Chinatown - Roman Polanski (1975)

This movie has been on my list to see for a while, so I was glad to see it on the list, and glad the guy at the video store picked it out for me. I didn't know a lot about it - just that Jack Nicholson was in it and that at some point he had something happen to his nose in the movie.

So this is where I start to sound very....possibly insightful...possibly annoying....(I leave it to you dear reader to choose)...

Basically, this is a detective story that revolves around a woman. Very similar in concept to 'The Big Sleep' (see previous post on this one). So same concept, VERY different interpretation. The two main characters were portrayed very differently: Philip Marlowe in 'The Big Sleep' low key, 'small time', works alone. Where Jake Gittes in 'Chinatown' was well dressed, had people working for him and was definitely not low key. Admittedly it was kind of cool to see the similarities and the differences in the movies.

The movie was also.....clean. I don't know what other word to describe it. Visually...it was clean. I am sure there is a way better term for that (something more 'movie like') but that's all I got. The other thing I did notice was some of the sounds in the movie. There would be sounds 'off camera' that wouldn't really have to do with the scene or story at hand, such as crickets, or phones ringing or the like. So it almost made it more....realistic, since that's kind of what happens day-to-day (where there is always 'background' noise).

Last line of the movie.....classic (apparently made it to the AFI's top 100 movie quotes in American cinema): "Forget it, Jake, it's Chinatown". Classic.

And not to ruin it for anyone....but the movie isn't actually about Chinatown. But at the same time, it kind of is. Weird.

One word to describe 'Chinatown': Clean.