Even though I’d had every plot point of Chinatown (1974) spoiled for me by film school staples like Robert McKee’s STORY, by the end of my first watch through of the new 4K edition from Paramount Presents, I still wanted to throw up and remove the sick feeling from the pit of my stomach. It’s one of David Fincher’s (Se7en; The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) favorite films, which is no surprise if you’ve ever been asked “What’s in the box?.” It’s also no surprise that he takes the place of Chinatown’s notorious, wanted director, Roman Polanski, on the commentary with screenwriter Robert Towne (Mission: Impossible; The Firm).
L-R: Faye Dunaway as Evelyn Mulwray and Jack Nicholson as J. J. “Jake” Gittes in CHINATOWN. Photo courtesy of Paramount Pictures.
This glaring absence has the unfortunate effect of adding to the film’s power. As John Huston’s (The Treasure of the Sierra Madre; The Black Cauldron) Noah Cross says “I don’t blame myself. You see, Mr. Gittes, most people never have to face the fact that at the right time and the right place, they’re capable of ANYTHING,” and one cannot help but feel the darkness Roman Polanski (The Pianist; Rosemary’s Baby) brought to the picture. It’s the darkness that visited him when Charles Manson entered his house, and it’s the darkness he brought when he entered Nicholson’s. Yet the work of Jack Nicholson (The Shining; A Few Good Men) and Faye Dunaway (Network; Bonnie and Clyde) keeps us coming back, as their iconic characters Jake Gittes and Evelyn Mulwray fight to grasp any amount of hope they can as a new Los Angeles rises out of the desert on the corpses of good men and good dreams. “An evil movie,” as it’s often called, and maybe it is, but it’s an American evil we all know, and that’s what noir films are all about.
Jack Nicholson as J. J. “Jake” Gittes in CHINATOWN. Photo courtesy of Paramount Pictures.
It was only four years after its release that Polanksi would flee the US after being convicted of raping a 14-year-old Samantha Geimer, leaving Nicholson and Towne on their own to finish the planned LA trilogy, which became the 1990 film The Two Jakes, directed by Nicholson himself. It’s an interesting film that doesn’t even come close to the power of Chinatown, but does manage to include an all-timer close-up of Harvey Keitel (Reservoir Dogs; Cop Land). It reunites us with Nicholson’s Jake Gittes as he reckons not with how water moguls shaped L.A., but real estate developers. It’s been released on 2K Blu-ray before, but its inclusion is welcome here as its low reputation makes that single disc a hard sell from Paramount and a hard buy for the average consumer. If you love Chinatown, it’s worth seeing at least once, at least to witness the evolution of Nicholson the movie star over 17 years.
A capable “nobody” (as Fincher refers to pre-Chinatown Nicholson) who’d put in good work that got no attention, the Jack Nicholson of Chinatown is in pure actor’s actor mode, working on a script written for him. He’s witty, charming, and scrappy. He’s good with women but you don’t think he needs them, he’s got too much work to do. The Nicholson and Gittes of The Two Jakes, on the other hand, are the iconic movie star who sits ringside at the Lakers, and an investigator whose work has turned him into a tabloid icon. Like the real man who plays him, this iteration of Jake must now bear the burden of beautiful women begging him to bang their brains out as he “regretfully” obliges. Watching Madeleine Stowe (12 Monkeys; The Last of the Mohicans) angle her butt towards an exhausted Nicholson is the strangest sex scene I’ve ever seen in a film from a human behavioral angle, and I’ve seen Titane (2021). It just doesn’t make any sense, until you realize that now Gittes is wearing Nicholsons’s sunglasses indoors just like he does, and the star has swallowed the character.
Expanded edition of 4K UHD CHINATOWN. Photo courtesy of Paramount Pictures.
As I’ve written before, the Paramount Presents line is a fantastic new product line that is excellent to see coming from a major studio. It’s not perfect (this disk still doesn’t have a “resume” feature and The Two Jakes didn’t get the 4K UHD treatment that Chinatown did), but it’s still obviously made with more-than-average care. Chinatown is stunning to look at with its vivid oranges and blues in the desert sequences, and the packaging’s good, too. It’s Chinatown’s 50th anniversary, so there’s new content, two interviews with Sam Wasson, the author of The Big Goodbye: “Chinatown” and the Last Years of Hollywood, and noticeably glowing stories about Roman Polanksi on set from Hawk Koch (The Parallax View; The Keep). You may be tired of me hanging Polanksi out to dry, but his legacy is baked into the experience of the box set. Because he cannot participate in the director’s commentary, we instead get David Fincher back-seat directing for the second hour of that special feature. This is a celebratory commentary tinged with equal parts reverence and melancholy, as are the rest of the legacy features. The feature-length series of documentary shorts, Water and Power, is a journalistic look at the legacy of William Mulholland and his friends, the man who inspired Chinatown’s fictional Noah Cross (Huston). Politicians, conservationists, water workers, Mulholland’s daughter, Indigenous leaders, Robert Towne, they all weave in and out through interviews to paint a story with no conclusion, only history and promises yet to be broken. It’s a shockingly daring piece of work to come out of a studio extra feature, and it’s 12 years old. The extras made by the Paramount of today, while well made, are dedicated to whitewashing the legacy of a rapist, discussing only the pain he suffered at other’s hands and telling stories of unprofessional behavior as stories of good fun with the boys. Noah Cross would love it.
Here’s what you get for your $39.99:
Chinatown 4K UHD Special Features:
Disc One (4K UHD)
- *New* Chinatown (1973) 4K UHD
- *New* A State of Mind: Author Sam Wasson On Chinatown – Sam Wasson, film historian and bestselling author of The Big Goodbye: Chinatown and the Last Years Of Hollywood, on the importance of the film and its legacy.
- *New* Chinatown Memories – Legendary producer Hawk Koch shares stories from his time as assistant director on the film.
- *New* The Trilogy That Never Was – Sam Wasson discusses the planned third installment of what would have been a trio of movies featuring the character Jake Gittes.
- Commentary by screenwriter Robert Towne with David Fincher
- Water and Power
- The Aqueduct
- The Aftermath
- The River & Beyond
- Chinatown: An Appreciation
- Chinatown: The Beginning and the End
- Chinatown: Filming
- Chinatown: Legacy
- Theatrical Trailer
Disc Two (2K Blu-ray)
- The Two Jakes (1990)
Available on 4K UHD Blu-ray and digital June 18th, 2024.
For more information, head to the official Paramount Pictures Chinatown webpage.
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Categories: Home Release, Recommendation
WHERE CAN A PERSON BUY THIS??? WHEN WILL IT BE AVAILABLE AGAIN?
Should be available at the usual physical media retailers like Wal-Mart, Amazon, and others. For additional information, head to the Paramount Pictures link provided at the bottom of the review.