Chinatown, My Chinatown: An Andalusian Dog
love poem in images and music

Wow.

I know alot of wows are forthcoming, but as I watched this I just kept repeating "wow, wow, wow..." over and over. It was breathtaking. Jim, you are a great filmmaker, editor, and all that other stuff you credited to yourself at the end, which essentially means you're a great artist. You're writing always moves me and your video essays are an extension of your passion and your passion is palpable. This video is a great distillation of "Chinatown." Art begets art. Enough gushing already, right? But, hey what do you expect? After watching this, I was thinking of "Being John Malkovich": It's like I'm watching "Chinatown" through your eyes. I guess this is what all great movies do: Play like music. Again, wow.

For some reason, I can't get this or any of your Vimeo videos to play without stuttering (I don't have a problem with other videos/sites).

By the way, in the title of the video did you mean to say "widows" or "windows"? I suppose it works either way. ;)

I have never seen Chintatown before, should I watch this?

And Jim, what do you think of The Ghost Writer? I'm only 18, I haven't seen many Polanski movies but that one made me want to check out his other films, too.

This is tremendous, Jim. You've really distilled the movie's central motifs to a connected list. I want to watch the film again, and the video.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to raise the level of my game!

Thanks for the great montage, Jim. But don't miss the additional motif of horses (land animals) vs. fish (sea creatures). Throughout the movie, the good guys are associated with horses -- Gittes has pictures of them on his bedroom wall and sculptures in his office, both the Mexican boy in the riverbed and the farmer in the orange grove ride them, Evelyn rides bareback (!). The bad guys are visually tied to fish and other sealife -- Noah Cross serves them with the head still attached, and controls the Albacore Club, Yelburton has a swordfish trophy on his wall, and of course there's the Mar Vista Rest Home (nice pun, considering that it's in the desert), and Jasper Lamar Crabb (double pun!). Finally, for a nice land/sea mashup, Gittes is reading a newspaper item about the famous racehorse Seabiscuit. I could go on...

A perfect film and your connect-the-dots approach only enhances that assertion (and you included one of my "points-to" for that, the shot of the painters outside the door, and the way the one ruefully shakes his head after his acknowledgement of Gittes as the door closes--a tiny moment perfectly cast and played).

Goldsmith's evocative score, by the way, was a last minute replacement—10 days elapsed between the day he got the assignment and the final dubbing.

One question for you, though: is the dedication to Mrs. Mul-WRAY, or Mrs. MUL-wray?

Like Mike F., I can't seem to watch the video without stalling. But what I did see was fascinating, and it made me want to go watch "Chinatown" again...too bad tonight's scheduled movie is "Ruggles of Red Gap".

I know that you've been involved in a number of different areas of the film industry, including writing (criticism), writing (for the screen), exhibition, editor of Cinemania, marketing, etc, etc. Have you ever wanted to direct?

Toward the end, when we have that ole 40's radio tune playing and the tight strings, high notes horror music playing over it, is as creepy (and as perfectly wrought) as Lynch! Good editorial choices, Jim.

I don't mean to be a letdown, Jim, but did you know that you share a common love of Chinatown with Richard Schickel? He once said that if he had to pick an all-time great American film, it would be this one.

Does this affect your not-so-generous appraisal of him in any way?

You have turned Polanski's policier into Mrs. Mulwray's Mulholland Drive. Haunting, man. I had never paid so much attention to Dunaway's performance or Goldsmith's score, which here seem to work as stealth accomplices across all those doors and divides.

Great, now I have to give "Chinatown" another watch. Thankfully, the local video place has it available. The older I get, always in small increments, the more and more I begin to really appreciate all kinds of films and the telling of stories. I think I owe a lot of it to you, Jim.

Thanks for another great video essay. You really know how to piece different visual compositions together into something really fascinating.

Very nice. It does indeed inspire the urge to see the film again - immediately, like.

I wish I hadn't passed up the chance to buy the special edition DVD for ten bucks at the now-defunct Virgin, but I'd just seen it on the big screen at the Castro, and the notion of watching it on a TV set seemed somehow sad after that experience.

Oh well. It'll come 'round again.

Great stuff. You are bad(ass) for the glass.

I always thought another fine video candidate would be footwear in the movies, entitled "Goddamn Florsheim Shoe."

It never occurred to me that there was a Bunuelian/surrealist element to CHINATOWN, loaded with frames and fetish objects, but this video makes me feel it was in front of my nose all along. I guess I just wasn't nosy enough, but you know what happens to nosy people...

Seriously you've elucidated and transformed the source material all at once. And all the better without voiceover! Polanski's images, your montage and some Goldsmith for atmosphere - that's a pretty potent recipe. I've learned a lot from this.

I've seen Chinatown 7 or 8 times. I loved this movie from the first viewing (a love that only kept growing as I revisited it), and yet I never fully realized how great it was until now.

Jim, this Chinatown's de/re-construction is one of the best examples of film criticism I've ever seen.

Jim,

Wunderbar!
I'm "intimate" with Chinatown as well...I've heard it called the best script ever written and I'm inclined to agree. Do you?

Kevin Lee expresses my sentiments so exactly, I wonder if we weren't separated at birth. A superb tribute to a film that's one of the constants on my ever-shifting lifetime Top 10 list.

Not only one of the greatest scripts ever written but one of the best film scores as well. Bravo to Jerry Goldsmith.

I wonder if the eye with the "flaw in the iris" is the same eye that was shot through when Mrs. Mulray drives away at the end and meets her demise.