Chinatown

Chinatown. 1974 Paramount Pictures.
Starring: Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, John Huston, Perry Lopez, John Hillerman, Diane Ladd, Burt Young
Director: Roman Polanski
Available from Amazon (special collectors' edition).

Chinatown established Jack Nicholson as a true superstar in Hollywood, and it was also the last movie Roman Polanski directed in the United States before his arrest and conviction for statutory rape. The movie was part of a planned trilogy about corruption in the local government in Los Angeles. Nicholson himself directed the second part, The Two Jakes, which looked at the natural gas department in L.A., but its failure at the box office nixed plans for the third part, Cloverleaf, a movie about the development of the Los Angeles freeway system during the late 1940s.

The movie also won an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay (for Robert Towne), plus four Golden Globe Awards, including Best Motion Picture: Drama for producer Robert Evans, Best Director, and Best Actor in a Motion Picture: Drama for Nicholson.

J.J. "Jake" Gittes (Nicholson) is a detective specializing in "matrimonial work" hired by someone claiming to be Evelyn Mulwray (Ladd) to tail her "husband", Water Department engineer Hollis Mulwray (Darrell Zwerling). Gittes takes a picture of Hollis with a young blonde and assumes it's an open and shut case, but when the real Evelyn Mulwray (Dunaway) surfaces, the detective finds out that she never hired him in the first place. Hollis turns up dead, prompting Gittes to investigate further, running across a shady home for the elderly, corrupt L.A. bureaucrats, angry farmers upset at losing needed water to the city, and famously, a nostril-slicing attacker (Polanski in a cameo). By the time Gittes confronts water baron Noah Cross (Huston), who is also Evelyn's father and a former business partner of Hollis, Jake thinks he has the case solved, but nothing doing. Gittes is also stunned to learn about the true relationship between Evelyn, her father, and the young blonde seen with Hollis earlier.

"Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown." Highly, highly recommended.