CHINATOWN: "Forget It Jake, It's Chinatown"
 They don't make 'em like this one anymore, do they? The closest Hollywood has come to mimicking the hard-boiled gumshoe antics of CHINATOWN was with L.A. CONFIDENTIAL, and either it's a real pity, because those are the only two great detective films set int he 1940s, or it's a boon, because it makes them really stand out. Raymond Chandler definitely would be proud of the legacy he left behind, and no one has come close to touching Jack Nicholson as J.J. "Jake" Gittes, the ultimate private dick.
At any rate, CHINATOWN is the 1974 film that was inspired
In the movie, Jake gets hired in what seems like a basic "I think my husband is cheating on me" case, and the husband in question is Hollis Mulwray, a play on words for William Mulholland who was an actual figure in the real water scandal. Gittes tails Mulwray and finds out that even though the Los Angeles is under drought conditions, the city is dumping fresh water into the ocean at night. He tires going to Mulwray for answers at his house, but finds him dead. He soon finds out that the Mrs. Mulwray who hired him was someone else posing as her, and whammo... we're deep into a mystery.
The real Evelyn Mulwray, played
Nicholson, of course, stays on the trail, and finds out that Mulwray's old partner Noah Cross (excellently played
The film has had previous releases on VHS, and then the DVD release in 1990, but this recent 2007 Special Edition version looks pretty damned amazing. It's in 16x9 for widescreen televisions, and while it doesn't look like it was filmed yesterday, it does look spectacular on the screen. They've created a newly remastered Dol
The Special Features offer up three newly produced featurettes, each one focused on a different facet of the film: The Beginning and the End, Filming, and the Legacy. They add up to about an hour in length total, and feature brand-new interviews with Polanski, Nicholson, and screenwriter Robert Towne. It would have been better if they'd stuck it all together in one hour-long documentary with chapters, but it's great to hear them looking back on the film now. In fact, both Jack Nicholson and Roman Polanski tell their sides of the famous story where Polanski hurled Nicholson's television (which actually belonged to someone else) out of his trailer for watching Laker games. There's a bunch of great stories throughout the featurettes, and it's the perfect thing to follow the film up with.
This was Polanski's last film in the United States before he became a fugitive from justice, and it arguably remains his best. If you haven't seen it yet, drop what you're doing and head to Chinatown.
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