Product Description
In a legendary performance, three-time Academy Award® winner Jack Nicholson stars as private eye Jake Gittes. Hired by a mysterious woman to investigate Hollis Mulwray, the chief engineer of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, Gittes’ sleuthing brings him into contact with Mulwray’s wife (Academy Award® winner Faye Dunaway), a stunning socialite with secrets of her own. As a determined Gittes delves deeper he soon realizes that even the City of Angels has a dark side. Director Roman Polanski’s Chinatown has evolved from an atmospheric film noir mystery into a modern day classic, with Robert Towne’s Academy Award®-winning script unforgettably and brilliantly capturing a lost era of deceit, corruption and treachery.
Amazon.com
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. --Anne Hurley
Chinatown [Blu-ray] Reviews
117 of 120 people found the following review helpful: Much improved picture and extras for new edition of classic film, By This review is from: Chinatown (Special Collector's Edition) (DVD) A remarkable film noir classic, "Chinatown" finally gets the deluxe treatment it deserves on DVD. While the previous edition looked quite good (and had some nice interviews), this edition features a sharper, more vivid transfer. Additionally, we get a three part documentary on the making of the movie focusing on the preproduction, filming and impact of the film with Jack Nicholson, Roman Polanski, Robert Evans and writer Robert Towne participating. Sadly, Faye Dunaway doesn't appear in any of the extras. I had hoped for a commentary track (even one cobbled together of various interviews from the entire surviving cast and production crew)and the discovery of any deleted scenes for this edition but neither is included. The latest edition of "Chinatown" has much better contrast, a cleaner, richer looking transfer that more accurately captures a pristine theatrical presentation of the film. The anamorphic transfer has a bit more information on the sides than in the previous... Read more 135 of 146 people found the following review helpful: A milestone in film noir history., By Themis-Athena (from somewhere between California and Germany) - See all my reviews This review is from: Chinatown (DVD) "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 th 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... Read more 100 of 108 people found the following review helpful: You Can't Ever Forget "Chinatown", This review is from: Chinatown (25th Anniversary Edition) [VHS] (VHS Tape) About an hour into "Chinatown", Noah Cross (John Huston) says to Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson), "You may think you know what you're dealing with, but believe me, you don't." Gittes, whose heard this rap before, just smiles. "Why is that funny?" asks Cross. "It's what the D.A. used to tell me about Chinatown." If any exchange defines "Chinatown" the movie then this is it. It's a film where the cliched metaphor of the onion is quite apt: the more layers you peel away, the more layers you find. And the less you're likely to understand. It begins life as a simple detective story, but eventually spins out of control into a web of intrigue (another cliched metaphor) that not only includes the murder of water commissioner Hollis Mulwray, but the entirety of 1930's Los Angeles.Into this web is sprung Jake Gittes, a man who seems to be a typical film noir detective, but upon closer inspection is much more. Or, as we shall see, much less. I'd argue that Jake is an existential... Read more |
› See all 260 customer reviews...