Chinatown

We couldn't very well programme an aquatic film strand without including the grandaddy of all water movies - although one where the stuff itself is in short supply.

Robert Towne's razor-sharp script shows how power-struggles over the Los Angeles water supply are etched on the landscape itself (much like oil in There Will Be Blood), and help to create a vortex of intrigue which sucks in laconic private eye Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson). Cold, stylish, and fabulously bleak; picking one Polanski film for a desert island would be tough, but this is probably ours. (It also scrubs up very nicely in a new digital print.)