Never have I ever been involved and hooked to a story as I have with Chinatown! This is an amazing film! No doubt about it. The acting is convincing, and entertaining with Jack Nicholson at the helm playing private investigator J.J. Gittes who gets wrapped up in a case involving infidelity and water possession in 1930s Los Angeles. May I say that this film defines story telling? I think so! Thanks Robert Towne for such a captivating piece of cinema. It involves the audience 100% in the clues, the cues, and the whews. Very few films have given me this kind of reaction of going on this mysterious adventure with Gittes and solving the crime with him. Simply pure story telling. Thanks Roman Polanski for directing Nicholson in a great performance and a nasty nose job!
The score by the great Jerry Goldsmith is an eternal piece that defines the 1930s in all of it’s glory and mystery. Hearing the trumpet playing the melody and the strings in the background make me feel that I am involved in the story even more. True 1930s fashion. Whenever the story turns in a crazy direction (it happens quite a bit), the music turns from beautiful melodies to stomping and dangerous piano keys. The score summarizes how Gittes is feeling throughout the entire film. The score adds passion to Gittes’ journey.
My favorite piece of this movie is again the great use of the cast. Everybody in “Chinatown” serves a purpose. They either help Gittes, or try to stop him in his case. No unnecessary roles here! Nicholson stands strong playing a man with integrity, stubbornness, smarts, and full of gritty charisma. He drives the story the whole way! Fay Dunaway, Jon Huston, Perry Lopez, and John Hillerman all portray their characters with heart and deceit, which doesn’t make it easy for Gittes to find out who’s lying. You really can’t trust any of them. They are just that good of a cast! Chemistry is key to having a cast match the scale of the story. If that doesn’t work out, then you end up with a movie like “Lost in Space” (1998). Great idea, but horrible story telling and casting. No movie is immune to the possibility of poor stories and poor casting, but Chinatown hits it just right creating a class act.
Jack Nicholson (L) and Faye Dunaway (R) in Chinatown
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