MOVIE · 1974

Chinatown

CrimeDramaMysteryThriller130 min

Private eye Jake Gittes makes his living in the sunbaked moral haze of 1930s Los Angeles, handling adultery cases until a seemingly simple job points him toward something much larger. Jack Nicholson is Gittes, hired to investigate Hollis Mulwray, the head of the city’s water department; before long, he’s face to face with Faye Dunaway’s Evelyn Mulwray, a wealthy wife with secrets of her own. What starts as routine surveillance opens into a web of land deals, civic corruption, and personal scandal, with drought, money, and power all tangled together beneath the polished surface of the city.