Chinatown (film)

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Chinatown
Directed by Roman Polanski
Produced by Robert Evans
Written by Robert Towne
Starring Jack Nicholson
Faye Dunaway
John Huston
Music by Jerry Goldsmith
Editing by Sam O'Steen
Distributed by Paramount Pictures
Release date(s) June 20, 1974 (U.S.A.)
Running time 131 min.
Language English
Budget $6,000,000 US (est.)
Followed by The Two Jakes
Allmovie profile
IMDb profile

Chinatown is a 1974 film directed by Roman Polanski featuring many elements of the film noir genre, particularly a multi-layered story that is part mystery and part psychological drama. It stars Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, and John Huston. Also appearing in the film are John Hillerman, Diane Ladd, Perry Lopez, James Hong, Joe Mantell, Bruce Glover, Burt Young, and Noble Willingham.

The film was nominated for eleven Academy Awards, winning in only the category of Best Original Screenplay for Robert Towne. In 1991, Chinatown was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

A sequel, called The Two Jakes, was released in 1990, starring Jack Nicholson (who also directed it), with a screenplay written by Robert Towne.

Contents

[edit] Plot

A Los Angeles, private investigator named Jake "J.J." Gittes (Nicholson) is hired to spy on Hollis Mulwray, the chief engineer for the city's water department. The woman hiring Gittes claims to be Evelyn Mulwray, Hollis's wife. Mr. Mulwray spends most of his time investigating dry riverbeds. Mr. Mulwray also has a heated argument with an elderly man. Gittes finally catches Mulwray during an outing with a young blonde and photographs the pair, which becomes a scandal in the press. After the story is published, Gittes learns that the woman who hired him was not the real Evelyn Mulwray.

Clues suggest a scandal in the city government: Despite a serious drought and an expensive proposal to build a new dam, the Water and Power department is dumping fresh water into the ocean at night.

On a tip, Gittes seeks out Mr. Mulwray at a reservoir but finds the police there instead, investigating Hollis Mulwray's death from drowning. When the police speak to Mrs. Mulwray about the death, they assume she hired Gittes, which Gittes corroborates. She thanks him and hires him to investigate what happened to her husband.

Later that night, while breaking into the reservoir's secured area, Gittes is confronted by water department security, Claude Mulvihill and a thug (a cameo by Polanski), who slashes Jake's nose for being a "very nosy fella." Gittes receives a call from Ida Sessions, the woman who was hired to pretend to be Mrs. Mulwray, who suggests that Gittes look at the obituary column. At the water department, Gittes notices photographs of the elderly man Mulwray quarreled with a few days before his death, Noah Cross (Huston). Cross, who is Evelyn Mulwray's father, used to own the water department as Mulwray's business partner. Cross ended his association with the department when the partners sold it to the city.

Cross hires Gittes to find the blond girl Hollis had been seeing, saying that she might know what happened to him. Acting on a hint from Sessions, Gittes begins to unravel an intricate water scandal. Cross and his partners have been forcing farmers out of their land so they can buy it cheap, after which a newly-built (and controversial) dam and water system would start redirecting much of L.A.'s water supply to that land, dramatically increasing its value. Since Cross wants no record of such transactions, he has partnered with a retirement home community in such a way that many of the eldest residents within (one of whom is mentioned in the obituary column) would legally, but unknowingly, own the land.

Back at Evelyn's house, Gittes and Evelyn share a romantic interlude. As they lie on the bed afterward, the phone rings. Evelyn has a cryptic conversation with someone, then informs Jake that she has to leave for a little while. She asks him to trust her.

Gittes follows Evelyn to a middle-class house and sees Mulwray's girlfriend crying. Evelyn claims this is her sister, who was crying because she had just learned about Hollis' death. Later that night, Sessions is murdered. Police Lt. Escobar points out that the coroner's report proves that salt water was found in Mulwray's lungs even though the body was found in a freshwater reservoir.

Gittes returns to Evelyn's mansion, where he discovers a pair of eyeglasses in a garden saltwater pond. Gittes confronts Evelyn, who reveals that the blond girl, Katherine, is both her sister and her daughter; Gittes asks Evelyn if her father raped her and she shakes her head no. It remains unclear whether the act was consensual or not; Evelyn's father later hints that it was indeed a consensual incestuous relationship by saying: "Most people never have to face the fact that, at the right time and the right place, they're capable of anything". It is apparent also that Evelyn resents her father for taking advantage of her in a relationship considered unnatural. Gittes then chooses to help Evelyn escape. Evelyn remembers that the eyeglasses could not have been her husband's because they are bifocals. Gittes arranges for the two women to flee to Mexico and instructs Evelyn to meet him at her butler's address in Chinatown. Evelyn leaves, and Cross arrives with Mulvihill under the pretext that Gittes has found the girl; however, Gittes confronts Cross with the accusation of murder and the glasses. Mulvihill takes away the eyeglasses that are the only physical evidence. Cross forces Gittes to take him to the girl. When Gittes arrives at Evelyn's hiding place in Chinatown, the police are already there and arrest Gittes.

When Cross approaches Katherine, demanding custody of her, Evelyn pushes him back, shoots him in the arm and starts her car. As Evelyn is driving away, the police open fire and Evelyn is shot and killed. Cross clutches Katherine, taking her out of the car, as a devastated Gittes is comforted by his associates, who urge him to walk away: "Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown."

The plot is based in part on real events that formed the California Water Wars, in which William Mulholland acted on behalf of Los Angeles interests to secure water rights in the Owens Valley.

[edit] Background and analysis

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Chinatown was set in the 1930s and portrays water department corruption. It was the first part of a planned trilogy written by Robert Towne about the character J.J. Gittes and Los Angeles government. The second part, The Two Jakes, was about the natural gas department in Los Angeles in the 1940s. It was directed by Jack Nicholson and released in 1990, however, the second film's commercial and critical failure scuttled plans to make Cloverleaf, a film about the development of the Los Angeles freeway system in the late 1940s. The plot for "Cloverleaf" later became the basis of the live action/animation film Who Framed Roger Rabbit.[citation needed]

Because Chinatown was planned as the first film in a trilogy, Nicholson turned down all detective roles he was offered so that the only detective he played would be Jake Gittes.[citation needed]. Gittes was named after Nicholson's friend, producer Harry Gittes. The original script was over 180 pages. Roman Polanski eliminated Gittes' voiceover narration, which was written in the script, and filmed the movie so the audience discovered the clues at the same time Gittes did.

The title Chinatown is both a reference to the setting of the film's tragic ending as well as a symbolic reference to the demons from the past that haunt the characters' lives. Chinatown can also symbolically mean here an alien place beyond J.J. Gittes's understanding or control. The idea of past events haunting and influencing characters' actions is a common thread throughout the film. Every major character in the film is troubled by inner demons that seem to have a profound influence on the present events that Gittes is investigating. Examples of these demons include the breakup of Noah Cross' partnership with Mr. Mulwray, Jake's inability to save a woman he cared for when he was a detective in Chinatown, and Evelyn's troubled personal history. The opening scenes set this theme with the minor character Curly shown devastated by the revelation that his wife is having an affair, and by Jake advising the Evelyn Mulwray imposter, who insists on finding out about her "husband's" infidelity, that it is better to "let sleeping dogs lie." The fact that Jake offers this advice is ironic since it is Jake's inability to "let sleeping dogs lie" that partially leads to the film's tragic ending. The theme of the haunting of characters' pasts is punctuated in the film's final line when Jake's partner Walsh advises Gittes to "Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown," suggesting that Gittes will be haunted by the memories of this case and that it would be in his best interest to bury his past.[citation needed]

Robert Towne intended the screenplay to have a happy ending. He and Polanski argued over it, with Polanski insisting on a tragic end.[citation needed] Towne was originally offered $175,000 to write a screenplay for The Great Gatsby (1974), but felt he couldn't better the F. Scott Fitzgerald novel and accepted $25,000 to write his own story, Chinatown, instead.

The characters Hollis Mulwray and Noah Cross are both references to the chief engineer for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, William Mulholland (1855-1935) — the name Hollis Mulwray is partially an anagram for Mulholland. The name Noah is a reference to a flood — to suggest the conflict between good and evil in Mulholland. Mulholland was the designer and engineer for the Los Angeles Aqueduct, which brought water from the Owens Valley to Los Angeles. The dam Cross and the city want to build is opposed by Mulwray for reasons of engineering and safety. Mulwray says he will not make the same mistake as when he built a previous dam, which broke resulting in the deaths of hundreds. This is a direct reference to the St. Francis Dam disaster. The dam was personally inspected by Mulholland himself before it catastrophically failed the next morning on March 12, 1928. More than 450 people, many of them school children died that day and the town of Santa Paula was buried[1]. The incident effectively ended Mulholland's career and he died in 1935.

Polanski originally offered the cinematographer position to William A. Fraker, Paramount agreed and Fraker accepted. Paramount had previously hired Fraker to shoot for Polanksi on Rosemary's Baby. When Robert Evans became aware of the hire he insisted the offer be reneged. Evans who had also produced Rosemary's Baby felt pairing Polanski and Fraker yielded a team with too much power on one side, and would thus complicate the production.

This was the last movie Roman Polanski filmed in the U.S., after he was arrested and convicted of sexual assault of a minor. Polanski was outraged when producer Robert Evans ordered the film lab to give Chinatown a reddish look.[citation needed] Polanski demanded that the film be corrected.

Phillip Lambro was originally hired to write the film's music score, but it was rejected at the last minute by producer Robert Evans, leaving Jerry Goldsmith only 10 days to write and record a new one. The haunting trumpet solos are by the Hollywood studio musician Uan Rasey. Goldsmith received an Academy Award nomination for his efforts.

(Some of this is verified by Nicholson, Towne, and Polanski on the DVD released on 11/6/07 in the special features section)

[edit] Awards

[edit] Academy Awards - 1974

Wins:

Nominations:

[edit] Golden Globes - 1974

Wins:

Nominations

[edit] Other Awards

[edit] Bibliography

  • Easton, Michael (1998) Chinatown (B.F.I. Film Classics series). Los Angeles: University of California Press. ISBN 0-85170-532-4.
  • Borgnine, Ernest(1997). Chinatown and the Last Detail: 2 Screenplays. New York: Grove Press. ISBN 0-8021-3401-7.
  • Tuska, Jon (1978). The Detective in Hollywood. Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company. ISBN 0-385-12093-1.

[edit] External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:
Preceded by
The Exorcist		 Golden Globe for Best Picture - Drama
1975		 Succeeded by
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
v • d • e
Films directed by Roman Polanski
v • d • e
American films of the 1970s
1970 •1971 •1972 •1973 •1974 •1975 •1976 •1977 •1978 •1979