Chinatown (1974)

Chinatown (1974)

In emigre Polish director Roman Polanski's great neo-noir detective story set in the late 1930s Los Angeles - the complex and colorful film was a brilliant but dark tale of murder, incest, infidelity, and the deadly acquisition of water rights (the ecological rape of the land) that paid homage to the detective melodramas of the past (during the traditional period of film noir limited to the 1940s-1950s).

Polanski's atmospheric, subtly-paced, superbly-made neo-noir mystery - in the disillusioned, post-Watergate era, told about the uncovering of many layers, facades, and networks of deception, conspiracy, political, urban and capitalist corruption and sexual scandal surrounding a water conspiracy set in 1930s Los Angeles.

The noirish detective-mystery thriller featured a beautifully-constructed, taut and complex original screenplay written by the film's sole Oscar-winner Robert Towne. Due to intense competition from Coppola's The Godfather, Part II (1974), Chinatown received a total of eleven nominations, but only one win! It was a skillful blend of mystery, romance, suspense, and hard boiled detective/film noir genre elements. Towne's screenplay was partially based on a true Los Angeles scandal in the early part of the 20th century (the story of the nefarious 1908 Owens Valley 'Rape' and scandalous San Fernando Valley land-grab by speculators).

Jack Nicholson starred as a meddling, hard-nosed, world-weary private gumshoe named Jake Gittes, who specialized in adultery cases. He began his search within a tangled plot of deceptive and perverse double-crosses, after he took on a client named Evelyn Mulwray (Faye Dunaway) - an alluring and mysterious vamp. The recently-widowed woman asked him to investigate the infidelities of her alleged husband, LA's chief water engineer for the drought-stricken city. As the film-noir plot unfolded, the detective was way over his head in a case involving murder, the illegal diversion of water to artificially deflate land prices, and fraudulent and corrupt politicians including sinister millionaire Noah Cross (John Huston) who was grabbing up land in the northwest valley. In addition, a prominent family's scandalous, long-hidden dark secret was uncovered (summarized in the famous wrenching line: "She's my sister...she's my daughter").

Gittes was masterful as he flippantly and self-confidently offered pat explanations for the deeply-flowing corruption he unearthed, and then found that he had to continually revise his inaccurate pronouncements and backtrack, after further evidence surfaced. His transgressive snooping was symbolized throughout the film by a large bandage on his sliced nose, after it was painfully slashed by a knife-wielding punk (director Roman Polanski in a cameo role).

After original, complex plot twists, the film ended in an unsettling finale in the 'Chinatown' section of the city - a state of mind where the law was ineffectual. Gittes found himself impotent and powerless to prevent the inevitable tragedy that he had exposed. In the film's final line after the surprise death of Jake's love, he was told: "Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown."

• in the film's opening, a haunting, melancholy trumpet solo accompanied a sepia-colored art deco background
• in the upscale office of ex-cop, now private detective J.J. "Jake" Gittes (Jack Nicholson) in 1937 Los Angeles, the gumshoe - who specialized in messy, 'dirty' divorce cases and extra-marital affairs, Gittes' distraught client Curly (Burt Young) viewed photographic evidence of his unfaithful wife committing adultery; Gittes' reminded the upset man: "All right, Curly, enough's enough. You can't eat the venetian blinds. I just had 'em installed on Wednesday"
• in Jake's outer office with his two "operatives" Walsh (Joe Mantell) and Duffy (Bruce Glover), the PI was introduced to a second prospective client - a "Mrs. Mulwray" (Diane Ladd); [Note: The female was actually an imposter - hired to discredit Mr. Mulwray.]; the female asked Jake to investigate her husband's alleged affair with another woman, and identified her husband as Hollis Mulwray (Darrell Zwerling), the well-known chief engineer of L.A. city's "Water and Power" Company
• in the early part of his investigation, Jake attended a public hearing of the City Council that discussed the latest waterways project (the Alto Vallejo Dam and Reservoir) to construct a dam and reservoir; bored sitting in the audience, Jake listened as the Mayor Bagby (Roy Roberts) advocated the building of the dam and reservoir, followed by the unpopular Mulwray who spoke and opposed the politician's expensive dam and reservoir project that would give the desert area north of LA (the San Fernando Valley) irrigation water and divert water from elsewhere; Mulwray also predicted that the dam's faulty construction would fail and cause a catastrophe

• afterwards, Gittes' trailed after Mulwray as he checked out many of the city's water systems, and took visits to a dry riverbed and a coastal beach; a flyer was placed on his car's windshield, advocating a 'yes' vote on the dam project's bond: ("SAVE OUR CITY!!! LOS ANGELES IS DYING OF THIRST! VOTE YES!"); pictures were taken of Mulwray speaking heatedly to an unidentified man (Noah Cross, Mulwray's father-in-law); the next day, Jake followed up by taking secretive, incriminating still photos of Mulwray on a rowboat in Echo Park with an unidentified young blonde woman, and of them hugging and kissing on an outdoor back patio of an apartment building; Gittes wrongly assumed that it provided evidence of a clandestine, adulterous affair; the scandalous photos were published in the local LA newspaper with the headline: "DEPARTMENT OF WATER AND POWER BLOWS FUSE - J. J. Gittes Hired by Suspicious Spouse, Chief's Use of Funds for El Macondo Love Nest Being Investigated"
• once back in his office, Gittes repeated an inappropriate, racist and crude joke he had just heard in a barbershop about a Chinaman (with the punchline: "You're screwin' just like a Chinaman"); as he went on and on, he didn't realize that another prospective female client - the cool, beautiful, wealthy and regal, and troubled socialite Mrs. Evelyn Mulwray (Faye Dunaway) - the real Mrs. Mulwray - was standing within earshot; Gittes realized he had been duped by the first deceitful woman; Mrs. Mulwray threatened a lawsuit to sue him for defaming her husband's character in the papers as she stalked out with her lawyer; it was obvious that Mulwray was the target of smears
• further casework took Gittes into an illegal search of Mulwray's "Water and Power" office, where he found one enigmatic scrawled note: "Tues night - Oak Pass Res. 7 channels used"; Gittes was ushered out of the office by the engineer's chief deputy, Russ Yelburton (John Hillerman), and also met the city's water department enforcer Claude Mulvihill (Roy Jenson) in the lobby, whose job was to protect against numerous threats of protesting farmers in the Valley to blow up the city's reservoirs during a lengthy LA summer drought: "We've had to ration water in the valley and the farmers are desperate"
• Gittes drove to the Mulwray mansion, attended by four Asian servants-workers; in the back was a fish-pond and fountain (Gittes overheard the foreign-speaking gardener mumble: "Bad for glass" (actually "Bad for grass" - referring to salt water's effect on the lawn) and noticed a shiny object in the water; after meeting briefly with Mrs. Mulwray, she abruptly offered to drop the lawsuit, although Gittes remained suspicious about the identiy of Mulwray's blonde companion
• Gittes was sent to look for Hollis at the remote Oak Pass or Stone Canyon Reservoirs (fresh water reservoirs outside of LA), where he spoke to two police guards - one of Gittes' former partners when they were Chinatown cops - Loach (Dick Bakalyan) and Hispanic police detective Lieutenant Lou Escobar (Perry Lopez); Escobar mentioned how he had been promoted and transferred out of Chinatown

• and then, Gittes was told that the body of Hollis Mulwray (without his glasses and only one shoe) had been shockingly discovered; he was apparently the victim of an accidental drowning after he fell into the storm drain, was knocked unconscious, and his body was washed down the entire length of the run-off channel
• the troubled, elusive, and recently-widowed Mrs. Mulwray was questioned in the Coroner's office and denied that Mulwray's death was a suicide; she also didn't want to discuss her husband's "alleged affair" with the blonde woman, and claimed she didn't know the lady's identity or location; as they left the building, she offered to hire Jake to "put an end to a ridiculous rumor that had no basis" about Mulwray's illicit liaison with the young unnamed girl
• Jake was intrigued when the chain-smoking, overweight mortician Morty (Charles Knapp) lightheartedly joked about Mulwray's death: "In the middle of a drought and the water commissioner drowns! Only in LA"; he also remarked that a "local drunk" had drowned after passing out under the Hollenbeck Bridge - that Gittes mentioned was dried up
• Jake followed up by prowling around the storm drain under the Hollenbeck Bridge where the drunken bum had also drowned, although the LA riverbed was almost bone dry; at the site, a Mexican boy on horseback told Jake about the manipulation and diversion of the water supply that deliberately left the farmland dry: "It goes in different parts of the river. Every night a different part" [Note: As Mulwray had also found out, portions of the city's water supply were being dumped into run-off channels at night in order to claim drought and build a case for the building of the new reservoir.]
• during a nighttime sequence in the "No Trespassing" area near where Mulwray's body was found, impulsive and snooping detective Jake was also almost drowned in the storm drain during the flooding of the water sluice (after two gunshots); Jake was threatened by Mulvihill, punched, and held back as a second individual - a short-statured, maniacal, intimidating, knife-wielding hoodlum (director Roman Polanski in a cameo role) wielded a switchblade and told Jake to stay off the case - ("You're a very nosy fellow, kitty-cat, huh? You know what happens to nosy fellows? Huh, no? Want to guess? Huh, no? OK. They lose their noses. (Jake's nose gushed blood after a sharp flick of the knife.) Next time you lose the whole thing. (I) cut if off and feed it to my goldfish. Understand? Understand!?"); for the remainder of the film, Gittes' sported a bandaged nose

• the next day in his office, Jake insisted: "I want the big boys that are making the payoffs" (to support the reservoir construction); the "Mrs. Mulwray" imposter (Mrs. Ida Sessions) who had been hired to impersonate Evelyn phoned Jake - she was worried that she might be implicated in Mulwray's death, but wouldn't identify who paid her; she claimed: "I want somebody to know that I didn't know what would happen"; meanwhile, Jake read in the newspaper that the water bond passed the City Council to fund the reservoir; Jake met up with Mrs. Mulwray in a cocktail lounge, and basically insinuated that he still didn't trust her because she was "hiding something"
• during further sleuthing from Yelburton's annoyed secretary (Fritzi Burr), Jake learned that Mulwray was once the business partner of his wife Evelyn's wealthy father, Noah Cross (John Huston) in the mid-1920; Cross owned "the water department...the entire water supply for the city"; he was also able to get Yelburton (the newly-appointed Chief of the Water Dept.) to admit - with another semi-falsehood - that secret diversions of irrigation water were indeed being made to some orange groves in the San Fernando Valley (outside the city's limits) to help the farmers - evidence of the manipulation of the LA water supply
• back in his office, Gittes was formally hired by Mrs. Mulwray to find her husband's murderer; Jake made her nervous when he mentioned that he knew her father was Noah Cross - Hollis' former business partner and father-in-law who together owned the entire city's water supply back in 1925; she described how the two had a "falling out" over the ownership of the water (but couldn't admit that the conflict was partially over her) and over the construction of a previous dam that had catastrophically collapsed; Jake thought it strange that Evelyn married Noah's ex-partner after they had a falling out over business
• Jake had his first meeting with corrupt and perverse tycoon Noah Cross during a lunch conversation at the Albacore Club; Cross carelessly and repeatedly mispronounced his name and scolded the detective: ("You may think you know what you're dealing with, but believe me, you don't... 'Course I'm respectable. I'm old. Politicians, ugly buildings, and whores all get respectable if they last long enough"); then, Cross offered to hire Gittes to find the mysterious "Hollis' girlfriend" for double Evelyn's fee plus 10,000ドル dollars, and wasn't clear about his motives except to say: "Just find the girl"
• at the Hall of Records for the County of Los Angeles, Jake realized from the plat books that numerous land sales were in escrow with new owners buying up the land in the drought-stricken Northwest Valley in just the last few months; using a borrowed ruler, he tore off one of the pages showing the recent land sales
• during a visit to the valley to check out the orange groves, Jake was attacked by men on horseback; one farmer reported that the Water Dept. was blowing up water tanks and poisoning wells; Gittes was rescued by Mrs. Mulwray (his employer's name and contact was found in his pocket) who arrived and drove off with him

• Gittes explained how corrupt water officials had selectively been diverting irrigation water to cause a drought in some parts of the valley to force farmers out of the arid areas, so that land-grab speculators like Cross (who had opposed Mulwray), pending the reservoir's construction, could monopolize the purchase of the parched land at cut-rate prices, and then the new land owners would profit by irrigation of the valley with water that should have been directed to Los Angeles; Mulwray knew about the scheme and was murdered as a result (Gittes: "That dam's a con-job...The one your husband opposed. They're conning LA into building it, but the water's not gonna go to LA. It's comin' right here...They're blowin' these farmers out of their land and then pickin' it up for peanuts. You have any idea what this land would be worth with a steady water supply? About thirty million more than they paid for it")

• on a hunch that a fraudulent land swindle was in progress with phony names turning up on deeds of sale (the names of retirement home residents), Jake and Mrs. Mulwray bluffed their way into the Mar Vista Rest Home where they discovered that some of the elderly folks, such as Emma Dill (Cecil Elliott), were unaware that they were new valley land-owners; the suspicious, unethical rest-home director Mr. Palmer (John Rogers) summoned Mulvihill to the home to apprehend them; Jake and Mrs. Mulwray made a getaway in her car as bullets were fired at them (a foreshadowing of the film's concluding scene)
• in the next scene within Evelyn's mansion, Gittes noticed that all the servants had purposely been given "the night off" by Mrs. Mulwray; Gittes changed the subject about why he had left the police force in Chinatown in his past by asking for some peroxide for his bruised nose; he removed his bandage in the bathroom, causing Mrs. Mulwray to exclaim at the ugly, naked wound: "God! It's a nasty cut. I had no idea"; while she dabbed on the peroxide, he noticed that she had a black speck in the green part of her eye ("Your eye...There's something black in the green part of your eye"). She confessed that there was an imperfection in her vision: "Oh, that. It's uh, it's a fl-flaw in the iris...Yes, uh, it's a sort of birthmark"

• after visually exposing both of their flaws or deficiencies, their faces were so intimately close to each other that they kissed; a post-coital scene showed them naked in bed and leisurely smoking cigarettes
• after an urgent phone call, Mrs. Mulwray hastily left without telling Jake where she was going, and covered herself nervously when he mentioned he had already met her father at the Albacore Club over lunch; before departing, she told Jake that her father was "dangerous" and "crazy" and might be responsible and "behind all this"
• Jake disoediently followed Evelyn and spied upon her visit at a house where she spoke to her Chinese butler, who was watching over her late husband's visibly upset young blonde 'mistress' lying down on a bed and being administered with a sedative; when Evelyn returned to her car, Jake asked questions - she told him that her "husband's girlfriend" was not being held against her will, but was actually her sister who was upset at having learned of Hollis Mulwray's death; Evelyn also affirmed that she would never have harmed Hollis
• the next day, Jake drove to Ida Sessions' house and found her dead body sprawled on the kitchen floor; Jake's ex-colleagues Lt. Escobar and Loach confronted him - in a frame-up; Escobar relayed one crucial bit of information - that the coroner's report found salt water in Mulwray's lungs; that meant that he had not drowned in the location where his body was found, but had been moved there from the salt-water ocean where the water was being dumped; Escobar suspected Evelyn of the murder of her husband; Gittes was given two hours to present himself and his "client"-suspect Evelyn at Escobar's office
• Jake entered the Mulwray mansion, and saw signs that it was being packed up; he had a sudden revelation that the water in the fish pond was salt-water: ("Salt water - very bad for glass"), and that the shiny object in the pond was a pair of cracked spectacles [Hollis' glasses?]; Was Hollis drowned by a very jealous Evelyn in their domestic salt-water fishpond (with the young girl as a witness), and then his body was dragged to the reservoir?

• Jake hurriedly drove over to the house where the blonde girl was being held, and discovered the group (the Asian butler, Evelyn, and the girl) was packing to catch a 5:30 pm train to retreat to Mexico; Mrs. Mulwray finally revealed the identity of the alleged "mistress" of her husband - suspected philandering water commissioner Hollis Mulwray, as she was being repeatedly being slapped by Gittes; the scandalous truth was that the young and enigmatic Katherine that she was hiding was related to her: "She's my daughter... She's my sister. She's my daughter. My sister, my daughter ...She's my sister and my daughter!...My father and I - understand? Or is it too tough for you?"
• the secretive Evelyn had now confessed that she had been incestuously impregnated as a teenager by her ruthless tycoon father Noah Cross and had conceived a teenaged daughter Katherine from that union; the struggle over the girl directly led Cross to murder Hollis Mulwray; Hollis and Evelyn were only trying to protect the innocent girl from her incestuous father; she also identified the broken bifocal spectacles as belonging to the killer - her father; their revised plan was to take the girl to her Chinese butler's home in Chinatown (with arrangements to eventually smuggle them to Ensenada)
• Jake met for another conversation with Noah Cross at the Mulwray mansion - the scene of the crime where he accused Cross of Mulwray's murder - with the glasses as evidence - due to Mulwray's opposition to his land and water-grab (to annex the Northwest Valley into the City of Los Angeles and then irrigate and develop it); the tycoon explained his business aspirations and motivations to get rich through land development - while denying his obvious greed and ruthlessness: ("The future, Mr. Gits - the future!...I don't blame myself. You see, Mr. Gittes, most people never have to face the fact - (at) the right time and the right place, they're capable of anything!"); at gunpoint, Mulvilill led Jake away (with Cross following) to lead them to Chinatown to the girl
• in the film's tragic ending set in neon-lighted Chinatown, to escape from Cross, detective Gittes held out his hand to be cuffed by Escobar's partner Loach, but his accusations against Cross were ignored; Jake protested that Noah Cross (Evelyn's incestuous father) was "...the bird you're after...He's crazy, Lou. He killed Mulwray because of the water thing...Lou, you don't know what's going on here, I'm tellin' ya"
• during the confrontation between Cross, Gittes, and Evelyn, she tried to escape and get away in a convertible with blonde daughter Katherine, but Cross finally caught up with her; he stumbled when guiltlessly identifying himself to Katherine as her grandfather; Evelyn pushed her evil father away and attempted to get her depraved father away from the girl; Cross pleaded with her to release the young girl - his offspring: "Evelyn, pleeease, pleeease be reasonable...How many years have I got? She's mine too?" Evelyn retorted: "She's never going to know that"; with that, Evelyn pulled out a small pistol and threatened her father; Cross tried to reason with Evelyn and accused her of being neurotic and paranoid: "Evelyn, you're a disturbed woman. You cannot hope to provide...You'll have to kill me first." And with that, she wounded her father in the arm in full view of everyone, and then attempted to escape by car with Katherine
• in the gripping final scene, police Lt. Escobar fired his pistol twice into the air as a warning, and then once at the car's tires; Loach, still handcuffed to Gittes, took three more shots at the escaping car as it receded out of view - and one of his shots was fatal; suddenly the car slowed to a stop in the far distance, with the blaring horn of the car signaling a death; there were Katherine's screams, as the awful, horrible scene was revealed; slumped over the wheel of her car was Evelyn, shot through the head from behind; Gittes was the first to get to the car - he opened the driver's door and she flopped over toward him; her face was horribly blown apart through her flawed left eye - she had literally been destroyed by her father
• Escobar had the cuffs removed from Gittes' arms when he ordered: "Turn them all loose"; Cross, lamenting "Lord, Oh Lord," clumsily shielded and covered the eyes of an hysterical Katherine - telling her "Don't look, don't look" - to prevent her from comprehending the enormous tragedy; the domineering, capitalistic water tycoon and controlling father/grandfather comforted her and ended up taking her away

• Jake's meddling into the mystery, and his emotional involvement in this case led to a chaotic finale, where he was left to repeat past history in the dark streets of Chinatown; the tragic ending included the haunting closing line by his operative Walsh told to Jake: "Forget it, Jake, it's Chinatown"