Chinatown (1974)

"Can you believe it? We're in the middle of a drought, and the water commissioner drowns. Only in L.A."

Jake Gittes, a successful small-time private eye, is hired by a lady claiming to be the wife of Hollis Mulwray, the man who oversees construction of new dams, canals and pipes for the city of Los Angeles. She believes her husband is having an affair and wants pictures proving it. It's the 1930's; the Great Depression is still in full swing and the City is being terrorized by drought. Hollis is not a popular man and is being attacked in newspapers for his opposition to a dam that would, in theory, solve some of the water problems the city is facing. Jake accepts the case and snaps several pictures of Mulwray spending time with a beautiful young girl. He's not really surprised when these pictures appear in the newspapers, but even his years of experience does not prepare him for the real Evelyn Mulwray who breezes into his office with her lawyer to sue him. Angry that he was "made a patsy of" he seeks out Hollis Mulwray only to find that he's dead, possibly murdered, and his wife seems to be acting very suspiciously. But so is her father, who was at one point Hollis' business partner and whom never seemed too keen on their marriage.

Film Noir is a movie genre celebrated for its cynical, despairing, bleak attitudes and for those qualities alone Roman Polanski's Chinatown will forever be ensured a warm place in the heart of many movie fans. Yet it is also one of the few noir movies that is, in a certain sense, deeply critical of the cynical attitudes of its characters. Other stories in the genre (and outside of it, actually) consider cynicism to be an asset that the character wields like a club, but in the hands of Towne and Polanski it limits them; at a important juncture in the plot Gittes (Jack Nicholson) makes a cynical assumption, based no doubt on years of tiresome experience, and triggers a tragedy. The person affected is one of the few people in the story who had entirely pure motives, other than Hollis Mulwray, who is killed in the first half-hour of the movie. Made only a few years after Polanski's wife, Sharon Tate, was senselessly murdered by the Manson family, it is for the most part only good people who die in the movie. Those who seem evil to us, or who walk the borderland between the two, survive to be haunted by the their sins and desires.

One of the many good things Chinatown has is a pitch-perfect screenplay that evokes the language and motions of classic film noir without making it seem like a pastiche, something also helped by the cinematography, which is not set-bound. No doubt each shot had to be chosen to hide the modern edges of the city that was rising out in the deserts of California; Polanski gives us a picture of what Los Angeles looked and felt like before it became a city dominated by skyscrapers and celebrities. This still was the Los Angeles that Raymond Chandler sardonically evoked in his Philip Marlowe novels.

Nicholson plays Gittes as a man outside of the everything, even when he's in the middle of it. He keeps the world at arm's length, never quite wanting to get involved in any cause, ready never to be taken in by anything; he's tarnished and maybe a little bit mean. He begins to see the shape that the conspiracy central to the story takes and what's at stake, but his cynicism makes him foolish. Naturally he finds himself slowly falling for Evelyn, whom he has little reason to trust. She hires him to officially look for her husband's killer, but he later feels that the police might suspect he's blackmailing her with something and needs to tread carefully with her and with her money. Faye Dunaway plays Evelyn Mulwray perfectly; there is no other actress from that time that I can imagine in the role. Although Nicholson is the lead she is, without a doubt, the actual star of the movie. Nicholson can carry a movie better than most actors but it's ultimately Dunaway who turns the movie from a routine crime story to something powerful with her enigmatic performance.

The same can be said of another key character named Noah Cross, played deliciously by director-turned-actor John Huston, a grizzled old millionaire who made his money selling water to Los Angeles. His dialogue uncovers a degree of self-loathing when he says: "'Course I'm respectable. I'm old. Politicians, ugly buildings, and whores all get respectable if they last long enough." Although he acts like he's concerned about his daughter it is clear that there is a large gulf between him and Evelyn which he downplays in front of Gittes. Huston, off course, was one of the founders of the film noir genre and his directorial debut, The Maltese Falcon, is considered an indisputable classic. Huston plays Cross as a darker variation of himself; a good-humoured, outspoken but guarded man. Like Evelyn he's got secrets of his own.

The third important character in this movie is one very few people would consider that interesting, but who is essential to the story. This character is Lieutenant Escobar, who is investigating the Mulwray murder case for the LAPD and who is portrayed by little-known actor Perry Lopez. Escobar is a parallel of the Nicholson character. Both served in Chinatown as policeman, both essentially view the proceedings through the prism of weary cynicism. Escobar, however, is still part of the system, and maybe because of it he's not trying to over complicate the case more than necessary. He's got a job to do and he's not afraid of the rich and powerful.

Chinatown is the kind of high budget movie that does not get made today, usually because even in art-house cinemas a classic noir is not as popular as it used to be. It is deliberately paced with a complex plot unfolding slowly; if the movie moved any faster it would have been incomprehensible. It also has the layered complexity of a novel despite being written directly for the big screen. Author Robert Towne turned down a lucrative writing job to write this movie, which was produced by Robert Evans who also had his hand in several other prominent Paramount movies at the time, namely The Great Gatsby and The Godfather. Towne had a different ending in mind, and had a big fall-out at the time with Polanski, who wanted a bleaker ending. Towne would later admit that Polanski's ending was a better ending than the original. The movie did surprisingly well on its release, generating a large profit and catching a few Oscars. Its success lead to the inevitable sequel; Towne wrote The Two Jakes, which is essentially solid but dragged too much at places (but I blame Jack Nicholson for that; he's a better actor than a director). It was meant to be part of a trilogy, but due to the luke-warm response of the sequel I doubt the third movie would ever get made.

Still, on its own, Chinatown, stands as one of the great masterpieces of American cinema. It's slowly uncoiling plot does not bare its fangs until the last twenty minutes, and only then will you understand why this was one of the most startling tragedies of its time as well.

Rating: 9.5/10