FilmQuest 2012 (6/30): 'Chinatown':

Furthering my quixotic "FilmQuest 2012" - a mission to fill the vast, unforgivable gaps in my knowledge of film - is Roman Polanski's 1974 neo-noir classic 'Chinatown'. When I selected my arbitrary roster of 30 films I made it a rule to name no more than one by any given director, meaning that 'Repulsion', 'Cul-de-sac' and 'Rosemary's Baby' will have to wait for a future list. It's fair to say Polanski encapsulates one of those embarrassing cinema blind spots that prompted the list in the first place.

'Chinatown' is the first "classic" Polanski film I've had the pleasure of seeing and now I can see why he's considered one of the great masters of cinema - something that was not apparent upon watching his forgettable 'Oliver Twist' or rote thriller 'The Ghost Writer' (though that film is similar to 'Chinatown' in so far as its an investigation told from a subjective viewpoint). It's one of those rare films that is universally acclaimed for more or less every aspect of its production - and deserves it. What can you say about a film like that? I'm afraid I'll be reduced to simply repeating the obvious.

Robert Towne's Oscar-winning screenplay is intelligent and full of brilliant one-liners ("politicians, ugly buildings and whores all get respectable if they last long enough"). I recently discussed the films of David Fincher with friends who defended the loathsomeness of 90s thriller 'Seven' as being a poem on the decline and immorality of the modern American city. 'Chinatown' is similarly cynical and critical: indeed its hero takes a similar arc to Brad Pitt's idealistic cop in that film, ultimately realising that his attempts to do something good are futile amongst the greed and corruption of 1930s Los Angeles. But the foregrounding of specific, historically-routed political critique stops 'Chinatown' from feeling like the nihilistic ambassador for hopelessness or a cheerleader for empty despair.

The actors are also on career-defining form. Jack Nicholson is at his inimitable best as private eye Jake Gittes (who surly ranks as one of the all-time greatest movie detectives), combining his explosive intensity - that ever-present feeling that he could do or say anything - with an understated, classic movie star elegance. The great director John Huston makes a lasting impression as wealthy patriarch Noah Cross, despite only appearing in two scenes (one of which is at the very end). His courtly and genteel portrayal ensures the character looms large over the whole film.

Faye Dunaway is also perfectly cast as the seemingly poised and in-control femme fatale Evelyn Mulwray, exhibiting an underlying damaged quality that prevents her ultimate reveal as the victim from being out of the blue without robbing it of its capacity to shock. Legendary screenwriter William Goldman has said that good movies feel both inevitable and surprising and 'Chinatown' certainly has this strange seemingly contradictory quality.

And then there's Polanski. The director ensures a dialogue heavy and complicated script holds together without an ounce of fat. He apparently eliminated a Gittes voiceover from the script and tightened up the famous ending: bringing everything to a head in one climactic confrontation instead of over several more complex scenes. He also placed the film's celebrated "Forget it Jake, it's Chinatown" at the very end. The line had apparently already existed elsewhere in the script but Towne could never quite make it fit - in the end its placement is perfect, capturing the tragic futility Gittes struggle in a single phrase.

FilmQuest 2012 (4/30): 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest':

SPOILERS ahead

The fourth in my series of retrospective reviews bearing the oft-derided (if only by me) name "FilmQuest 2012", this time I'm looking at 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest': the Michael Douglas produced, Milos Forman directed, Jack Nicholson starring 1975 drama set within a mental institution. Funny, sad, disturbing and life-affirming in equal measure, 'One Flew' is one of those rare Best Picture Oscar winners that people seem to unanimously agree is genuinely very good. I guess it would have to be: the other nominees that year were 'Barry Lyndon', 'Nashville', 'Dog Day Afternoon' and 'Jaws' (has there been a better year than that in terms of Oscar?).

Douglas, Forman and Nicholson all won golden statuettes in their respective categories (picture, director, actor), as well as the screenwriters (Laurence Hauben and Bo Goldman) and actress Louise Fletcher, for her legendary portrayal of the uncompromising Nurse Ratched. Yet what really caught my eye, as I sat down to watch the film for the first time, was the revelatory performance of one of its few Oscar losers: Brad Dourif as the stuttering, suicidal Billy Bibbet. Dourif's bright-eyed intensity and haunting vulnerability make the ending all the more tragic. If we hadn't just witnessed Dourif's dramatic fall from newly confident euphoria to pathetic, weepy pleading, Nicholson's subsequent attempt to murder Ratched would play as far less sympathetic. As it is, you are - for those few seconds at least - right there with him.

Dourif's impact on the whole film is made even more extraordinary by the fact that, aside from Nicholson and, at a push, Will Sampson (as the Chief), most of the inmates/patients don't have a great deal of individual screentime - restricted to the occasional (often wordless) close-up. But we feel like we've spent more time with them than we have in reality, no doubt thanks to the uniqueness of the actor inhabiting each small role. Alongside Dourif are the likes of Christopher Lloyd, Danny DeVito, Vincent Schiavelli, Sydney Lassick, William Duell and William Redfield: all of whom look and sound distinctive enough as to form an immediate, unshakable impression.

Despite the ultimate, spirit-crushing lobotomy visited upon Nicholson's Randle McMurphy following his strangling of the nurse, one of the really exceptional elements of 'One Flew' is that the institution is not portrayed as malicious for its own sake. Ratched is stern and rigorously enforces her regime - to the detriment of the patients - yet, until the heartless humiliation of Bibbet, her good intentions are never really in question. You get the sense she genuinely believes her methods are the best way bring stability or order to disordered lives. Here (in a refreshing break from the norm) the system, though it medicates patients into docility and uses electro-shock therapy as a punishment, is not depicted as deliberately cruel.

Perhaps (the forced lobotomy of McMurphy aside) Ratched's greatest act of cruelty is subtle and indirect. Though most of her patients are in the hospital voluntarily - and therefore permitted to leave at any time - none of them express even the faintest desire to do so, thanks to her control over them and the relative security it brings. Through her regime Ratched merely seeks to pacify her wards, with little thought of preparing them to reintegrate with society. This horrifies McMurphy who thinks only of freedom. Though clearly a loose cannon, he's not himself mentally ill: he's a criminal who's had himself committed in order to avoid manual labour and serve the rest of his sentence in relative comfort.

This allows him to witness, and experience, the pitfalls of institutionalisation. It is ambiguous whether he fails to escape the night of the illicit party (falling asleep) or simply decides not to - preferring to stay within this new community in which he has become an important member. Either way McMurphy becomes the unwilling victim of a system that seems designed to make people easier to handle, rather than working to enrich their lives. In this respect the hospital is not too dissimilar from the prison Nicholson's character has left behind.