Chinatown

Chinatown is a 1974 American film directed by Roman Polanski and written by Robert Towne, starring Jack Nicholson as a Los Angeles private investigator whose inquiry into a seemingly routine infidelity case leads him into a conspiracy involving municipal water rights and a powerful family's hidden crimes. Set in 1930s Los Angeles and drawing loosely on the real history of the city's water politics, the film revives the visual and narrative conventions of classic film noir while ending on a considerably bleaker note than genre convention of the earlier era typically allowed. Chinatown is widely regarded as one of the greatest American films and as the defining work of the neo-noir revival of 1970s Hollywood cinema.