2009 AFI Dallas Film Festival - Chinatown

(USA, 1974, 131 mins)
35mm
Directed By: Roman Polanski

“You may think you know what you’re dealing with, but believe me, you don’t!” John Huston’s avuncular Noah Cross coolly assures Jack Nicholson’s L.A. private eye Jake Gittes in Roman Polanski’s elegant take on the 1930s hard-boiled detective genre. An outstanding example of why the 70s is now widely considered one of the great eras of Hollywood filmmaking, the downbeat tale resonates Watergate-era cynicism and conspiracy paranoia while dressed in period detail that sets off the assured performances of Nicholson, Huston, and Faye Dunaway as edgy, enigmatic Evelyn Mulwray. Robert Towne’s screenplay, loosely inspired by the often-shady dealings behind the transformation of arid Los Angeles into a sprawling metropolis, is both quotable and complex, gradually revealing the moral and political decay behind rosy American myths of progress. That the director of the classic detective movie The Maltese Falcon (1941) plays the depraved villain continues The New Hollywood’s drive to revise and invert the genre conventions of the past. What can an impossibly rich visionary buy that he can’t already afford? “The future, Mr. Gittes!”

Information from the festival's website