Chinatown (1974 Roman Polanski)

It's not wide lenses, it's narrow ones that give it its distinctive look - in fact 50mm lenses which in the anamorphic format closely resembles the human field of vision.* Like people can be right up close to the lens, an in-your-face feeling. The great Stanley Cortez started on the film and was involved in all the pre-production, but wouldn't shoot it the way Polanski wanted, then John Alonzo (who took inspiration from James Wong Howe) was called in. Polanski wanted it shot straight - 'no diffusion or other tricks'. (This makes nonsense of Halliwell's seventies review - 'tending to suggest period by use of an orange filter' - honestly, don't say things like this unless you're sure. Yeah, like my last review of this...) What Alonzo did, was to use 'Chinese tracing paper to shift the light and colour, so that it turned beige and gold. Roman liked it.' It's a film blanc...

Nicholson and Dunaway are terrific. So is Richard Sylbert's production design. And Jerry Goldsmith's score - a haunting, influential theme. It has a wonderful, complex plot and I finally paid enough attention to work out whose glasses they were. For quite a talky film, it picks up in momentum successfully.

I like the moments when you hear sound and don't know where it's coming from - someone washing a car, or stencilling a name on an office door. Or the typewriter, off-screen. And the cripple with the crutch who keeps hitting the wrong people.

With John Huston, Perry Lopez (cop), John Hillerman, Darrell Zwerling, Diane Ladd, Polanski, Bruce Glover, Burt Young ('Curly', recently in Win Win). Edited by Sam O'Steen.

It's a chilly film. I don't really buy the relationship between Nicholson and Dunaway.

Good one for the obscure screen shot series

I looked up Towne's original ending - Evelyn and her daughter get away, Noah Cross is killed. Polanski's ending is much more powerful...

Robert Evans died October 26.

*No it isn't, it's wide lenses! What I find really confusing info about Polanski's lenses here. I think the wider they are the smaller the mm. I don't know where this stuff about 50mm lenses comes from when Edelman says "“Roman has been shooting his movies with one or two lenses all his life. He likes wide lenses because he likes to see the characters integrated with the space."