Cinema Classic

Rating: Null/10 (16 June 2003)

`C'mon Jake, it's . . . Chinatown,' so utters Joe Mantell, one of the finest and least known character players of his generation, to Jack Nicholson's Jake Gittes at film's end. Those of you who have seen the film realize that it is not about Chinatown at all, but what it stands for in the story: broken dreams and that things are often not what they seem.
Chinatown is a great film, truly one of the all time greats. As I type this I have the video jacket in front of me and the production / cast credits on the back read like a Who's Who in Hollywood in the1970's. (Chinatown was released in 1974). Robert Evans, Roman Polanski, Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, John Hillerman, Burt Young, John Huston. Robert Towne, to name a few, persons all well known to the public or whom someday would be. When viewed in this context, it is easy to understand why Chinatown is such a classic.
The story is too complicated and convoluted to go into detail here, as all of the great gumshoe films of the 1940's were, but a recap is in order. It is 1930's Los Angeles. Jake Gittes (Nicholson) is a private investigator making a nice living performing surveillance on wayward spouses. One day, a wealthy woman shows up wishing to hire Jake to trail her husband, who happens to be the Los Angeles water commissioner, only it turns out that the woman who did the hiring is not the man's wife. Gittes should have paid better attention to the alarm bell which went off in his mind because he is soon involved in public fraud, murder and family scandal. Along the way he falls in love with the water commissioner's real wife, the smoky and secretive Evelyn Mulray, ably played by Faye Dunaway, and a woman who is hiding a dark family secret.	I won't give the finish away, but it does end in Chinatown in an unexpected and tragic way.	I am not certain Chinatown could be shot and produced today as it was in 1974. There are excellent interior/exterior and location shots of 1930's architecture which today would be almost 30 years older. Director Roman Polanski's influence upon his pictures is, in my view, unique, for I have never seen anyone draw emotion out of his characters as he does. (I was reminded of this when I recently viewed The Pianist). It is a pity that his well-documented problems with the American legal system have kept him out of the United States for so many years, for I doubt that we will ever have the opportunity now to see if he has another American masterpiece within him, as was Chinatown and 1968's Rosemary's Baby.	Another example of Polanski's genius is how he managed to make a masterpiece of a story which was shot in bright color but should have been filmed in black and white. (My imagination runs wild when I consider what Humphrey Bogart would have been like as Jake Gittes, or Sydney Greenstreet as the quintessentially evil Noah Cross, portrayed by John Huston and the father of Evelyn Mulray, together as they were in The Maltese Falcon, another film noir classic). Polanski not only used color but vivid color to turn the picture within itself and present a dark story in the full light of day.	Jack Nicholson was a year away from his big success in One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. Faye Dunaway, who earned a place in my Grand Dame Hall of Fame with her performance as the benighted Evelyn Mulray, was at the height of her popularity and powers in 1974. Huston as the sinister Noah Cross will keep you awake at night after your first viewing of this film. Players such as John Hillerman and Burt Young would go on to greater success and popularity . Chinatown owes much of it's success to these players.	A last word about the previously mentioned Joe Mantell who had a small role as one of Jake's investigators. He did utter the film's most famous line, but that is not all of his story. Mr. Mantell appeared in a 1960 Twilight Zone episode titled, `Nervous Man in A Four Dollar Room,' where he literally had to change his entire personality in real time on camera, Marc Scott Zicree, writing in The Twilight Zone Companion, (copyright 1982, Bantam Books), has this to say about him: `Joe Mantell is an actor not generally known, but he should be.'	In Chinatown, even the bit players were great performers.