To tell the truth, I lied a little: A hot summer movie.

Slowly, I become more educated. Almost a year ago, we bought a copy of Chinatown in the cheap bin, because a) it was in the cheap in, and b) Corey said it was very good. It took me that long to feel like watching it, but this week I got myself a new book with the proceeds from some cooking I've been selling to one of Cor's colleagues, and it happens to be an excellent period noir, which put me right in the mood to give Chinatown a try.

What can I say that you probably haven't heard before? It was, after all, made ten years before I was born, and been rightly famous ever since. It's a work of art, and I can now see the stamp of its influence all over the last film noir I saw, 2005's Brick. Chinatown is filmed in a way that makes big places seem small, hot, desperate, and stuffy - it screams "summer movie", but not in the derogatory, throwaway popcorn-flick sense. It thrives on the strength of being made by actors who didn't feel too important to make a stuntman or stand-in do the dirty work, and on main man Jake Gittes not being a stereotypical noir hard case. He doesn't swear in front of women, and apologizes when he accidentally does. He asks his secretary to leave the room so that he can tell his colleagues a dirty joke. It take a lot for Jake to lose his temper, but when he does, he doesn't blow his stack. He accepts the desperation that pays his P.I. fees with a paradoxically dignified sense of defeat. His manner is smooth and easy, until he's pushed too far, but there's the sense that he is only so smooth and easy because that is the only way to deal with what he sees as a P.I., and what he saw during his stint as a cop in Chinatown. He is a fascinating character. Of course, having support from heavyweights Fay Wray and John Huston didn't hurt Jack Nicholson's breakout role, either.

The downside to Chinatown is that knowing the story makes director Roman Polanski's unserved conviction for drugging and raping a 13 year-old girl all the more disturbing. Very all the more disturbing. It makes me wonder if he has an actual psychological problem or fetish.

But, if I'm going to talk about Polanski's crime, I must make two things clear. The first is that in no way do I condone what he has been proven to have did, nor do I condone the fact that he continues to evade arrest and refuse to serve his sentence. The second, which became a huge media issue when The Pianist was nominated for an Oscar, is that I do not believe his work, or his merit as a filmmaker, should be judged according to his sins - I was not offended when he won the award. It was an excellent film.

There has never been, and never will be, and artist who is not also a sinner. Every film you have ever seen, even the "family-friendly" ones or the ones we think will please God, was made by someone whose legal sins are every bit as foul under heaven as Polanski's illegal ones. We're all on equal footing in this arena. For this reason, I would ask you to not shy away from watching a film directed by Roman Polanski, because he is a wonderful artist and very good at his job - but that doesn't mean I would have dinner with him, because I'm honestly now a bit frightened of him what with the parallels between Chinatown and his crime.

Well. That's Chinatown. Watch it if you haven't - it's an experience hard to describe, and a very important film in terms of the influence its had on the industry.