← Back

Chinatown

Turkish title: Çin Mahallesi

“You get tough. You get tender. You get close to each other. Maybe you even get close to the truth.”

1974 · 2 h 10 min
Directed by Roman Polanski
DramaMysteryFilm-Noir

Cast

Jack Nicholson Faye Dunaway John Huston

Credits

Written by: Robert Towne

Plot

In 1937 Los Angeles, the private detective J.J. Gittes is hired by a woman claiming to be the wife of a water department official, to follow him. When the man is found dead, Gittes finds himself in a conspiracy over water, land and corruption, involving the tycoon Noah Cross and the real Evelyn Mulwray. Roman Polanski's 1974 neo-noir, with Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway, and a script by Robert Towne, is celebrated for its bleak ending.

Sinekatalog’s take

Polanski's noir sends a private eye into a water-rights conspiracy in 1930s Los Angeles. Robert Towne's script is a model of its kind, and the ending is bleak enough to become shorthand.Sinekatalog’s own editorial review – not a user or critic quote.

Ratings

IMDb: 8.1 / 10 (381,095 votes)
Rotten Tomatoes: 98%
IMDb rating and vote count from the IMDb ratings dataset; Rotten Tomatoes snapshot from October 2026. Scores change over time.

If you liked this

Picked by director, genre, era and shared cast. Titles only, no spoilers.