"You're dumber than you think I think you are."
There are thousand definitions of being classic, but for me definitely is the case when I have time to time the feeling to rewatch the same film. Polanski's Chinatown is one of them. A true neo noir masterpiece. Why 'neo' is this noir? I could find thousand reasons, just think on its brave colours (a colorful noir? Yes!), its sexual taboos (hmm, maybe I won't spoil..), its femme fatale's human touch (which makes her story even more tragic). On the other hand it follows all the real noirs' rules with its slow ventillators, venetian blinds, complicated / layered storyline, dense cigarette smoke, sweating foreheads, heroes with accused past, soft hats and white rounded car tyres, where the sneaking in score of Jerry Goldsmith during the credits makes you goose bumps already (It would deserve a separate essay how the tone and the variations of the main theme of the music is changing along our way descending the deepest darkness of the story).
We are somewhere in the 1930's Los Angeles. Jake Gittes, a Marlow-type private eye, who changed a big part from his ancestor's cynism for some blasé attribute (I told you, it's 'neo' already, right after the fatal Vietnam war mixed with Gittes' diegetic dark secret back to his past in Chinatown...) has a new case: Mrs. Mulwray hires him to check her husband who in her opinion is having a lover. An important detail: Mr. Mulwray is a chief engineer of a huge L.A. project "Water and Power." The Alto Vallejo plan is about to solve the water problem of the city ("to keep the desert out from the streets and not on the top of them"). Simple case for the coony Gittes (he defines this extra of his as a "finesse"), he has the next days already compromitted pictures from the "couple" (even the newspaper gets them somehow...:). But the happines doesn't last too long: the next day Mrs. Mulwray is waiting for Gittis at his office with her lawyer. I mean the the never seen before, real Mrs. Mulwray (Faye Dunaway).
And we are only at the very beginning of it – after some murders happen Gittes gets another assignment, even from the real Evelyn Cross Mulwray. One more character needs to be introduced namely Evelyn's father, Mulwray's business partner in planning, Noah Cross (played by unbelievable complex John Huston, exactly, the film director), who is most likely behind all the mysterious and more and more deadly actions. He gives another assignment for the getting confused but more and more motivated (and involved) Gittes. And I didn't mentioned Polanski's cameo as a "midget" with a knife. Hilariously dangerous with his childish face...
"- May I speak frankly, Mrs. Mulwray?"
- You may if you can, Mr. Gittes."
Of course I won't forget to emphasize Jack Nicholson's figure as Gittes. But I have to say if I would write here a whole litany about his greatness it wouldn't be enough to express his qualities. Some might say that this is his career's main character, which according to his Jack Torrance or McMurphy is rather a brave statement, but I'm not sure if it isn't true.
If we are really talking about a classic film historical masterwork (as we are doing), there must be thousand small stories, gossips, legends around its cultic presence. Next to those I'd like to add my small proud-detail which was mentioned among the extras of the DVD: the novel's and the film's title as Chinatown comes from a Hungarian fellow who was working there and told stories about its strange world to the writer of the original story (Robert Towne).
To make it simple all the enthusiastic gibberish above: Perfect and obligatory.
10/10
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