A Hollywood Masterpiece

Rating: 10/10 (24 December 2006)

Experiencing older Hollywood films, films made in the era when script, direction, cinematography, lighting, musical scoring and acting became melded together in an intricate but cohesive escapist adventure, is like visiting a fine art museum - masters at work creating a living work of art that time only enhances in respect.
Such is the case for Roman Polanski's 1974 film noir CHINATOWN. Robert Towne's brilliant script is the baseline for this fascinating story of the Los Angeles and environs of the 1930s, a time when power was wedded to corruption, greed, family secrets of aberrant stature, and manipulation of resources (here the Department of Water and Power, the police, and entrepreneurs). Using the inimitable Jack Nicholson as the smart and daring private detective who pries open a conspiracy in the family of John Huston and his daughter Faye Dunaway whose private life secret is as huge as the water stealing crimes that are at the basis of the story was a stroke of genius that has rarely been matched since. And tying all of this together with one of Jerry Goldsmith's finest musical scores and cinematography that is liquid and redolent of the wastes that were the at the core of Los Angeles' prostitution of sunlight and shadow - the desert by the sea - was part of Polanski's genius for direction.
For viewing an example of the finest in film-making, CHINATOWN remains at the top of the list. Grady Harp