Chinatown (1974)

Mystery | 131 minutes

3,81 1.831 votes

+ My vote

3 comments

Genre: Filmnoir / Mystery

Duration: 131 minuten

Country: United States

Stars: Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway and John Huston

Releasedate: 20 June 1974

Chinatown plot

"You get tough. You get tender. You get close to each other. Maybe you even get close to the truth."

Hollis Mulwray is a wealthy landowner. Ida Sessions, pretending to be his wife Evelyn (Faye Dunaway), asks private detective Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson) to investigate his adultery. Jake takes pictures of Hollis with a young woman. When Hollis is murdered, Jake decides to investigate the murder. He finds more than he was looking for...

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Jack Nicholson

Evelyn's Butler

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Trailer Chinatown

Ernest Dickerson on Chinatown

Chinatown' | Critics' Picks | The New York Times

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3 COMMENTS

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Fisico

10039 messages
5398 votes

1 May 2019 at 22:15

Chinatown is a strong neo-noir where the atmosphere is everything. There is always a subcutaneous tension that can explode every time. The music also contributes to that mysterious atmosphere that is so rich in Chinatown. The movie is quite slow and at many moments very little happens to make me feel 100% in the movie. Fortunately, the dialogues make up for a lot. The acting performances of Nicholson and Dunaway are also top notch. Technically it is a strong film anyway, such as the reflection in the binoculars of Jake Gittes.

Jack Nicholson plays an excellent devious and opportunistic detective. He takes the film to a higher level and Faye Dunaway also does an excellent job as a femme fatale. Purely as a plot I found it a bit less, a bit boring even at times, but fortunately other criteria lifted the film to a higher level.

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Filmkriebel

9947 messages
4643 votes

15 August 2019 at 19:28

At first glance, I expected a classic police movie, nothing more than a whodunit in which a private detective investigates a murder. But there's a snake in the grass here that you don't see coming so quickly. It's not for nothing that Chinatown is considered one of the best screenplays ever.

Needless to say, Jack Nicholson is a great character actor… his cynical character is really solid. The actions he takes and the words he utters match the character. There are, however, other elements that take this film to the next level: the bigger picture surrounding strategic control over LA's water resources and the murdered man's confused widow, who is clearly holding back. There is enough mystery in this complex plot to keep the viewer glued to the seat. And the title of the film is also a vague mystery that I had to chew through. The ending is very bleak and that atypical makes it a successful film for me anyway. However, I don't give it 4* because of a tension that remains a bit on the low side... For me it could have been a little more intense.

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