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After the sulfur behind the New York penthouse (Rosemary's Baby), the desert under the Los Angeles asphalt. Water for the garden, rot needs irrigation as well, a portrait of a growing city. The professional snoop (Jack Nicholson) specializes in "matrimonial work," the case trails an earnest magistrate who washes up in the reservoir. ("Middle of a drought, and the water commissioner drowns. Only in L.A.!") The widow (Faye Dunaway) is a porcelain dame who cracks at the mention of her father, the genially depraved tycoon (John Huston) who reigns like a lion amid weasels. The cocksure hero turns out to be a patsy in a corkscrew scheme, the painful past of being unable to protect the heroine is repeated. "Cherchez la femme?" "Of course." The Seventies via the Thirties, the New Hollywood film par excellence, a work of renowned perfections. The adamantine constructions of Robert Towne's screenplay serve Roman Polanski's magisterial camera, both are attuned to the sleek surrealism in cobalt skies and Spanish colonial houses. (A characteristic fusion at the City Hall meeting has a spieling councilman at the center of the frame flanked by FDR's portrait in the background and the funnies on an open newspaper in the foreground.) "Is this a business or an obsession with you?" The director of The Maltese Falcon is directly recognized (dead partner's name scraped off office door), otherwise Diane Ladd's resemblance to Claire Trevor is indicative of the allusive engagement with film noir. The exploding orange at the citrus grove, slashed nose and perforated eye, the shattered specs in the fishpond. The setup of the cuckolded slob finds its punchline in the slattern's shiner, the Vertigo effect with the incestuous doll is by way of Mary Cassatt. "You may think you know what you're dealing with, but believe me, you don't." Nicholson has the official follow-up (The Two Jakes), Lynch the unofficial one (Mulholland Drive). Cinematography by John A. Alonzo. With Perry Lopez, John Hillerman, Darrell Zwerling, Burt Young, Roy Jensen, Joe Mantell, Bruce Glover, and James Hong.
--- Fernando F. Croce |