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Chinatown Reviews
...a progressively enthralling piece of work that admittedly takes its time in wholeheartedly grabbing the viewer’s attention...
An enduring masterpiece.
Feelings of pessimism, powerlessness and futility in the face of overwhelming odds lie at the film noir genre’s core. Chinatown boasts these in spades.
Among its myriad alluring – and lurid – contradictions, Chinatown is overtly stylish yet understated, depicting inveterate moral decay and corruption so matter-of-factly that Huston’s emphatic refusal to accept any blame... makes your skin crawl.
The result was acrimony behind the scenes and genius on the screen in a masterpiece that repays any number of viewings.
One of the greatest movies of the 20th century was Roman Polanski’s 1974 film noir with the darkest twist imaginable (50th anniversary)
The cast of Chinatown is well chosen and Nicholson has the right amount of “swagger” and confidence to pull off the cocky private eye.
In its total recapturing of a past, in its plot, its vivid characterizations, its carefully calculated and accelerating pace, its whole demonstration of a medium mastered, Chinatown reminds you again that motion pictures are larger, not smaller than life.
The miracle of the picture is that the tale itself, composed of so many familiar elements -- and I mean 30-years-of-moviegoing familiar -- is grippingly convincing throughout. It is like going to your first movies all over again.
The film, set in the thirties, from a script by Robert Towne, is wickedly skillful, funny, and socially alert.
You are slowly drawn deep into the director's trap before he springs his surprises. It's a bit like strolling through a beautiful field of flowers and suddenly being told not to move another step because you are in the middle of a minefield.
It is so big and so thrilling and so entertaining that years from now, when we look back on the really important films of the 1970s, Chinatown is likely to be one of the most fondly remembered.
Mr. Polanski and Mr. Towne have attempted nothing so witty and entertaining, being content instead to make a competently stylish, more or less thirtyish movie that continually made me wish I were back seeing The Maltese Falcon or The Big Sleep.
A tremendously interesting movie to watch and to listen to. Roman Polanski, who directed, dredges up the dark slimy things that float beneath a sunlit surface.
The plot of Chinatown just misses the fascinating beat of first-rate works in the genre. It's a well-made film, however, rich in the thirties' atmosphere.
There was a time in the middle of the movie when I felt that it was lagging behind my expectations. But the ending is as stunning as any I have seen since Day of Wrath.
Richard Sylbert’s production design is magnificent. The Paramount release, first to bear the producing credit of production chief Robert Evans, has money written all over it.
If Chinatown were shorter and less consciously paradigmatic, it would be a good sinister thriller. But Towne and Polanski are insufficiently innocent.
Chinatown is a stunner, a superlative movie. And, while it's not specifically comparable, it has the exotic, resonating atmosphere of Casablanca. In other words, I think Towne-Polanski & Co. have made what may become a classic.
Towne should have spent more time studying the relatively tightly written Raymond Chandler-Dashiell Hammett works he was trying to emulate... Still, it is an interesting film. Dunaway has never been better.