Among its myriad alluring – and lurid – contradictions, Chinatown is overtly stylish yet understated, depicting inveterate moral decay and corruption so matter-of-factly that Huston’s emphatic refusal to accept any blame... makes your skin crawl.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Jul 12, 2024

In its total recapturing of a past, in its plot, its vivid characterizations, its carefully calculated and accelerating pace, its whole demonstration of a medium mastered, Chinatown reminds you again that motion pictures are larger, not smaller than life.

| Mar 8, 2024

The film, set in the thirties, from a script by Robert Towne, is wickedly skillful, funny, and socially alert.

| Mar 8, 2024

It is so big and so thrilling and so entertaining that years from now, when we look back on the really important films of the 1970s, Chinatown is likely to be one of the most fondly remembered.

| Mar 8, 2024

Mr. Polanski and Mr. Towne have attempted nothing so witty and entertaining, being content instead to make a competently stylish, more or less thirtyish movie that continually made me wish I were back seeing The Maltese Falcon or The Big Sleep.

| Mar 8, 2024

There was a time in the middle of the movie when I felt that it was lagging behind my expectations. But the ending is as stunning as any I have seen since Day of Wrath.

| Mar 8, 2024

Richard Sylbert’s production design is magnificent. The Paramount release, first to bear the producing credit of production chief Robert Evans, has money written all over it.

| Mar 8, 2024

If Chinatown were shorter and less consciously paradigmatic, it would be a good sinister thriller. But Towne and Polanski are insufficiently innocent.

| Mar 8, 2024

Chinatown is a stunner, a superlative movie. And, while it's not specifically comparable, it has the exotic, resonating atmosphere of Casablanca. In other words, I think Towne-Polanski & Co. have made what may become a classic.

| Mar 8, 2024

If you like Nicholson and you know what evil lurks in the heart of that most chilling and masterful moviemaker Roman Polanski and enjoy being scared for the sake of someone you care for, you'll love Chinatown.

| Mar 8, 2024

It is part of the film's greatness that Nicholson and the audience see the next horror at the same time without being able to predict the end. Nicholson's portrayal is likely to be remembered for a long time.

| Mar 8, 2024

It is a rare experience in the cinema these days -- to see a film succeed so completely in its aim of turning a new buck out of past nostalgia without depreciating in the private eye currency in the process.

| Mar 8, 2024

A stylish, beautiful, interesting, highly literate film that, like a great detective novel, leads one slowly and carefully through many twists to the final denouement.

| Mar 8, 2024

As a character study, the film may not be profound, just as the moral issue of political greed is not too seriously engaged. It nevertheless elevates Chinatown into a unique and stylish achievement.

| Mar 8, 2024

It is a grown-up love story and mystery that isn't frightened of its more serious implications, nor of seeking to entertain in spite of them. In short, it is both box office and genuinely good.

| Mar 8, 2024

An all together unexpected triumph, a rich, inventive murder mystery of deepening complexity and tantalizing twists that should gradually intrigue and finally captivate its audience.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Mar 8, 2024

Polanski's new film may be a throwback, but it roots fresh material in the conventions of a familiar genre.

| Mar 8, 2024

Chinatown brings the private eye mystery bounding back because it keeps its sense of the past within itself, playing none of those cute, boring audience games with nostalgia.

| Mar 8, 2024

The film holds you, in a suffocating way. Polanski never lets the story tell itself. It's all over-deliberate, mauve, nightmarish; everyone is yellow-lacquered, and evil runs rampant. You don't care who is hurt, since everything is blighted.

| Mar 8, 2024

Miss Dunaway, as the distressed daughter, gives the film just what it needs: a central haunting female presence which touches upon most of the crisscrossing layers of the plot.

| Mar 8, 2024