Private detective films in the days of Humphrey Bogart were in shadowy black and white, but Polanski updated the form for the Watergate era, shooting in colour in the sunny glare of Southern California. For his richly intricate screenplay, Robert Towne researched historic power struggles over the water supply to Los Angeles, creating in tycoon Noah Cross – played by old-guard film director John Huston – one of cinema’s most disturbing villains.
The mystery plot has a classical simplicity, as Nicholson’s private eye Jake Gittes is drawn by his own curiosity into a situation in which he’s dangerously out of his depth, and where he endangers the very thing he sought to protect. The Los Angeles of the 1930s is immaculately recreated, with production design by Richard Sylbert.
