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'''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. The movie won several high-profile awards, including an Academy Award in 1975 for Best Original Screenplay for Robert Towne.
''Chinatown'' stars Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, and John Huston and also features a cameo appearance by its director, Roman Polanski. 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 has been selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry. 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

Plot

Background and analysis

Awards

Academy Awards - 1975

Golden Globes - 1975

Other Awards

Bibliography

External links

Plot

In 1937 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' wife. Mr. Mulwray spends most of his time investigating dry river beds. 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 in a kiss, 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 himself), 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.
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. 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 blonde girl, Katherine, is both her sister ''and'' her daughter; Gittes asks Evelyn if her father raped her and she shakes her head no but it is insinuated through her body language and frequently expressed fear of her father that she is not being wholly truthful. 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.
When Cross approaches the girl, demanding custody of her, Evelyn pushes him back, shoots him in the arm and starts her car. The police arrest Gittes, and as Evelyn drives away, they open fire and Evelyn is shot and killed. Cross clutches Evelyn's shrieking daughter as a devastated Gittes is comforted by his associates, one of them saying, "Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown."
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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.

Background and analysis

''Chinatown'' was the first part of a planned trilogy written by Robert Towne about J.J. Gittes and L.A. The second part, ''The Two Jakes'', about the natural gas business in Los Angeles in the 1940s, was directed by Nicholson and released in 1990. However, this film's commercial and critical failure scuttled plans to make ''Cloverleaf'', a film about the development of the area's freeway system (this plot actually became the basis of the live action/animation film ''Who Framed Roger Rabbit'' also set in the 1940s).
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. 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.
Robert Towne intended the screenplay to have a happy ending. He and Polanski argued over it, with Polanski insisting on a tragic end. 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 — and which Mulwray opposes for reasons of engineering and safety — is a direct reference to the St. Francis Dam, which catastrophically failed in 1928, killing more than 600 people and ending Mulholland's career.
This was the last movie Roman Polanski filmed in the U.S. Polanski was outraged when producer Robert Evans ordered the film lab to give ''Chinatown'' a reddish look. Polanski demanded that the film be corrected. Polanski has a cameo role, portraying the hood who slits Jake's nose.
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.

Awards

Academy Awards - 1975

'Wins:'

★ Best Original Screenplay - Robert Towne
'Nominations:'

★ Best Picture - Robert Evans

★ Best Director - Roman Polanski

★ Best Actor - Jack Nicholson

★ Best Actress - Faye Dunaway

★ Best Film Editing - Sam O'Steen

★ Best Art Direction - Richard Sylbert, W. Stewart Campbell, Ruby Levitt

★ Best Costume Design - Anthea Sylbert

★ Best Cinematography - John A. Alonzo

★ Best Sound Mixing - Bud Grenzbach, Larry Jost

★ Best Music Score - Jerry Goldsmith

Golden Globes - 1975

'Wins:'

★ Best Motion Picture - Drama - Robert Evans

★ Actor in a Motion Picture - Drama - Jack Nicholson

★ Best Director - Roman Polanski

★ Best Screenplay - Robert Towne
'Nominations'

★ Actor In A Supporting Role - John Huston

★ Best Actress - Motion Picture Drama - Faye Dunaway

★ Best Original Score - Jerry Goldsmith

Other Awards

★ 1975 BAFTA, Best Actor (Nicholson), Best Direction, Best Screenplay (male)

★ 1975 Edgar Award, Best Motion Picture Screenplay - Robert Towne

★ 1991 National Film Preservation Board

Bibliography

★ Easton, Michael (1998) ''Chinatown'' (''B.F.I. Film Classics'' series). Los Angeles: University of California Press. ISBN 0-85170-532-4.

★ Towne, Robert (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.

External links

★

★ Tim Dirks' analysis of ''Chinatown'', one of "The Greatest Films"

★ Roger Ebert's complete review of ''Chinatown''

★ - conversation with sceenwriter Robert Towne

★ Chinatown pictures