CHINATOWN franchise (1974-1990)

Interesting perspective.
Huston does appear to chew the scenery a fair bit, compared with other films he did as an actor.

It's a film that probably was lifted quite a bit by the shock value of the incest story as well as a media cult around Polanski.
This was the height of the "white man failure" theme in Hollywood and few films personify it like Chinatown.
John Huston is an incestuous greedy murderer and he gets exactly what he wants. Jack Nicholson fails completely to stop him, and doesn't even get the girl.
It is a total negative.

The movie is 8/10 for me.

I disagree about John Huston's performance.  I thought it was great.

There's rarely much point in citations of the elements earning generally high praise of a given film to those who simply don't see in it what others do. I'm that way about a handful of widely-acclaimed ones; Raging Bull is an example. All the bravura cinematic technique it can offer doesn't transcend the apathy I have toward the tawdry and uninteresting existences of the tiresome characters it depicts. But your post indicates recognition of Chinatown's thematic richness, and the single-word query to teleadm 's nearly-as-brief reply indicates some curiosity on your part about the virtues others find in it that you don't.

Inasmuch as your focus is on script and plot, I'll likewise direct my own appreciation primarily thereto. In the sense of its crafting, I've likened the first to an intricately-woven tapestry in which each strand connects to others in support of the design's overall integrity and not a one is superfluous or wasted; the second to geological layering, in which eons progressively pile one atop another and an archaeological dig systematically unearths them one by one.

Chinatown commences that plot simply enough with a career keyhole-peeper hired to document the marital infidelity of a public figure, then begins piling on the layers: the subject is embroiled in a contentious battle over a municipal water project; mysterious diversions and dumping of water during a drought are stumbled upon; publicity surrounding the discovery of the supposed mistress reveals the client to have been an impersonator; the subject's actual wife takes legal action, then just as quickly drops it when the investigator states his intention to uncover the purpose behind the set-up; the subject turns up drowned, and his now-widow appears reluctant to cooperate with a police inquiry.

As yet more layers are added - to the history of the investigator, that of the water system, a wealthy and powerful but shadowy city figure and the widow's connection to them as well as to the "mistress" - the script has been boldly presenting clues and engaging in foreshadowing that are at first so obscure as to go nearly unnoticed, but which are revisited in due course to be tied together as those layers are being stripped away, all the while reinforcing and unifying the "Chinatown" metaphors of inscrutability, futility and inevitability that coalesce at the climax and denouement.

For all these qualities (and more), it's a film crafted as much for multiple viewings as for a single one, and an aspect of its screenplay that I often cite for its daring is the way in which it leaves questions unanswered (how did Ida Sessions know about the real estate sales and "those people," and was the motive for murder Katherine, the dam or both, for example), enriching rather than frustrating repeat visits; viewers can continue the investigation on their own by filling in those blanks for themselves any way they choose, and one conclusion's as good as another because each leads to the same outcome. Like multiple routes leading to a single destination, inevitability is as much a part of the script's construction as it is those of the plot and characters' trajectories, but it's so skillfully applied that it isn't apparent until the final moment.

That's only some of what I see in Chinatown. I have thoughts on its followup, The Two Jakes, but it's late and time for dinner, so I'll submit those tomorrow.  

        

Dear Doghouse6,

Excellent comments.

Chinatown 10/10 (I believe I have only 8 rated perfectly out of 5000+ ratings)
The Two Jakes 5/10

and,

Raging Bull 8/10 for its film-making artistry but I have no desire to ever watch it again.

  The emoji's blush can't compare to mine. Thanks awfully.

Like you, my appreciation deepens with each viewing, and it's common to notice some tiny nuance or detail that hadn't caught my attention before. I'm a bit embarrassed, for example, to say how many times I saw it before I spotted the Albacore Club flag framed on the wall of Yelburton's office.    

Cool, Vits. I'm actually grateful for divergence and diversity of opinions; imagine how homogenized and barren our film landscape would be without them.

I only answaer this to be freindly! as a teen this movie was booring as hell, growing up gerring new values or something, seeing it again it's azmazing