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Китайский квартал (1974 )

JJ 'Jake' Gittes is a private detective who seems to specialize in matrimonial cases. He is hired by Evelyn Mulwray when she suspects her husband Hollis, builder of the city's water supply system, of having an affair. Gittes does what he does best and photographs him with a young girl but in the ensuing scandal, it seems he was hired by an impersonator and not the real Mrs. Mulwray. When Mr. Mulwray is found dead, Jake is plunged into a complex web of deceit involving murder, incest, and municipal corruption all related to the city's water supply. Written by garykmcd

Plot Keywords:

You get tough. You get tender. You get close to each other. Maybe you even get close to the truth. See more »

Did You Know?

The name of Water and Power engineer Hollis Mulwray is likely a play on the real-life head of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, William Mulholland (1855-1935). A man obsessed with an engineering challenge of epic proportions, Mulholland brought the Owens River to Los Angeles-which turned the previously lush Owens Valley into a virtual desert-through a combination of determination and deceit. See more »

When Jake arrives at Ida Sessions's apartment at 848-1/2 E. Kensington in Echo Park, the trees in front of the building shift back and forth while the building does not, indicating a poorly executed overlay. See more »

[ first lines ]
Jake Gittes. All right, Curly. Enough's enough. You can't eat the Venetian blinds. I just had them installed on Wednesday.
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Crazy Credits

The film opens with the 1940's Paramount logo. See more »

Connections

Polanksi's 'Chinatown' stands as one of the classics of 1970s American cinema, the last classic period in American cinema. It's a great reminder of how utterly engaging cinema can be without the special effects, flimsy plots and outrageous stunts of many major studio productions now, not evening mentioning the obvious marketing tie-ins.

The cinematography and screenplay could be considered almost economical in its minimalism as it is really the story, script and characters that drive this movie forward.

Chinatown tells the story a detective, confidently played by Jack Nicholson, who gets embroiled in an investigation involving the mysterious murder (suicide?) of the head of the Water Board. During the investigation, he gets involved with Evelyn Mulwray, the wife of the murdered man who appears to want to get to the bottom of the mystery but during the course of the movie demonstrates that she is not telling the whole story and has something to hide.

Everything in this movie works from already mentioned tight editing down to the costumes and sets.

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