One of the most used genres in the Hollywood is the noire genre. The good old detective classic that takes place in 1920s or 1950s. It is such a romanticized genre that people know it by the back of their hand even if they haven't seen a noire movie in their life. There was one movie that changed the chemistry of noire, Chinatown. Spoilers Ahead
The formula for a noire movie is as follows. A complex crime, a detective trying to solve it, and slowly everything unravels as the detective figures it out and saves the day. Roman Polanski follows what makes the noire genre great, which are the theme and the tone. The story on the other hand is fully altered, at first it starts just like any other noire movie, but at the end it gets worse and worse. The entire story is demoralized, everything falls negatively making you feel something new, the detective is left traumatized at the end, and the antagonist wins. This is called demythology.
Demythologization is when someone wants to know the meaning of something so they diverse all the mythological attachments to it, for example removing the stories of the bible to understand it in a more human way. In Chinatown the father has raped his daughter at the age of 15, when she escapes pregnant with her own sister. Mr Gittes has to comprehend what kind of immoral painful situation he is put in.
In my opinion if you want to make a great script, you have to make it quotable. Chinatown excels at that, there are so many simple lines that are stuck in my head such as "Politicians, ugly buildings, and whores, all become respectable, if they last long enough".
If you have watched this movie you already know that the acting is so well done, the cinematography isn't special but it is still great and you know the movie is a masterpiece. Logan, The Road and No Country for Old Men are similar when it comes to the demythologization aspect of the story, and I bet they are influenced by Chinatown.
10/10