Jack Nicholson At 80: His 10 Best Performances

At first, the plot is simple enough: Nicholson plays a private investigator who is hired to survey a woman’s husband whom she suspects of having an affair. Gittes eventually ends up photographing the husband with a young lady.

Then comes the first of many twists in Roman Polanski's neo-noir thriller that sets it on its way to becoming an absorbing and intriguing classic: turns out that the woman Gittes was hired by was an impostor and that the man's actual wife (Faye Dunaway) subsequently threatens him with a lawsuit.

The film's memorable line in which Gittes (or "Gits" as John Huston kept pronouncing it) is told, "Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown", is a metaphor for Gittes' essentially futile attempts to scale the insurmountable mountain of corruption in the hope of finding decency and justice at the summit.

Moreover, Chinatown set Nicholson on the way to superstardom. And despite the bandaged nose, he does look at his most handsome and dapper best. Critics rightly lauded Nicholson, although perhaps the best compliment came from the eminent film critic Roger Ebert when he said that Nicholson’s performance, “was key in keeping Chinatown from just a genre crime picture."