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
15th (?) 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+
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