Chinatown

It's ridiculous how badly my generation was robbed when it comes to motion pictures. Watching a movie like "Chinatown" for the first time is an eye-opening experience. It was made in the 1970's and tells a story that takes place in the 1930's, but its overall production is timeless. To call Jack Nicholson a "Movie Star" would be putting it mildly. He's in every scene of this film and in every scene he's on. He's not just full of charisma and swagger, he's not just a handsome model type, he's an actor to the fullest degree. And the best part is, you can't tell. Nicholson is Jake Gittes from the moment you see him onscreen. I've read that Nicholson in the early 70's can compete with any actor's peak and I'd be hard pressed to argue that. Watching Brando in "On The Waterfront" is like watching Pete Rose run out a groundball. He's talented and hustling like nobody's business, but the strain is noticable. Nicholson at this period is like frickin' Sandy Koufax steaming curves past the National League in the early '60s before his arm gave out. Effortless.

There is no actor today off the top of my head who can compare. Dicaprio has the look of a young Nicholson, but nowhere near the prescence. Not even close. It helps that the script for "Chinatown" is top notch. The story is played out subtlely and the intelligence of the audience is assumed. Polanski shoots the entire movie from Nicholson's perspective, meaning we find out clues when Gittes does. We don't hear other characters conversations and when Gittes gets knocked out, we do too. Nicholson plays everything understated too for the most part. That way, when he does blow up or get excited about something, it means much more.

I've only seen Faye Dunaway in two movies, "Bonnie & Clyde" and now "Chinatown". Her character in this was more diffrent than Bonnie Parker than I expected, but she played it just as well. There are little scenes of character development between her and Nicholson which separate movies of this era from today's average release. There are generic scenes today where you find out items that happened in a character's past. To me, these usually feel shoehorned into the plot between action scenes and unauthentic. In "Chinatown", every scene flows, one into another. We barely find anything out about the main character at all, yet he's not really a mystery to us. We know his personality, what's important to him, and what he's trying to do. Nothing else matters. Then we find out whatever he finds out.

There are movies that I like a little more than "Chinatown" like "L.A. Confidential" and "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" that take place in a similar time period as "Chinatown" (1930's L.A.). However, although I may have my reasons why I like those movies better (Kevin Spacey dies and keeps his eyes open FOREVER, "When I killed your brother, I looked just like THIS!!!"), I believe "Chinatown" is much better at showing that period than any other movie. Within a few minutes of the movie starting, I had forgotten I was watching a period piece and just took for granted that this was 1937 Los Angeles. I don't know how authentic everything was, but the way it was shot led me to believe everything I was seeing. There are movies today that take place 40 years ago that either try to shoot the footage more "arty" and "flashy" or the color scheme looks wrong, or somehow or another your taken out of the picture. With "Chinatown", Polanski shot a movie in the 1970's using 1930's costumes and props and it worked perfectly. No crazy camera tricks either. There are points where the camera is RIGHT THERE in the scene and that's all I really need to feel like what I'm watching is real.

It was refreshing to see a movie have no generic feel to it at all, even though it came out 40 years ago. I wish more movies assumed that the core audience was intelligent. I wish more actors were like Nicholson, who plays every line the opposite way you'd expect (in a good way). I wish there were more villains like John Huston, who is so incredibly evil and monstrous in this movie without acting like it at all. I wish there more actresses like Faye Dunaway, who is ten times a better actress than she is beautiful and she is gorgeous. I guess I'll take what I can get.