CHINATOWN (Paramount, 1974) D: Roman Polanski, w/ Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway. Rating: NNNNN Blu-ray package: NNNNN Rating: NNNNN
This Chinatown is identical to the two-disc DVD that Paramount put out under its Centennial Collection banner in 2009. It’s worth going for the Blu-ray’s slight but noticeable additional clarity, because the rich, textured visuals are one reason why Chinatown is so rewatchable. The others have to do with its complex, multi-layered story that unfolds with the unexpectedness and inevitability of great tragedy.
J.J. Gittes, a successful private eye in 1930s Los Angeles, takes on a simple straying-husband job that leads him into a maze of murder and conspiracy with a terrible crime at its centre.
Robert Towne wrote Gittes specifically for Jack Nicholson, and the role plays to all the actor’s strengths: his hustler’s charm, vanity, humour, compromised morals and outbursts of anger. It’s a career-defining performance. Ditto for Faye Dunaway, the client, whose emotionally damaged reticence fits perfectly with Gittes’s aggression and conflicted emotions.
Towne, Nicholson, director Roman Polanski and producer Bob Evans provide almost an hour of reminiscences in the three-part retrospective making-of doc. Towne also makes a few fascinating remarks on constructing the script in the commentary he shares with The Social Network director David Fincher, whose insights into Polanski’s directing choices are valuable.
EXTRAS Commentary, three-part historical doc, appreciation doc, three-part retrospective making-of doc, 5.1 or restored mono sound. English, French, Spanish, Portuguese audio and subtitles.
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