Chinatown Soundtrack CD
Chinatown.
1974, Paramount.
Jerry Goldsmith.
Verese Sarabande CD, VSD-5677
Rating: 
Written in just eleven days as a replacement score, Chinatown is an astonishing achievement, not least because Roman Polanski’s detective film noir was not the most commercial of ideas. Set in 1930s Los Angeles during a water shortage, Jack Nicholson plays J.J. Gittes, a private eye hired by a woman claiming to be the wife of the Los Angeles Commissioner for Water, to spy on her husband suspecting him of having an affair. After uncovering a plot against the Commissioner, Gittes then finds himself knee deep in a sex scandal and organised crime involving Mrs Evelyn Mulwray (Faye Dunaway) and her powerful tycoon Father, Noah Cross (John Huston). From the atmospheric opening cue (‘Love Theme From Chinatown’), with its seductive trumpet solo, also used to great effect on ‘Jake and Evelyn’ and ‘The Wrong Clue’, Goldsmith’s score is highly evocative of the period and loaded with avant-garde eccentricity, particularly evident in ‘The Captive’. Standards such as ‘I Can’t Get Started’ and ‘The Way You Look Tonight’ were inserted to accent the period and are fine but remain fillers to one of Goldsmith’s best scores. Sublime.
Chinatown Movie Soundtrack. Review: Tim Mowbray.
Track listing:
1. Love Theme From ‘Chinatown’
2. Noah Cross
3. Easy Living
4. Jake & Evelyn
5. I Can’t Get Started Bunny Berigan & his Orchestra)
6. The Last Of Ida
7. The Captive
8. The Boy On A Horse
9. The Way You Look Tonight
10. The Wrong Clue
11. JJ Gittes
12. Love Theme From ‘Chinatown’
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