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Chinatown: Widescreen Collection |  | Actors: Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, John Huston, Fritzi Burr, Cecil Elliott
Studio: Paramount
Category: DVD
List Price: $16.99
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as of 7/30/2010 08:04 CDT details
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New (27) from $16.00
Seller: buyflix
Rating:  250 reviews
Sales Rank: 13784
Format: AC-3, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, Original recording remastered, Restored, Special Edition, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
Languages: English (Subtitled), French (Subtitled), Portuguese (Subtitled), Spanish (Subtitled), English (Original Language), French (Dubbed), Portuguese (Dubbed), Spanish (Dubbed)
Rating: R (Restricted)
Region: 1
Discs: 2
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
Running Time: 130 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 7.5 x 5.3 x 0.6
MPN: PARD072984D
UPC: 097360729849
EAN: 0097360729849
ASIN: B002HK9HR8
Theatrical Release Date: 1974
Release Date: October 6, 2009
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Studio: Paramount Home Video Release Date: 10/06/2009 Run time: 130 minutes Rating: R
Amazon.com
Roman Polanski's brooding film noir exposes the darkest side of the land of sunshine, the Los Angeles of the 1930s, where power is the only currency--and the only real thing worth buying. Jack Nicholson is J.J. Gittes, a private eye in the Chandler mold, who during a routine straying-spouse investigation finds himself drawn deeper and deeper into a jigsaw puzzle of clues and corruption. The glamorous Evelyn Mulwray (a dazzling Faye Dunaway) and her titanic father, Noah Cross (John Huston), are at the black-hole center of this tale of treachery, incest, and political bribery. The crackling, hard-bitten script by Robert Towne won a well-deserved Oscar, and the muted color cinematography makes the goings-on seem both bleak and impossibly vibrant. Polanski himself has a brief, memorable cameo as the thug who tangles with Nicholson's nose. One of the greatest, most completely satisfying crime films of all time. --Anne Hurley
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 250
 Case for dvd came in pieces July 8, 2010
riggidy19
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
I got the dvd reasonably quick, but the case came in pieces. The seller just sent the dvd in an envelope with no protective bubble wrap or anything. I'm glad it was just the case and not the dvd. Its very disheartening when you pick up a package you have been looking forward to and hear pieces rattling around.
 Centennial Collection review May 29, 2010
Brian (New York)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Everything about the style and substance of Polanski's legendary 'Chinatown' has been covered thoroughly in the surrounding reviews. This is simply to clarify what's included in the 2009 Centennial Collection edition (recently discontinued) of the film versus earlier versions: new features in this two-disc release are an audio commentary by CT screenwriter Robert Towne with David Fincher (the director of 'Seven' and 'Fight Club' I presume); 'Chinatown: an Appreciation,' a 26-minute documentary composed mainly of interviews with a handful of unrelated Hollywood illuminati; and three marginally interesting featurettes delving into the technical background of CT's 'Water and Power' plot thread. The transfer and other bonus material (three mini-docs with insights from Nicholson, Polanski, Towne and producer Robert Evans, plus theatrical trailer) seem to be identical to those that appear on the 2007 Special Collector's Edition. For completists, all that's missing here is the 13-minute Nicholson-Polanski-Towne-Evans interview featurette which can be found on the original CT DVD release (and 2006 re-release), although this becomes more or less redundant if you have the three mini-docs. So, in a nutshell, while the Centennial edition offers nothing spectacular it's probably the copy you want to own if you're reading this.
 East LA May 7, 2010
Jeanne Scott (Seattle, Washington)
This film is excellent, and made in the 70's around LA, specifically East LA where I grew up. Great murder mystery and excellent music.
In the garden of noir April 25, 2010
technoguy (Rugby)
This is a remarkable film, possibly the best work of it's director, Polanski, it's leading actor, Nicholson, and it's screenwriter, Towne. The film is bathed in sun-drenched landscapes suggesting dehydration and water scarcity. This film works at a leisurely pace and is a loving recreation of 30s noir.Jake Gittes is a well-dressed private eye,who has a dark past as a Chinatown cop, he'd rather not talk about. As played by Nicholson he is a cynical, cool operator with a hint of vulnerability and makes enough to hire two co-workers. He works in the field of divorce and adultery. The title is more about a state of mind: everybody does as little as possible, and if you help people you make sure you hurt them. But the film ends in Chinatown. The main subject is water shortages and the corrupt diversion of water supplies from the LA populace to irrigate orange groves. There is also land theft going on: bought cheaply and sold at enormously inflated prices.
Against this public corruption, there is a story of incest and sexual scandal, all coming together in the figure of Noah Cross(Huston),played malevolently with great swaggering malice. He "owns" the future and pulls all the strings, leading to the murder of Hollis Mulwray, his business partner, and Chief Engineer of the LA Water Department.Hollis's wife, Evelyn(Dunnaway), sets Gittes on the trail of what happened. She is a very alluring femme-fatale with many secrets,which she slowly reveals to Gittes. She is Cross's daughter and she seems to know about the young woman her husband was supposed to be having an affair with. Nicholson changes from a dapper, witty , charming teller of jokes to a man who gets in over his head and becomes bloodied,bowed but doggedly determined to unravel the whole sorry mess.
The cinematography is excellent with low horizon wide screen vistas of muted colours and radiant light. We are between the desert and the sea with low-slung architecture and nothing to blot out the sunlight but shadow.The music is jagged and drawn out. This is Polanski's first Hollywood film since the murder of his wife, Sharon Tate in 1969. It was also with the forthcoming sex trial, going to be his last.His future might have been different. He imbues the film with a sense of Greek tragedy,giving it the darkest(and best) ending possible, taking your breath away. He plays a mean cameo role as the midget who slices Nicholson's nose.Faye Dunnaway is remarkable in the role of a patrician lady with a dark vulnerability. Nicholson never acted better, with `The Passenger' and `One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest' ahead.The script is lean, tight and full of witty lines(it went on to win Oscar for screenplay).This is real noir without one cliché, and real backbone and bite. Polanski's personal tragedies have a great bearing on the crushing despondency of the outcome.
Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown March 16, 2010
C. CRADDOCK (Bakersfield)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since.
"Whenever you feel like criticizing any one," he told me, "just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had."
He didn't say any more, but in considering the life of a certain individual who goes by the name of Roman Polanski, I'm inclined to reserve judgment. Let the courts decide his fate. Why is a raven like a writing desk? Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown.
As for his oeuvre, that's another matter. I will judge that until the cows come home. And my judgment is this: Chinatown is a great film by a great director, Roman Polanski; with a great script by Robert Towne; and a great actor, Jack Nicholson; a great actress, Faye Dunaway; and a pivotal performance by another great director, John Huston.
Chinatown is kind of a roman à clef, if you will, where Noah Cross, played by director John Huston, stands in for Los Angeles Department of Water and Power director William Mulholland (1855-1935), the man who created modern Los Angeles out of a desert by adding water and stirring.
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Noah Cross: Either you bring the water to L.A. or you bring L.A. to the water.
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Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson) is a private eye who usually handles divorce cases. When the wife of the director of the water department comes in he tells her that if she loves him, it might be better not to know. Later, when the real Mrs. Evelyn Mulwray (Faye Dunaway) comes in he starts to realize that there is a lot more to the case than meets the eye. He wants to help the real Mrs. Mulwray but senses that she is hiding something. Is she ever. Gittes sticks his nose into other peoples business and almost gets it cut off for his trouble, but he can't stop until he gets to the gritty truth.
If Humphrey Bogart's detective in "The Maltese Falcon" (directed, by the way, by John Huston) was the prototype, then Jake Gittes was the updated, post-modern version. Where Bogart lacked the classic leading man good looks, Nicholson took it even further, with a receding hairline and a face somewhere between Mickey Mouse and the wolf in a Tex Avery cartoon. He is crass and crude, but buried deep within there is the desire to do the righteous thing. The whole genre of film noir is updated in "Chinatown." Instead of a case involving a fabulous jewel, the stuff from which dreams are woven, we have instead a case involving water, and the crime and corruption it took to deliver that water to Los Angeles. Water, Power, Hollywood--the real stuff from which dreams are woven!
Nicholson was born to play Private Investigator Jake Gittes. Or rather, Robert Towne wrote the role with Nicholson in mind. He was a friend of Jack's, and modeled Jake's dialogue after Nicholson's distinctive mode of speech.
The story goes that Producer Robert Evans wanted Towne to do a screenplay based on The Great Gatsby, but Towne didn't want to take on F. Scott Fitzgerald. I know the feeling. Though he was offered $175,000 to do the Gatsby script, he said that for only $25,000 he'd do an original script based on something a Los Angeles police officer had told him when asked what he used to do while working in Chinatown:
"As little as possible."
The cop explained that since they couldn't speak Chinese, they couldn't decipher what was really going on, and therefore couldn't tell if their actions were preventing crime, or helping the criminals commit a crime under the color of the law. So they did as little as possible.
Throughout "Chinatown," the film, the idea of Chinatown as a place or situation where the standard moral compass is no help to navigation runs like a Chinese wall. The film is really about Los Angeles--and why it is called Chinatown might seem like an enigma--but after watching it you'll know exactly what is meant.
The film might seem slow paced in parts, as layer after layer of the puzzle is slowly peeled away, but it is tightly written by Robert Towne, nothing is wasted, and even when nothing much happens, the tension is being ratcheted up. Take for instance a scene in the Hall of Records where Gittes encounters an officious petty pimple faced bureaucrat. Or the scene where Gittes visits the office of the director of the water department and annoys the secretary. The tension continually builds. It is all so very Hitchcockian.
And speaking of Alfred, Polanski pulls a Hitchcock by appearing in the film himself. I won't blow his cover, but no doubt the role was a way for Polanski and Nicholson to blow off some steam. The relations between director and star--as well as between the director and the screenwriter, and the director and the leading lady--were notoriously contentious. Polanski even smashed Jack's portable TV with a mop as he was fed up with Jack always stalling his scenes so he could watch L.A. Lakers games.
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Noah Cross: I don't blame myself. You see, Mr. Gitts, most people never have to face the fact that at the right time and the right place, they're capable of ANYTHING.
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Though all the aspects of "Chinatown" were top notch, a final 'note' on the soundtrack is in order, pun intended. Parts of the score reminded me of "The Planet of The Apes" where percussion punctuates the mounting tension. But in a good way. Other parts used Jazz and Pop songs from the era (mid to late 30's, early 40's) to give a feel for the period. Sometimes the tunes were echoed by the actors, like when Jake Gittes is waiting in the Water and Power Department office, annoying the secretary by humming and singing said songs. The best moments though are the beautiful trumpet solos that were played by Hollywood studio veteran Uan Rasey.
"Chinatown" was Roman Polanski's last American film before he fled the country, so far never to return--unless he is extradited.
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Jake Gittes: You're dumber than you think I think you are.
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The Pianist (2002) Directed by Roman Polanski
Bitter Moon (1992) Directed by Roman Polanski
The Witches of Eastwick (1987) Jack Nicholson was Daryl Van Horne
Barfly (1987) Faye Dunaway was Wanda Wilcox
Mommie Dearest (1981) Faye Dunaway was Joan Crawford
Carnal Knowledge (1971) Jack Nicholson was Jonathan
Five Easy Pieces (1970) Jack Nicholson was Robert Eroica Dupea
Myra Breckinridge (1970) John Huston was Buck Loner
Candy (1968) John Huston was Dr. Arnold Dunlap
Bonnie and Clyde (1967) Faye Dunaway was Bonnie Parker
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Walsh: Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 250
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