One of the seminal American films of the 1970s, Roman Polanski's detective yarn sees murder and scandal emerge from the drought of 1930s Southern California. Private eye Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson) is hired to follow water commissioner Hollis Mulwray (Darrell Zwerling), only to see him turn up dead at the bottom of a reservoir. Realising he has been used, Gittes confronts Mulwray's widow, Evelyn (Faye Dunaway), a woman who seems to have plenty of secrets of her own, not least her ambiguous relationship with her father, Noah Cross (John Huston).