1974 is rocked by the writing achievement in Chinatown

Rating: Null/10 (13 July 2013)

As I wrote the title to this post, the year "1974" flashed before my eyes in terms of my opinion of the highly respected film Chinatown. I've now seen this film twice, the first time I "convinced" myself it to love it no matter what I actually thought of it, knowing how highly regarded screenplay is in the movie industry. Honestly, I felt the film's pacing was a dud and Nicholson didn't work as the leading character. The screenplay was fine, but I felt like I was going to drown in my own saliva from falling asleep in this boring movie. I rewatched the film knowing where the story is going and having a firm grip on the plot and came out drinking the Chinatown cool-aid.
My most substantial complaints of my first viewing of Chinatown, pacing aside, was the disappointment I felt in Jack Nicholson's performance. I before thought he was playing himself as a detective. Jack Nicholson the Detective, not J.J. Gittes, which is frustrating and awkward to watch. On second viewing, I took to Nicholson's performance more, he's serviceable with a few moments of finesse. When Nicholson is put in "hammy" scenes, I feel like it's only Jack Nicholson that appears most times. Maybe that's why his work in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is the best work of his career. He gets to play the eccentric character that he is in real life.
Faye Dunaway emerges as the heroine grounded in mystery. Her character has layers that Dunaway is allowed to slowly peal off, each layer making sense from what we know about the layer prior. Chinatown is essentially a neo-film noir of its time, and Dunaway fits the bill of a noir heroine to a tee. Set in the 1930s, Chiantown features some wonderful costumes, sets, and cinematography that add to that era and the noir-feeling of the picture. The film score helps the picture set its wonderful tone, also.
Roman Polanski is the man I have any kind of a beef with when it comes to Chinatown. Polanski excels at creating the rush for viewers in the second half of the film, but Chinatown's blinding flaw is that the first hour, Polanski lets the picture flat-line. The information we're given in the first hour makes sense at the end of the movie, we need to see these crucial scenes, but Polanski doesn't help make these overreaching plot arc scenes lively enough to keep me interested. The first hour succeeds on all levels, with the huge exception of the lackadaisical directing. The second half, Polanski shifts the film into drive, stomps on the gas petal and makes amends for the first hour's glacial pacing.
Finally, what makes Chinatown "Chinatown".....the marvelous screenplay. Robert Towney penned the screenplay, which revived the noir-genre in the 1970s. Not only that, but Towney scribed a manicured script that had thick character development and a serpentine plot that keeps unfolding in your mind even after the movie has concluded. People probably confuse themselves searching for the allegory to bigger things in Chinatown's script, however, literary devices aren't why Chinatown is a step above most screenplays ever written. It's brilliant in the communication to the audience, keeping the audience under water in the mysteries (we're introduced to one big mystery to learn about multiple others in solving the one at hand) of Chinatown and the multiples secrets the characters conceal about their past.
Chinatown opens its film in a odd fashion and goes against the formula of film noir anatomy with its first twenty minutes. It's very carefully plotted and tricky to comprehend at first. But then a mystery unfolds that's one of the most satisfying and involved conclusions to a mystery story. Filled to the brim with fine performances and wonderful decor, if you're willing to be patient and relinquish your full attention to the plot, Chinatown is a movie that resonates and unrolls in your mind. The more I've thought about the intelligence behind the film, the closer Chinatown is to getting a perfect from me.
Rating: 9.5/10
Grade: A