Film of the Week: Chinatown (1974)

Roman Polanski's Chinatown is considered to be the best noir film ever made, and began the neo-noir movement. In the thirties and forties, black and white detective films featuring hardened private investigators running through the heavy shadows produced by the ingenious lighting of these films. The noir films were typically thrillers or mysteries, all of them attempting to maintain suspense. In an attempt to revitalize the dead film noir genre, Polanski and his screenwriter Robert Towne created this masterpiece that was in full color, but was still able to retain the shadowy lighting that helps to define film noir. In one of his breakout roles, Jack Nicholson plays a private investigator who is caught in a web of deceit and profits when a mysterious woman enters his office offering him a job. Many critics say that Chinatown captures a lost genre, but I think Chinatown recreates noir.