Chinatown            

By Anne Hurley

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 mold, 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 center 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 color 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.

Academy Awards

Chinatown received an Academy Award for Writing (Best Original Screenplay; Robert Towne). Chinatown also received Academy Awards nominations for Best Picture (Robert Evans - Producer), Actor (Jack Nicholson), Actress (Faye Dunaway), Directing (Roman Polanski), Art Direction/Set Decoration (Richard Sylbert - Art Direction, W. Stewart Campbell - Art Direction, Ruby Levitt - Set Decoration), Cinematography (John A. Alonzo), Costume Design (Anthea Sylbert), Film Editing (Sam O'Steen), Music Scoring Awards (Best Original Dramatic Score; Jerry Goldsmith), and Sound (Bud Grenzbach, Lawrence Jost).

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"I can't believe this film only won one Oscar! It is listed as the 19th best American film of all-time by the American Film Institute and Nicholson deserved Best Actor more than Art Carney!" --Anonymous