chinatown

"Q: Does Chinatown represent a departure for you in either theme or treatment?

Polanski: Every film I make represents a departure for me. You see, it takes so long to make a film. By the time you get to the next one you're already a different man. You've grown up by one or two years.Chinatown is a thriller and the story line is very important. There is a lot of dialogue. But I missed some opportunity for visual inventiveness. I felt sometimes as if I were doing some kind of TV show. I thought I had always been an able, inventive, creative director and there I was putting two people at a table and letting them talk. When I tried to make it look original I saw it start to become pretentious, so concentrated on the performances and kept an ordinary look.

Q: Isn't that better than having the audience acutely aware of the camera, like a thumb in their eye?

Polanski: Yes, but I don't think that's ever happened to me. Only when your camera makes them nauseous do the critics say, "His nervous camera moved relentlessly throughout the entire sequence" and so on. I've read those criticisms of some pictures. It's the same thing with writers. Sometimes a great stylist writes so smoothly that you're not aware of what you're swallowing.". [Interview from Penthouse Magazine 1974]

In order to prepare for directing this movie, Roman Polanski spent some time carefully analysing great mystery movies of the Thirties and Forties, therefore, as Polanski himself admits, "Chinatown" bears the tradition of film noir, and, of course, of Raymond Chandler mystery stories. With an excellent private-eye film noir thriller screenplay written by Oscar-winning Robert Towne, Chinatown manages to create a great atmosphere of mystery, romance, suspense, and thrilling detective work around what might be its tagline: "You may think you know what you're dealing with, but believe me, you don't". After all, as i read somewhere, the film's title itself, referred to a 'state of mind' rather than an actual geographic place, according to Towne.

I've read so many reviews and comments on this movie, that i sincerely do not know what i could add here. I'll just go here or here and remember what the movie was all about. So, i'd only add some quotes:

• Jake Gittes: So there's this guy Walsh, do you understand? He's tired of screwin' his wife... So his friend says to him, "Hey, why don't you do it like the Chinese do?" So he says, "How do the Chinese do it?" And the guy says, "Well, the Chinese, first they screw a little bit, then they stop, then they go and read a little Confucius, come back, screw a little bit more, then they stop again, go and they screw a little bit... then they go back and they screw a little bit more and then they go out and they contemplate the moon or something like that. Makes it more exciting." So now, the guy goes home and he starts screwin' his own wife, see. So he screws her for a little bit and then he stops, and he goes out of the room and reads Life Magazine. Then he goes back in, he starts screwin' again. He says, "Excuse me for a minute, honey." He goes out and he smokes a cigarette. Now his wife is gettin' sore as hell. He comes back in the room, he starts screwin' again. He gets up to start to leave again to go look at the moon. She looks at him and says, "Hey, whats the matter with ya. You're screwin' just like a Chinaman!"
• Jake Gittes: You're dumber than you think I think you are.
• Jake Gittes: Let me explain something to you, Walsh. This business requires a certain amount of finesse.
• Noah Cross: 'Course I'm respectable. I'm old. Politicians, public buildings, and whores all get respectable if they last long enough.
• Ida Sessions: Are you alone? Jake Gittes: Isn't everybody?