This was another excellent film, with a painfully sad ending.
J.J. Gittes (a great Jack Nicholson) is a private detective in 1930s Los Angeles. Currently, the city is going through a drought and the water company has different ideas on how to solve the problem. Noah Cross (John Huston) wants to funnel the water into the valley to feed the orange crops and incorporate the valley into the city while the mild-mannered and seldom seen Hollis Mulwray (Darrell Zwerling) wants to give the water to the people so he's promptly killed. And to complicate matters, Mulwray's wife, Evelyn (Faye Dunaway) hires Jake to determine if her husband is cheating on him. And then, they sleep together and her husband is barely cold in his grave, but that's before Jake finds the proof he needs on who killed Hollis and just when you expect it to be Evelyn, and that she lied to you all the time, but she's not a murderer. Her father is, and a rapist. But the ending is sad, as the city will lose, the drought will get worse, the bad guy gets away with murder because he has the police in his pocket and Evelyn dies. Jake is let off for unknown reasons. So yeah, I hate movies that have sad endings all the way around. Still, the screenplay was tight (it won the film's sole Oscar) and the acting was superb. Roman Polanski truly weaved together a brilliant film despite all his personal struggles. Grade: A-
Side Notes:
-Polanski portrays the man who sliced up Nicholson's nose, in a truly horrified realistic scene.
-The scene where Evelyn admits that the alleged 'other woman' is actually her daughter/sister Katherine (Belinda Palmer) is also a great scene though the truth is truly revolting.
-Jake does want the truth, though he is also money hungry, just like the rest of them.
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