Chinatown (1974)

Halfway through Roman Polasnki’s perfect crime noir “Chinatown,” the femme fatale played by Faye Dunaway bumps a car horn with her head during a moment of distress. The noise startles her and seat mate PI Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson). It is the coldest punch of foreshadowing I’ve ever seen, and I only noticed it on what may have been my 15^th (?) viewing. The next viewing I noticed a new twist: Gittes’ love of horses. That’s the beauty of Polanski’s tale of 1930s Los Angeles and ex-cop Gittes, who spies on wondering spouses, and wears fine suits. Plot: The wife of LA’s water engineer hires Gittes to bust her cheating husband, except the woman isn’t the engineer’s wife, and when the man turns up dead, Gittes realizes he’s been played. Gittes takes action. Except the cruel joke of “Chinatown” is Gittes is a fool, so lost and clueless the deeper he sinks into ancient familial evil, by film’s end he is left in shock, helpless. Robert Towne gets the screenplay credit, but Polanski wrote the unnerving finale. Polanksi’s direction is as smooth as jazz, with perfect interior car shots. As the villain, John Huston plays a monster for the ages. A+