Movies I Love, Part XVI: Chinatown

Frankly, I find it dumbfounding that I haven’t heralded this magnificent film sooner. Truth be told, it ranks in the Top 5 of my all-time faves. I’ve got the poster hanging on my wall. (Got if for a couple bucks too, at a yard sale. It’s worth a lot more. Nice.)

The Film Babe and I caught it on HDTV channel last night just by chance. Early on in the film too, so we didn’t miss much.

We sat enraptured.

Roman Polanski, at the top of his considerable game, directed this masterpiece from a screenplay by the estimable Robert Towne. The film is pitch perfect. It is very difficult to find flaws.

Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson) is the private dick in young and growing LA of the 40s. He’s hired by the wife to spy on a water company exec who is apparently having an affair. Except it turns out that the spouse (Faye Dunaway) didn’t hire him at all. And he’s not having an affair, but does end up dead, drowning in a town with a drought.

Oh, it’s such a delicious and clever plot. Eminently believable also.

The McGuffin of course is that this doesn’t have anything to do with a love affair at all. It’s about money and incest and greed.

Towne won the Oscar for his screenplay. The others were nominated — Polanski, Dunaway, Nicholson — and won various end of year awards. Deservedly so. My favorite performance in the film is that of cagey John Huston as Dunaway’s father, Noah Cross, who was one of the co-founders of the water company. Along with the dead guy, Dunaway’s hubby.

Nicholson’s character is so well played. A perceptive detective with major flaws. He can’t keep his mouth shut, so he’s always revealing too much to the wrong people.

I must also give my props to John A. Alonzo, the cinematographer. This is a visually beautiful film.

So let’s see. “Chinatown” is intelligent, has great rhythm, entertaining, clever, well-acted, pretty to look at. What more can one ask of a movie? Correct answer: Nothing.