Remember it, Jake: 'Chinatown' turns 50

One of the greatest movies of the 20th century was Roman Polanski’s 1974 film noir with the darkest twist imaginable.

Chinatown looks, in the beginning, like it’s going to be about terrible things: Namely, adultery, with a side of garden-variety business corruption. 

But as it goes on, the film reveals itself as really about something much worse: The systematic stealing of land and water.  And then, in the third act, it becomes about something even worse than that- rape, incest, and (ultimately) the bad guy getting away with all of the above. 

Chinatown, written by Robert Towne, directed by Roman Polanski, and starring Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, and John Huston, arrived in theaters in June of 1974, 50 years ago last week.

It’s a great, great film—it looks amazing, with perfect period detail and a screenplay that’s both tight and ladles out big surprises throughout. Towne’s screenplay won the film’s only Oscar due to its misfortune of coming out the same year as The Godfather, Part II. 

It’s one of those movies I wish I could watch again for the first time. 

Chinatown is not really a “revisionist” film noir, the way so many New Hollywood classics rescrambled established genres (Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye, which arrived the year before, was more of a pure revisionist noir.) However, it goes against the established conventions of the genre in one place: That bleak, horrific, nihilistic ending. 

Towne wrote Chinatown with Nicholson in mind for the leading role of Jake Gittes, an ex-cop turned private eye in 1930s Los Angeles who specializes in catching adulterous husbands in the act.