Attributes
- Directed by Roman Polanski
- Origin USA
- Year 1974
- Duration 32h 54m
- Certificate 15
- Type Film
Faye Dunaway and Jack Nicholson smolder against the backdrop of late 1930’s LA, depicted as a hotbed of corruption in a narrative firmly grounded in historical reality. Robert Towne was a central screenwriter at the heart of the New Hollywood’s sharp socially alert scripts. He was tuned into the dramatic cultural changes going on in America and could pull together tightly plotted cinematic stories with authentic dialogue. Credited of uncredited, Towne was involved in most of the ground-breaking films of the era such as The Last Detail, The Parallax View and Shampoo.
His Oscar winning script for Chinatown was a more personal project born of his love of 1930s Los Angeles architecture and interest in the history of the city which he channeled through the classic pulp detective novel structure of a Dashiell Hammett or Raymond Chandler.
Director Roman Polanski took that script to craft one of the most perfect and acclaimed films of the era: a multi-layered study of power and corruption with devastating emotional consequences. Fifty years on, despite the controversy surrounding Polanski, it continues to resonate with filmgoers and critics, many of whom have declared it the greatest film of all time.
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Out of Their Depth: Corruption, Scandal and Lies in the New Hollywood
Following the cultural upheaval and racial tensions of the 1960s, the early ‘70s saw America increasingly in social and political turmoil as opposition to the Vietnam War grew more violent following revelations of the brutality of American forces whilst at home the full scale of the Watergate scandal was beginning to be revealed. The certainties of modern American values were not only tarnished they were found to be mired in corruption, scandal and lies.
This heightened unease in the mainstream American psyche was reflected in films from the New Hollywood of the period where the traditional male hero of the classic studio era was replaced by a protagonist who, whilst they thought they were in control, found themselves increasingly out of their depth.
This season is curated by Cinema Rediscovered Founder Mark Cosgrove.
