Cinema
Chinatown
Roman Polański · 1974
Synopsis
Los Angeles, 1937, in the middle of a drought. Jake Gittes, a private detective specialising in matrimonial cases, receives a woman who says she is Evelyn Mulwray and asks him to follow her husband Hollis, chief engineer of the city's water department. He photographs him with a young woman, and the pictures appear on the front page. The real Mrs Mulwray then comes forward, and her lawyer threatens Gittes with a lawsuit. Soon afterwards, Mulwray is found drowned in a reservoir; Gittes suspects murder.
Context
It was the last film its director made in the United States. The screenwriter reworked material for him once more, uncredited, in 1988. The plot draws on the way Los Angeles acquired the water rights of the Owens Valley, about three hundred and twenty kilometres away, and brought the water there by an aqueduct of three hundred and seventy-five kilometres completed in 1913. John Huston, who plays one of the major roles, is himself a director.
Who it is for
A two-hour ten-minute film, in colour, which follows a private detective's investigation in California at the end of the thirties.
Prizes and reception
Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay out of eleven nominations, four Golden Globes, added to the National Film Registry in 1991, and nineteenth on the American Film Institute's list.
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