Chinatown

Chinatown is a 1974 neo-noir film directed by Roman Polanski and written by Robert Towne. Set in 1930s Los Angeles, it follows private detective J. J. Gittes through a murder and a water-rights conspiracy.

J. J. Gittes: J. J. Gittes is the Los Angeles private detective at the center of Chinatown. His investigation supplies the film’s viewpoint and gradually exposes its conspiracy.
Robert Towne: Robert Towne was an American screenwriter, director, and actor best known for Chinatown. His screenplay built the layered mystery and its unsparing view of power.
Film noir: Film noir is a style of crime cinema marked by moral ambiguity, shadowed settings, and compromised protagonists. Chinatown draws on noir conventions while shifting them to sunlit Los Angeles.
Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay: The Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay honors a screenplay not based on previously published material. Robert Towne won the award for Chinatown at the 47th Academy Awards.
Hollis Mulwray: Hollis Mulwray is the chief engineer of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power in Chinatown. His apparent scandal and death launch Gittes’s investigation.
Roman Polanski: Roman Polanski is a Polish-French film director, screenwriter, and producer. His direction shaped the film’s controlled tone and final tragedy.
Neo-noir: Neo-noir is later crime cinema that reworks themes and visual conventions associated with film noir. The film is a defining example of noir’s revival in modern Hollywood.
American Film Institute: The American Film Institute is a nonprofit organization devoted to film and television education and preservation. Its rankings have repeatedly placed Chinatown among the greatest American films.
Evelyn Mulwray: Evelyn Mulwray is Hollis’s wife, whose family history becomes central to Chinatown’s mystery. Her concealed history changes the meaning of the case Gittes thinks he is solving.
Robert Evans: Robert Evans was an American film producer and studio executive who led Paramount Pictures from 1967 to 1974. As the film’s producer, he helped bring Towne’s screenplay to Paramount.

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