Dir. Roman Polanski. 1974, 130 mins. DCP. With Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, John Huston. Nicholson gave the movies a private detective for the ages as J. J. Gittes, a Los Angeles investigator who gets in way over his head after the wife of a local tycoon hires him to spy on her husband. Looks are deceiving in the brilliant script by Robert Towne, which spirals ever further into darkness, taking in scandals of both municipal and domestic corruption. Polanski's film is perhaps the great neo-noir melodrama, with a meticulously recreated 1930s Los Angeles.