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Film Chinatown (1974)

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"Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown," says a detective with weary nonchalance in director Roman Polanski's hard-boiled masterpiece Chinatown. Those lingering last words embody the film's resigned worldview — a dire outlook held by everyone but private eye J.J. 'Jake' Gittes (Jack Nicholson). With cigarette in mouth, Gittes snoops, snaps, and insinuates (mostly wrongly) about the shady dealings surrounding an adulterous Water Department engineer (Darrell Zwerling), his strangely guarded wife (Faye Dunaway), and a depraved water baron (John Huston). Polanski details '30s Los Angeles perfectly, depicting it as a corrupt home for one of cinema's most shocking tales.

– Jason Jude Chan

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