Jake Gates is an informant who was set up to investigate adultery. Over time, Jake reveals the existence of a murder plot by a thief, and many other issues related to the privatization of water through government corruption, land use, real estate and criminal cases that have not ended in full concealment. Jake is still threatened if he does not immediately drop the case, where he faces threats of legal action, but he is still following up on these issues, which reveal many clashes and challenges.
Polanski's film suggests that the rules of the game are written in some strange, untranslatable language, and that everyone's an alien and, ultimately, a victim.
As private investigator Jake Gittes, hired to dig up some dirt on Hollis Mulwray, chief engineer of Los Angeles's water department, Nicholson saunters round the city delivering one-liners with offhand brilliance.
Polanski's telling of his tale of corruption in LA is masterly - thrilling, humorous and disturbing at the same time - and brilliantly played by John Huston and Faye Dunaway as well as Nicholson.
A new private-eye melodrama that celebrates not only a time and a place (Los Angeles) but also a kind of criminality that to us jaded souls today appears to be nothing worse than an eccentric form of legitimate private enterprise.
In 1974 a director, a screenwriter, and a producer (Robert Evans, who for once deserves a few of the plaudits he's apportioned himself) could decide to beat a genre senseless and then dump it in the wilds of Greek tragedy.
