Perry Lopez, John Hillerman, Darrell Zwerling, Burt Young, Diane Ladd, Roy Jenson, Roman Polanski, Richard Bakalyan, Joe Mantell, Bruce Glover, James Hong, Roy Roberts, Charles Knapp, Rance Howard, Federico Roberto, Jesse Vint, Jerry Fujikawa.
Cinematography: John A. Alonzo
Production Designer: Richard Sylbert
Art Director: W. Stewart Campbell
Costume Design: Anthea Sylbert
Film Editor: Sam O’Steen
Special Effects: Logan Frazee
Original Music: Jerry Goldsmith
Written by Robert Towne
Associate producer: C.O. Erickson
Produced by Robert Evans
Directed by Roman Polanski

The swank label ‘Paramount Presents’ continues its line of prestige studio tentpole pictures in 4K Ultra HD. This time out it’s Chinatown, an all-pro effort by élite Hollywood talent and a crowning achievement of the fading studio system. It is as perfect a film as could be made in 1974. The case can be made that Roman Polanski was the best director working.

Most every movie fan admires this picture, and by now plenty have read Sam Wasson’s celebrated book about its making. Chinatown is now fifty years old, so no matter how familiar it seems to us, it’s wise to remember that today’s generation has less interest in movie history, and multitudes out there have never heard of it. So we don’t mind writing this basic overview.

“Either you bring the water to L.A. or you bring L.A. to the water.”

Chinatown ‘did it all’ for film students of 1974. The term film noir was four or five years away from gaining traction in the general culture. We UCLA students were immersing ourselves in classic examples on our incredible Melnitz Hall screen, taking advantage of the newly-founded UCLA Film Archive’s holdings of Paramount and Fox nitrate studio prints. Thus Alain Silver, Carl Macek, Elizabeth Ward, Bob Porfirio and James Ursini were already refining the French noir definition for an American sensibility.

Where was noir in ’74?  The American style was originally tagged as ending in 1958 with Orson Welles’  Touch of Evil. Everything made thereafter was considered a self-conscious neo-noir … at least partly channeling an older form.  Even as B&W was being phased out, plenty of 1960s films retained the style, like Burt Kennedy’s  The Money Trap. The James Garner vehicle  Marlowe  shows the influence even as it pursues other agendas. Along with interesting nostalgia pieces like John Flynn’s  The Outfit, Roman Polanski’s 1974 Chinatown was one of the first films that the UCLA critical studies crowd recognized as a bona fide Neo-Noir. It’s makers knew they were toying with an older convention. The show even begins as an ersatz 1940s film, with a nostalgic B&W title sequence formatted for the old Academy ratio.

Robert Towne’s drama of 1930s Los Angeles does more than just look back at old romantic thriller conventions. Following in the footsteps of classic noirs that yearned for lost hopes and ideals, Chinatown constructs a noir metaphor for the Garden of Eden. Some time in the past, the City of the Angels fell prey to a land grab by The Devil. The water to make it grow was stolen by political powers intent on ‘owning’ the future, in perpetuity.

Ambitious detective Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson) puts on airs of respectability. But a shady client tricks him into publicizing an indiscretion on the part of Hollis Mulwray (Darrell Zwerling), the chief engineer in charge of Los Angeles’ water supply. Mulwray’s wife Evelyn (Faye Dunaway) sues Jake, but then relents and hires him to find out who wants to discredit her husband. It doesn’t take long for Jake to uncover a sinister plot by persons unknown to make millions from the drought in the San Fernando Valley. The trail leads to Evelyn’s father Noah Cross (John Huston), a land baron obsessed with power and control.

Honest ‘origin’ stories tend to uncover Original Crimes.

Chinatown captures the sense of a sick and disillusioned Los Angeles, a sleepy town with big secrets to hide. A private dick in the classic Raymond Chandler tradition, Jake Gittes claims that he’s an ethical businessman. But Jake also nurses a fatal streak of idealism. He hides it from the man who really knows him, LAPD lieutenant Lou Escobar. Some trouble in Chinatown a number of years ago resulted in Jake’s ignominious departure from the force.  Jake’s snappy dialogue and feigned sophistication can’t hide the fact that he’s still troubled by the fate of a woman he wanted to protect.

Gittes now wants to redeem himself by coming to the aid of another woman in distress, the secretive, potentially dangerous Evelyn Mulwray. He’s smarter now, and soon begins to uncover Noah Cross’s large-scale real estate conspiracy. But Gittes makes critical mistakes. His bigotry is a weakness: he can snap out curses in Chinese, but fumbles a clue offered by a ‘jabbering’ Japanese gardener. He also tells the police too many lies, alienating a needed ally, Escobar. Worse still, Gittes foolishly underestimates his enemies’ deadly reach.

“Next time you lose the whole thing. Cut it off and feed it to my goldfish.”

They say that only foreigners can really nail the American ambience. In 1973 much of Los Angeles was still unchanged. Roman Polanski expresses the essence of 1930s L.A. in every scene. For some shots designer Richard Sylbert had only to drop some television aerials and repaint some curbs. A cramped apartment building serving as the home of sometime actress Ida Sessions (Diane Ladd) resembles the Alvarado courtyard address where William Desmond Taylor was murdered. A dry wash and an orange grove represent the San Fernando Valley. Just as ‘foretold’ in Chinatown, the Valley is now an endless residential development.

Echo Park, Evelyn Mulwray’s Beverly Hills (or is it Los Feliz?) estate, various reservoirs and Catalina’s Avalon Bay haven’t substantially changed. Polanski evokes the past with even better signifiers, like the sight of a boiling radiator through a barbershop window and the chi-chi cars in the valet lot of the Biltmore Hotel. As if acknowledging the jest that L.A. is one big unplanned, unconscious urban mistake, a hideaway motel carries the name Macondo, a lift from Gabriel Gárcia Márquez’ novel of ‘realismo mágico,’  100 Years of Solitude.

Already established as a movie star, Jack Nicholson ascended to a new level of achievement in Chinatown. For the first time we saw his full range and felt the gravity behind his boyish features, mischievous grin and short-sighted gaze. His Jake Gittes isn’t quite as smart as he thinks he is. We don’t blame him for not seeing all the pitfalls laid in his path; he would have done much better if he were less cocky about his ability to snooker people. Jake tries to trick Lt. Escobar one time too many.

Film detectives are prone to superficial beatings, the kind that heal in just two or three script pages. The thugs that intercept Jake aren’t so lenient. He receives a nasty battle scar in the form of a slit nostril, a scene done so well, everybody in the audience jumps an inch. Jake wears his bandage proudly, not realizing that the gash is really the Mark of Cain. The nervous, evasive Evelyn Mulwray carries her own telltale physical signifier, a discolored spot in the iris of one of her eyes. The ‘flaw’ is more than an excuse not to look Jake in the eye. Eye color is inherited, and Evelyn’s psychological disturbance has everything to do with shameful hereditary secrets. Los Angeles is a primitive land where the powerful break taboos, letting succeeding generations deal with the unspeakable consequences.

The cost of idealism and innocence always runs high in Polanski films, and Chinatown is no exception. The ‘nosy’ Jake Gittes is taught a lesson with a switchblade knife. The flaw in Evelyn’s eye becomes a horrible, perverse punishment.

“The future, Mister Gittes!  The future!”

Chinatown finds relevance in its notion that powerful men took possession of Los Angeles long before most of us were born. John Huston’s charming monster Noah Cross fancies himself an unofficial Viceroy of the entire region — he wears a caballero sash, as would a Don of old Spanish days. Cross is the kind of kingpin who might have run liquor into Los Angeles during Prohibition; his main muscle Mulvihill appears to be a disgraced former sheriff of Ventura County,

Robert Towne’s story of how Los Angeles got its water is a fiction that many now assume to be the truth … if only because there are so many lawless abuses of civic power on the history books. Chinatown shifts the decade forward to declare that city water was deliberately withheld until bankruptcies put most of the drought-plagued San Fernando Valley under new ownership. Only then was the Valley incorporated into the City proper, making all that water available for agriculture at bargain rates. Cross calls this ‘buying the future’ but Towne’s screenplay compares it to a rape. Chinatown is fiction, but a case can be made that it doesn’t distort L.A.’s capacity for civic corruption. Crimes almost as big were routinely swept under the rug.

Roman Polanski was enticed back to Hollywood to direct; his achievement in  Rosemary’s Baby had not been forgotten. Frankly, nobody working in town had half his talent. There isn’t a single false step to be seen in Chinatown, in performance or camerawork. The Panavision view always seems in the optimal place — Roman Polanski said that he didn’t film with two cameras, because for any given scene there is only one place our eye wants to be. Nobobdy blocked scenes better than Polanski. Often in unbroken takes, group shots become close-ups of faces, or key action like an extended arm holding a gun.

Chinatown ignores the early ’70s embrace of improvisation. The finale has a perfection of framing and action seen only in a few old Hollywood movies. Eight characters move in and out of the frame. In just a few extended shots Polanski juxtaposes running figures with a bloody face, with Noah Cross’s grasping hands, with the dazed Jake looking over his shoulder, incapable of righting what has gone wrong. The expressive blocking of the finale just can’t be improved. It compares favorably with classic, much-studied examples like Michael Curtiz’s  Casablanca and Otto Preminger’s  Laura. Just like those films, it also delivers an unforgettable closing dialogue line.

Chinatown remains a high water mark for Hollywood glory. We’re lucky to have been witnesses to such genuine, glamorous excellence. It received ten Oscar nominations, for Best Picture, Actor, Actress, Director and Writer. But it won only one, for Robert Towne. That’s what happens when a picture goes up against the likes of The Godfather Part II.  Paramount didn’t complain, as both pictures were theirs.

Paramount Presents’ 4K Ultra HD of Chinatown has the crisp, sharp look of original prints in 1974; I remember a photochemical restoration around 1990 that was not very good-looking at all. The new 4K is sensational. We admire the clean look of everything — Jake Gittes’ investigation takes him to the better sections of L.A., under smogless clear skies. Even the parched San Fernando Valley looks like God’s Country. Credited cinematographer John Alonzo resurrects the allure of Venetian blinds. His lighting emphasizes textures — the bone-dry orchards, the manicured lawns in the Hollywood Hills and the rough plaster walls of Evelyn’s Spanish Colonial mansion. The film evokes an even older California in a brief glimpse of Old Mexico parade riders practicing on Noah Cross’s Catalina ranch.

We especially note the 4K image sharpness. Panavision optics had totally taken over anamorphic movies, and John Alonzo uses one slightly wide lens for most of his medium shots. The optics allow Jake to walk from mid-distance into choker close-up, and not distort.

Paramount Presents’ loading interface still makes one click through 12 text pages, but once we arrive at the main menu it’s smooth sailing. It is not a combo format disc.  Chinatown plays only in 4K Ultra HD, and its disc contains all the extras. The 4K disc is user-friendly for languages and the hearing impaired: all the extra featurettes carry subtitles as well.

The second feature The Two Jakes is only on the second plain-wrap Blu-ray disc that bears artwork and menus from an older release. Directed by Jack Nicholson, Robert Towne’s follow-up is more of a standard whodunit about land developers and oil rights, adultery and murder; it was supposed to be produced after a specific time interval, not 16 years later in 1990. Despite a top-notch cast — Harvey Keitel, Meg Tilly, Madeleine Stowe, Eli Wallach, Rubén Blades, Frederic Forrest, David Keith, Richard Farnsworth, Tracey Walter — the movie is curiously inert. The finale in a housing development / explosive oil field feels on the weak side. The show is entertaining enough, it’s just that Chinatown is such a hard act to follow.

Back on the main 4K disc, the excellent commentary and featurettes include material from 2009 and perhaps even earlier. The commentary gives us Robert Towne, assisted by David Fincher; author Sam Wasson provides an overview arguing for Chinatown’s importance. I watched several featurettes to the end but saw no credits, even though I believe Laurent Bouzereau produced one of the earlier added value packages. A grouping of four interview-based pieces pulls a Grand Slam of important names on the show — Polanski, Nicholson, Evans, Towne. Only Faye Dunaway is conspicuously absent. The shows are well organized and edited. The star interviewees have good stories to tell, even assistant director ‘Hawk’ Koch.

Chinatown is not an accurate exposé.

A three-part feature length documentary goes into great detail on the real-life history of the machinations that brought water to Los Angeles. It shows that Robert Towne’s story of a massive swindle is fiction — many now assume that the Bringing of Water was a criminal conspiracy, whereas the real story is very different.

. . . .

Personal sidebar:  Wow, talk about the ultimate Date Memory of 1974 …  ^*  see below.

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Chinatown
4K Ultra HD rates:
Movie: Excellent
Video: Excellent
Sound: Excellent English, French Spanish
Supplements:
Audio commentary with Robert Towne and David Fincher
Video essay A State of Mind with author Sam Wasson
Featurettes:
Chinatown Memories
The Trilogy that Never Was
Water and Power
An Appreciation
The Beginning and the End
Filming
The Legacy
Trailer.
Second Blu-ray Disc with The Two Jakes.
Deaf and Hearing-impaired Friendly? YES; Subtitles: English, French Spanish, Portuguese — on all the 4K extras as well.
Packaging: One 4k Ultra HD disc and one Blu-ray in Keep case
Reviewed: June 8, 2024
(7143chin)

^*  Our unsolicited personal memories are encouraged, but we think a footnote is the best place for them. This one is a little on the arcane side. In 1974, almost exactly 50 years ago, fellow film students James Ursini and Alain Silver were very enthused about a new movie. Chinatown had just premiered at Grauman’s Chinese and was a sell-out attraction. I arrived with my date just in time for a 10 p.m. show, knowing there’d be no good seats left.

It was a gamble. I was no longer working as a theater usher, but we were in luck because the assistant manager on duty remembered me. He okayed our sneaking into the theater’s Cathay Lounge, a private ‘royal balcony.’  Officially it could no longer be used, because earthquake retrofitting had made it difficult to enter and blocked half of its 16 or so seats. But it was a GREAT setting for what for us was a regal Command Performance … with very private seating.

Attendees of FILMEX might remember VIPs sometimes being seated up in the Cathay Lounge balcony with the programmer Gary Essert. We applauded Luis Buñuel when he waved to the audience at the end of his U.S. premiere for The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie. I guess the elderly Spaniard had to get past those steel reinforcements too?  I can imagine Buñuel seeing something surreal in the experience of squeezing around those girders. The last time I was in the Chinese Theater, I noted that an overhaul had changed everything — no more hidden balcony.

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