Chinatown (4K UHD)

Director: Roman Polanski
Screenplay: Robert Towne
Stars: Jack Nicholson (J.J. Gittes), Faye Dunaway (Evelyn Mulwray), John Huston (Noah Cross), Perry Lopez (Escobar), John Hillerman (Yelburton), Darrell Zwerling (Hollis Mulwray), Diane Ladd (Ida Sessions), Roy Jenson (Mulvihill), Roman Polanski (Man with Knife), Richard Bakalyan (Loach), Joe Mantell (Walsh), Bruce Glover (Duffy), Nandu Hinds (Sophie), James O’Rear (Lawyer), James Hong (Evelyn’s Butler), Beulah Quo (Maid), Jerry Fujikawa (Gardener)
MPAA Rating: R
Year of Release: 1974
Country: U.S.
Chinatown Paramount Presents 4K UHD
 Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.

Roman Polanski’s Chinatown is one of the great masterworks of ’70s American cinema and an apex of the decade’s obsession with genre revisionism. Along with Coppola’s The Godfather (1972), Altman’s Nashville (1975), and Spielberg’s Jaws (1975), which reimagined the gangster film, the musical, and the monster movie, respectively, Chinatown helped usher in a new era of gutsy American cinema in which the genres of Hollywood’s golden age were rewritten with new rules, heightened aesthetic intensity, and a sharper, if frequently more despondent, tone that no longer had to play by the dictates of the industry’s Production Code.

Robert Towne’s screenplay, still hailed as one of the finest ever written and a model that aspiring screenwriters study and attempt to emulate, pays loving homage to, while also slyly undercutting, many of the dictates of the hard-boiled detective story, which was forged by pulp writers like Dashiell Hammett and Mickey Spillane and then given expressive cinematic life in ’40s and ’50s film noir by filmmakers such as John Huston, Jules Dassin, Fritz Lang, Robert Siodmak, and Orson Welles. Set in Los Angeles in the late 1930s, Chinatown was one of the first modern films to consciously evoke the bygone era of film noir. Even though it was shot in color, John Alonzo’s sepia cinematography, which frequently resembles old, faded postcards, has the same visual effect as black-and-white while also emphasizing the arid environment in a way that purely monochromatic images never could (which is absolutely crucial for a film that centers on the centrality of water in the power struggle over the development of Los Angeles).

One of the means by which Chinatown deviates sharply from the films that inspired it is the protagonist. Unlike Humphrey Bogart’s Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon (1941), which is generally considered the first true film noir, Jack Nicholson’s private detective J.J. Gittes is not a primal masculine archetype, but rather a complicated and at times unintentionally absurd protagonist whose sense of control is highly illusory. The film immediately establishes his less-than-ideal persona via his work snapping pictures of adulterous spouses, a lowbrow form of detective work that is typically beneath the more admirable private eyes. His dapper sense of style makes him into a vain dandy of sorts, and while he manages to hold his own most of the time, he is also made to play the fool, such as when he insists on telling a bawdy joke in an inappropriate situation. Far from cool and collected, he is simply self-possessed, and much of the film pivots on undercutting his misplaced self-confidence, never so directly (and painfully) than in the scene in which a pint-sized thug (played, not incidentally, by Polanski himself) slices his nostril with a switchblade. The cutting itself causes us to wince, but more importantly it leads directly to the ridiculous image of Nicholson playing the tough detective with a massive white bandage on his nose—in other words, vintage Polanski.

Other characters also play into and against expectations. Faye Dunaway’s Evelyn Mulwray, a mysterious woman whose husband (Darrell Zwerling), an engineer with the city’s power and water department, is murdered, provides an endless stream of contradictions and apparent secrets. Her evasiveness and mood swings suggest the manipulations of yet another dangerous femme fatale, but Dunaway’s vulnerability constantly tempts us with the notion that she is the victim, rather than the villain. Outright villainy is instead embodied by Noah Cross, Evenlyn’s father and one of the wealthiest and most powerful men in Los Angeles. Played with insidious gusto by the great John Huston, who directed Bogart in The Maltese Falcon three decades earlier, Noah Cross is one of the cinema’s most unnerving depictions of evil. He is, in every sense, J.J. Gittes’s opposite, not in some simplistic sense of good-versus-evil morality, but rather in the sense that Gittes’s illusion of control is Noah Cross’s reality.

In hindsight, we recognize that the narrative momentum in Chinatown moves us inexorably toward the revelation of the depths of Noah Cross’s depravity, which is at once so banal and so horrific that we are left baffled, troubled, and lost. The key line of dialogue in the film is when Cross tells Gittes, “You may think you know what you’re dealing with. But believe me, you don’t,” to which Gittes responds by snickering and saying, “That’s what the district attorney used to tell me in Chinatown.” He thinks he can get to the bottom of the case by exposing Cross and his illegal dealings, but it is that very ambition—which, not incidentally, climaxes in Chinatown, the film’s all-encompassing heart of darkness—that swallows him whole. His intense desire to know is the seed of his own destruction, as well as others around him.

Notoriously bleak, yet utterly compelling, Chinatown’s ending (which was a source of great contention between Towne and Polanski and was undecided when production on the film began) is one of the greatest of modern cinema; it is so complete in its depiction of evil triumphant that it demands that we reflect on it philosophically. Like the ending of Rosemary’s Baby (1968), Polanski’s great horror masterpiece, the brute force of its ugly truth is the heart of the film’s artistry, and it sticks with us. Gittes is famously told “Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown” at the end of the film, but we can’t. It is, in a word, unforgettable.

Chinatown Paramount Presents 4K UHD + Digital Copy
This two-disc set also includes the 1990 sequel The Two Jakes on a separate Blu-ray disc.
Aspect Ratio1.85:1
Audio
  • English Dolby TrueHD 5.1 surround
  • English: Dolby TrueHD 2.0
  • French: Dolby Digital 2.0
  • Spanish: Dolby Digital 2.0
  • Portuguese: Dolby Digital 2.0
  • SubtitlesEnglish, French, Portuguese, Spanish
    Supplements
  • “A State of Mind: Sam Wasson on Chinatown” featurette
  • Audio commentary by writer Robert Towne and filmmaker David Fincher
  • Chinatown Memories” featurette
  • “The Trilogy that Never Was” featurette
  • “Water and Power” three-part documentary
  • Chinatown: An Appreciation” featurette
  • Chinatown: Filming” featurette
  • Chinatown: The Legacy” featurette
  • DistributorParamount Home Entertainment
    Release DateJune 18, 2024

    COMMENTS
    The new “Paramount Presents” edition of Chinatown gives us a 2160p/Dolby Vision presentation from a new 4K scan of the original 35mm camera negative with subsequent restoration that has done a beautiful job of maintaining the intended look of the film. Although the image is crisp and well-detailed, bringing out nuances in the image I had never seen before (particularly the textures of the fantastic costume designs), it is not overly smoothed or artificially sharpened, instead maintaining the slight softness and grain structure of the 35mm source. The color palette, which tends toward desaturated earthen tones, looks spot-on, and black levels maintain a fine consistency in the nighttime scenes. Restorationist Robert A. Harris has suggested that the colors on the 4K much better approximate the original dye-transfer Technicolor prints that were struck for the initial theatrical run, and I will have to take his word for that since I was born the year the film was released. Although largely low-key in color, there are strong primary hues throughout, including the red seats of the restaurant, the vibrant green of grass (where it exists), and, of course, Evelyn’s lips. The lossless Dolby TrueHD 5.1-channel surround soundtrack, which is the same as on the previous Blu-ray releases, does a nice job of opening up the original monaural mix without sounding forced, especially where Jerry Goldsmith’s elegant score is concerned. There is not a whole lot of activity in the surround speakers, but there is just enough to impact the film’s overall ambiance.

    The biggest supplement is the inclusion of a Blu-ray with the belated Jack Nicholson-directed sequel The Two Jakes (1990), which makes this a double-feature release. However you feel about Nicholson’s film (and I know there are a lot of detractors out there), it is nice to have them both in a single package. We get a new supplement with “A State of Mind: Author Sam Wasson on Chinatown,” a 16-minute interview the film historian who wrote The Big Goodbye: Chinatown and the Last Years of Hollywood (2020). Wasson was an excellent choice for the interview, as he has researched the film in depth and is articulate and cogent is discussing what makes it such a unique production, even for its time (too bad Paramount didn’t coral him for an audio commentary). Wasson also appeares on “The Trilogy That Never Was,” a too-short 3-minute featurette about the never realized plans to follow Chinatown with two sequels (The Two Jakes was the only one that got made). There is an excellent audio commentary with screenwriter Robert Towne and filmmaker and Chinatown appreciator David Fincher, as well as “Water and Power,” a three-part, 76-minute documentary about the history of the complex aqueduct system, first developed in 1913, that feeds water to Los Angeles. The doc features interviews with the late Robert Towne; Catherine Mulholland, granddaughter of the aqueduct’s chief engineer; and various representatives of the L.A. Department of Water and Power, ranchers, historians, and activists. It provides a fascinating historical backdrop to deepen our understanding of the film and appreciation of Towne’s skillful reimagining of actual history for his screenplay. We also get “Chinatown Memories,” a 6-minute interview with first assistant director Hawk Koch, who shares some amusing anecdotes about the production, including the time Roman Polanski plucked a hair from Faye Dunaway’s head; “Chinatown: An Appreciation,” a half-hour featurette in which directors Steven Soderbergh and Kimberly Peirce, cinematographer Roger Deakins, and composer James Newton Howard offer their thoughts on the film’s brilliance, as well as three shorter retrospective featurettes: “Chinatown: The Beginning and the End” (19 min.), “Chinatown: Filming” (25 min.), and “Chinatown: The Legacy” (10 min.), which feature interviews with Robert Towne, director Roman Polanski, star Jack Nicholson, and producer Robert Evans.

    Copyright © 2024 James Kendrick

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    All images copyright © Paramount Home Entertainment

    Overall Rating: (4)




    James Kendrick

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