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Film details
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Featuring
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Director
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Country
USA
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Year
1974
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Genre
Film noir
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Type
Film
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Category
Fiction
Introduction
“Chinatown is an art-house movie in American mainstream drag. Seldom since Hitchcock’s prime had a director displayed such a facility for making a commercial movie that is also a work of art.”
James Verniere, The A List: The National Society of Film Critics’ 100 Essential Films, 2002
Private detective films in the days of Humphrey Bogart were in shadowy black and white, but Polanski updated the form for the Watergate era, shooting in colour in the sunny glare of Southern California. For his richly intricate screenplay, Robert Towne researched historic power struggles over the water supply to Los Angeles, creating in tycoon Noah Cross – played by old-guard film director John Huston – one of cinema’s most disturbing villains.
The mystery plot has a classical simplicity, as Nicholson’s private eye Jake Gittes is drawn by his own curiosity into a situation in which he’s dangerously out of his depth, and where he endangers the very thing he sought to protect. The Los Angeles of the 1930s is immaculately recreated, with production design by Richard Sylbert.
Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye (1973) is an alternative 70s riff on the private eye genre. Nicholson himself directed a Chinatown sequel, The Two Jakes (1990).
Cast & Credits
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Cast
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J.J. Gittes
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Evelyn Cross Mulwray
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Yelburton
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Lieutenant Lou Escobar
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Curly
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Duffy
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Walsh
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Claude Mulvihill
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Ida Sessions
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Loach
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Noah Cross
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Hollis I. Mulwray
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Evelyn's butler
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Emma Dill
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maid
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Cross' butler
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clerk
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Mr Palmer
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man with knife
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Sophie
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lawyer
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the gardener
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Katherine
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Mayor Bagby
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councilman
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councilman
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irate farmer
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barber
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customer
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Mulwray's secretary
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Maury, mortician
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boy on horseback
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farmer in the valley
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farmer in the valley
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farmer in the valley
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farmer in the valley
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Curly's wife
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policeman
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policeman
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policeman
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Credits
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Direction:
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Directed by
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Assistant Director
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2nd Assistant Director
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Script Supervisor
Production:
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©
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a Paramount picture
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a Paramount-Penthouse presentation
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Produced by/a Robert Evans production
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Associate Producer
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Unit Production Manager
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Assistant to the Producer
Casting:
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Casting by
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Casting by
Writing:
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Written by
Photography:
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Director of Photography
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[Director of Photography - replaced]
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Camera Operator
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Gaffer
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Key Grip
Special Effects:
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Special Effects
Editing:
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Film Editor
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Assistant Editor
Design:
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Production Designer
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Art Director
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Set Designer
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Set Designer
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Set Decorator
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Property Master
Costumes:
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Costume Designer
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Wardrobe
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Wardrobe
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Jewels by
Make-up:
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Makeup
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Makeup
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Hairstylist
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Hairstylist
Titles:
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Titles
Film processing:
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Colour by
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Filmed in
Music:
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Music
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Music Editor
Sound:
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Sound Mixer
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Boom Man
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Re-recording
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Sound Editor
Consultant:
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Production Services Furnished by
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