Ray Pride

This 1974 bravura reexamines the detective film from a director (Roman Polanski), writer (Robert Towne), and star (Jack Nicholson) at the peak of their powers. In "City of Quartz," Mike Davis' seminal study of Los Angeles as city and spectacle, myth and nightmare, he writes of "Chinatown": "A major revival of noir occurred in the 1960s and 1970s as a new generation of émigré writers and directors revitalized the anti-myth and elaborated it fictionally into a comprehensive counter-history. Thus Robert Towne (influenced by Chandler and West) brilliantly synthesized the big landgrabs and speculations of the first half of the twentieth century in his screenplays for 'Chinatown' and 'The Two Jakes.' ... "Chinatown" suggests (in a history more syncretic than fictional) [that the] windfall profits [of Los Angeles' boom] welded the ruling class together and capitalized lineages of power that remain in place today." "'Course I'm respectable," John Huston's Noah Cross says, "I'm old. Politicians, ugly buildings and whores all get respectable if they last long enough." Twenty years on, "Chinatown"'s beauty grows. With Faye Dunaway and Burt Young as a blind-chewing cuckold. Panavision. 131m. (It's being shown to complement the release of producer Robert Evans' autoerotobiopic, "The Kid Stays In the Picture.")

"Chinatown" plays Saturday and Wednesday at the Film Center.

(2002-08-07)

Also by Ray Pride

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Denis Villeneuve's Quebecois Canadian "Maelström" is delicious, playful, emotionally scatty yet physically precise, a dazzling, intent portrayal of a 25-year-old woman's life as she falls into unlikely chaos.
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CANDID CAMERA
An account of the making, and almost unmaking, of Chicago band Wilco's now-best-selling "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" album, "I Am Trying To Break Your Heart" is a heartfelt and heartening documentary, shot mostly hand-held, on high-contrast black-and-white 16mm stock for about $500,000.
(2002-08-01)

TIP OF THE WEEK
The twenty-first edition of Chicago Filmmakers' lesbian and gay international Film Festival, Reeling 2002, begins Thursday and continues through August 8 at the Music Box, Landmark Century Centre Cinemas and at Chicago Filmmakers.
(2002-07-25)

YOU'VE GOT ASS
Could we talk about the weather? Been hot, huh? Need to cool off? There's the one good reason for stumbling into a theater showing "Austin Powers in Goldmember" this weekend.
(2002-07-25)

TIP OF THE WEEK
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MICE DREAMS
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SIGHT GAGS
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SNOW MOTION
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DOUBLE DEUTSCH
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