June 20, 1974—While Lou Escobar might have advised heartbroken private eye J.J. Gittes, “Forget it, Jake—it’s Chinatown,” fans like myself can do nothing of the kind when it comes to Roman Polanski’s brooding meditation on corruption and loss.
Ostensibly a tribute to the gloomy, black-and-white mystery genre of the Forties and Fifties known as film noir, Chinatown was recognized, immediately upon its release on this date, as a distant mirror of the growing disillusion with American institutions.
Ostensibly a tribute to the gloomy, black-and-white mystery genre of the Forties and Fifties known as film noir, Chinatown was recognized, immediately upon its release on this date, as a distant mirror of the growing disillusion with American institutions.
It was hard to miss, in the final weeks of the Watergate scandal taking down an American President, that Gittes had discovered a link to a murder involving the water supply of the city of Los Angeles.
(The real L.A. water supply scandal—the city’s original sin against nature, if you will—had occurred not during the 1930s decade lovingly recreated in the film but early in the 1900s, and it involved William Mulholland—but that’s a post for another day.)
Like the Francis Ford Coppolo epic that beat it out for most of the major Oscars the following year, The Godfather II, the primal source of wealth, corruption and violence was the family.
Like the Francis Ford Coppolo epic that beat it out for most of the major Oscars the following year, The Godfather II, the primal source of wealth, corruption and violence was the family.
That eternal wellspring of conflict, as ancient as the Old Testament and Greek tragedy, might account for why, though the original personalities and issues underlying both films have faded, these meditations on crime American-style have endured for two generations of subsequent movie fans, continually to be rediscovered and marveled at.
Now, we can see the sterling work of all hands involved with Chinatown. (For one of many examples, notice how the subtle set design by Richard Sylbert underscores the theme of the difficulty in extracting the truth. Gittes is always walking up countless steps and through endless doors, and mirrors abound—all cues that, as John Huston’s Noah Cross character warns him pointedly, he doesn’t know what he’s getting into.) But the product almost didn’t gel.
Jack Nicholson and Polanski butted heads sometimes over conception of character, but the real fracas occurred between the director and Faye Dunaway.
Now, we can see the sterling work of all hands involved with Chinatown. (For one of many examples, notice how the subtle set design by Richard Sylbert underscores the theme of the difficulty in extracting the truth. Gittes is always walking up countless steps and through endless doors, and mirrors abound—all cues that, as John Huston’s Noah Cross character warns him pointedly, he doesn’t know what he’s getting into.) But the product almost didn’t gel.
Jack Nicholson and Polanski butted heads sometimes over conception of character, but the real fracas occurred between the director and Faye Dunaway.
Polanski, accustomed to a Hitchcockian style of total control over his product, didn’t appreciate the actress’ input, and eventually saw her as “insane.” He didn’t help matters, though, by yanking a stray hair from her scalp because it caught the light and ruined a prize shot.
Dunaway can still go ballistic when asked to respond to the rumor that she retaliated for being denied a bathroom break by throwing a cup of urine in Polanski’s face.
Also contributing to the atmosphere of intrigue and tension (perhaps helpful, after all, to a thriller) was producer Robert Evans. Dunaway was able to land the role to begin with only because Evans’ first choice, his then-wife, Ali MacGraw, left him for Steve McQueen.
Also contributing to the atmosphere of intrigue and tension (perhaps helpful, after all, to a thriller) was producer Robert Evans. Dunaway was able to land the role to begin with only because Evans’ first choice, his then-wife, Ali MacGraw, left him for Steve McQueen.
Just before the film was to premiere, Evans stirred the pot again, jettisoning the original score by composer Phillip Lambro and giving replacement Jerry Goldsmith only 10 days to come up with a better one. (Fortunately, Goldsmith delivered.)
More consequentially, Polanski felt that Robert Towne’s brilliant, twisty screenplay failed in one respect: its happy ending. As a childhood survivor of the Holocaust and a widower (wife Sharon Tate was murdered by followers of Charles Manson), Polanski believed that, even when it receded, evil left an indelible stain.
And so, Gittes—a cynical marital investigator more blessed with doggedness than with smarts—at last solves the mystery—and is unable to bring to justice the powerful criminal at the heart of it.
More consequentially, Polanski felt that Robert Towne’s brilliant, twisty screenplay failed in one respect: its happy ending. As a childhood survivor of the Holocaust and a widower (wife Sharon Tate was murdered by followers of Charles Manson), Polanski believed that, even when it receded, evil left an indelible stain.
And so, Gittes—a cynical marital investigator more blessed with doggedness than with smarts—at last solves the mystery—and is unable to bring to justice the powerful criminal at the heart of it.
Worse, as he walks disconsolately away from the final killing, he knows that the evil will contaminate yet another generation--and that he inadvertently perpetuated it.
As blogger Tony Macklin notes in an extremely perceptive post, dualities abound throughout the film, including “light and darkness, vision and blindness, wholeness and imperfection, innocence and corruption.”
The most significant parallel, however, concerns rape. Rape of the land is analogized to rape of a daughter. The man responsible for both is sinister businessman Noah Cross.
The casting of John Huston in that role is completely apropos. His presence is not only a tip of the cap to Polanski’s seminal influence in making the film, the Huston-directed The Maltese Falcon, but also a reminder of the ark-building Biblical character he played in a film Huston himself directed, The Bible.
Unlike the Biblical patriarch, though, Noah Cross is not escaping water but cornering the market for it. When angrily prodded by Gittes, “What can you buy that you can’t already afford?”, Cross replies, “The future…the future.”
Everyone has his own favorite scene in the film. Mine is the love sequence between Nicholson and Dunaway’s Evelyn Mulwray. Suddenly their characters, unable to maintain their former veneers any longer, are seen by the other up close and vulnerable.
As Dunaway dresses the painful wound to Nicholson’s nose (cut off in a famous scene featuring the director himself as the principal thug), she discovers that he’s less a sleazy, wiseguy divorce detective than a world-weary idealist.
As blogger Tony Macklin notes in an extremely perceptive post, dualities abound throughout the film, including “light and darkness, vision and blindness, wholeness and imperfection, innocence and corruption.”
The most significant parallel, however, concerns rape. Rape of the land is analogized to rape of a daughter. The man responsible for both is sinister businessman Noah Cross.
The casting of John Huston in that role is completely apropos. His presence is not only a tip of the cap to Polanski’s seminal influence in making the film, the Huston-directed The Maltese Falcon, but also a reminder of the ark-building Biblical character he played in a film Huston himself directed, The Bible.
Unlike the Biblical patriarch, though, Noah Cross is not escaping water but cornering the market for it. When angrily prodded by Gittes, “What can you buy that you can’t already afford?”, Cross replies, “The future…the future.”
Everyone has his own favorite scene in the film. Mine is the love sequence between Nicholson and Dunaway’s Evelyn Mulwray. Suddenly their characters, unable to maintain their former veneers any longer, are seen by the other up close and vulnerable.
As Dunaway dresses the painful wound to Nicholson’s nose (cut off in a famous scene featuring the director himself as the principal thug), she discovers that he’s less a sleazy, wiseguy divorce detective than a world-weary idealist.
He, in turn, upsets her precarious balance -- and begins slowly to discover that she's not really a scheming femme fatale but a damaged victim--by observing “something black in the green part of your eye.”
What Dunaway haltingly calls her “flaw in the iris” initiates moments of tenderness completely isolated from everything else in this bitter film.
What Dunaway haltingly calls her “flaw in the iris” initiates moments of tenderness completely isolated from everything else in this bitter film.
But even as it makes us care for the characters, the scene also hastens the tragic ending. What makes us touchingly human also renders us weak enough to become ensnared by the vast net of money and power.
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