Chinatown. 1974. USA. Directed by Roman Polanski. Screenplay by Robert Towne. With Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, John Huston, Roman Polanski. 4K digital restoration by Paramount; courtesy Paramount. 130 min.
Robert Towne’s Raymond Chandler-esque, noir detective story, about the invisible corruption behind the urban development of Los Angeles, is considered one the greatest screenplays in history. Yet it was Roman Polanski’s inherent pessimism—fueled by his return to the city where his wife, Sharon Tate, had been brutally murdered by the Manson family—that pushed the film into even darker territory, uncompromisingly connecting the viciousness of urban politics to an inherent malevolence in human nature. As punishment for his incursions into the hidden history of a powerful family and the city they helped to build, Jack Nicholson gets his nose slashed onscreen (by none other than the director himself), and the bandage he wears for the rest of the film is emblematic of one man’s fall into an abyss—and a country losing its innocence after the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal.