Chinatown at 50: Five Reasons It’s Still a Great Movie

While there will always be a debate about what a great movie is, there’s not much debate about what a great movie does. A great movie affects the conversation around film. It has an impact on other creators and how they relate to their own work. It captivates audiences to such a degree that it will make them revisit it, or at least recognize when its influence flows through other films. Whether you measure Chinatown by awards or money or cultural effect, it remains an unassailably great movie. Fifty years after its release, here are five reasons why it still resonates.

1. The Screenplay

Our own Bill Newcott interviewed Robert Towne (Uploaded to YouTube by The Saturday Evening Post)

Screenwriter Robert Towne had a shot at a six-figure payday to adapt The Great Gatsby for producer Robert Evans. Evans was moving into producing movies on his own after overseeing one of the most insane hot streaks in the history of film between the late ’60s and early ’70s as head of production at Paramount. His productions there included The Odd Couple, Rosemary’s Baby, The Godfather (Parts I and II), Love Story, and Serpico. Towne declined the Gatsby gig, wanting to pursue his own project; Evans took him up on that, paying Towne a much smaller figure ($25,000) to pen his original screenplay.

For his story, Towne combined local L.A. history, the region’s troubles with water scarcity, and the influence of earlier film noir. Towne, an experienced TV writer and film “script doctor,” was working in the relatively new subgenre of “neo-noir.” Neo-noir mined the earlier conventions of noir (cynicism, hard-boiled protagonists, system corruption) but deployed a broader visual vocabulary with some masterful use of color and integrated a wider variety of themes that couldn’t be explored in earlier decades, such as the insidious nature of the relationship between Cross and his daughter. Early on, he had the notion that his protagonist, Jake Gittes, would be played an old acting classmate, Jack Nicholson.

Evans brought in Roman Polanski to direct, but Polanski and Towne disagreed about the film’s finale. The writer wanted a particular character to live, and Polanski thought the death added weight.Towne split before the film was done, and Polanski wrote the final scene. Over the years, Towne would come around to Polanski’s way of thinking, acknowledging that his more direct conclusion was best. Regardless, Towne gets his well-deserved credit for what is considered one of the finest, if not the finest, screenplays in the history of film (the Writer’s Guild of America has canonized it in their lists of greatest screenplays).

2. The Direction 

Discussing the legacy of Roman Polanski will always be complicated. He’s a brilliant director, making a number of well-regarded films, one of the great horror comedies (The Fearless Vampire Killers), and at least three unassailable classics (Repulsion, Rosemary’s Baby, and Chinatown). He suffered an unspeakable tragedy when his pregnant wife, Sharon Tate, was murdered by the Manson Family.  However, he’s also a convicted sex offender who has lived in Europe for years, avoiding extradition to the United States.

Polanski made Chinatown three years before the criminal case. Nicholson had told him about the script, and Evans thought that the director’s already dark filmography suggested that he could do great things with the picture. The director very nearly declined, as he had moved away from L.A. after his wife’s murder. He could not, however, deny how good the screenplay was, and returned to make the film. Polanski and cinematographer John A. Alonzo revel in the shadows of noir, but also find ways to make the California sunlight sinister (Roger Ebert pointed out that the hats that several male characters wear turn the shadows into masks).

3. The Cast 

Chinatown trailer (Uploaded to YouTube by Paramount Movies)

In a film full of great performances by an expansive cast, three stand out. The great director John Huston essays the rich and malevolent Noah Cross. Of course, Huston knew a thing or ten about noir, having directed The Maltese Falcon and Key Largo, among many others. Faye Dunaway, deep in a run of incredible performances that included Bonnie and Clyde and Network, captivates as Cross’s daughter, Evelyn Cross Mulwray. And at the center of the film, Nicholson’s Jake Gittes is one of his signature roles. He imbued Gittes with the tarnished nobility of Raymond Chandler’s Marlowe while also showing glimpses of a core of deep, welling sadness. Sure, he’s a tough guy, but he’s more than a tough guy. Both Nicholson and Dunaway would be nominated for their roles at the Academy Awards, the British Academy Film Awards, and Golden Globes (with Nicholson winning the BAFTA and the Globe), while Huston would be nominated in the Supporting category at the BAFTAs and Globes. (Nicholson and Al Pacino, who was nominated for The Godfather Part II, lost at the Oscars for Art Carney in Harry and Tonto).

4. The Score 

“Love Theme from Chinatown (Main Title)” (Uploaded to YouTube by Jerry Goldsmith)

Phillip Lambro had been hired to score the film, but Evans hated it and decided not use any of it. Jerry Goldsmith was brought in. The experienced film and TV composer had a stack of credits that included The Man from U.N.C.L.E. on TV and Planet of the Apes on the big screen. He knocked out a new score in a week-and-a-half.  An Oscar nominee, the score also sits in the top quarter of the American Film Institute’s 100 Years of Film Scores list from 2016.

5. The Last Line 

People can argue from here to eternity about what the best last line of a film is. Casablanca certainly has a contender, as do the 1933 King Kong and Some Like It Hot. But what can’t be discounted is the perfect thematic button that comes with Chinatown’s final bit of dialogue. After seeing the tragic ending unfold before him, Jake is moved from the scene by his friends. As he turns back, he’s told, “Forget it, Jake; it’s Chinatown.” That line sums up everything about systemic corruption and the near hopelessness that regular people feel in the face of it.