Actors - Chinatown

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Chinatown is a 1974 film directed by Roman Polański featuring many elements of the film noir genre, particularly a multi-layered story that is part mystery and part psychological drama. The movie is highly regarded and won several high-profile awards, including an Academy Award in 1975 for Best Writing and Original Screenplay for Robert Towne.

Chinatown stars Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, and John Huston and also features a brief cameo appearance by its director, Roman Polański.

Chinatown is consistently listed in the top 50 on the Internet Movie Database's top 250 films and has been selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.

A sequel, called The Two Jakes
, was released in 1990. Jack Nicholson directed and starred in it. The screenplay was also written by Robert Towne. The film was neither a box office nor a critical success, and plans for a third movie about the character of J.J. Gittes near the end of his life (the first film dealt with a young Jake, the second with a middle-aged Jake) have at this time been abandoned.

Plot

A Los Angeles Private Investigator named Jake 'J.J' Gittes (Jack Nicholson) is hired by a woman claiming to be Mrs. Evelyn Mulwray to spy on her husband. When Gittes's photographs of Mr. Mulwray, revealing an apparent affair, are published in the papers, another Mrs. Mulwray, the real one, appears and threatens to sue if Gittes doesn't drop the case immediately. Gittes pursues the case nevertheless, slowly uncovering a vast conspiracy around water management, state and municipal corruption, land use and real estate, and involving at least one murder, further complicated by the tangled emotional relationships between the primary characters in the film.

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.

Possible Interpretations

Chinatown is a thematically rich film that holds up remarkably well on repeated viewings. The movie, released in the heyday of the New Hollywood era, was at the time considered a homage to the Film Noir genre, especially since its cast included John Huston, who directed several great noir films, particularly The Maltese Falcon. However, some film historians consider Chinatown a genuine film noir in its own right despite the fact the film is in color and was released well outside of the classical film noir era.

Roger Ebert in particular shares this view; in his Great Movie review he states, "Chinatown was seen as a neo-noir when it was released -- an update on an old genre. Now years have passed and film history blurs a little, and it seems to settle easily beside the original noirs. That is a compliment."

The film follows many famous and archetypal conventions of the noir movies, such as:-

Cynical "Private Eye" with a past.

Femme Fatale.

McGuffin. (The fake Mrs. Mulwray)

Convoluted, complex plot.

Cynical and pesssimistic worldview.

However, the film also provides many departures from the noir conventions. Unlike the typical hard-boiled detective, Jake Gittes is incapable of seeing the broader aspects of the case and ends up reaching the wrong conclusions by focusing on individual clues. The core of the case, which involves incest and LA's water and power system, is another departure from the usual noir cases of fabulous treasure or a crime of passion. Also, for a "noir," few scenes are shot at night, and none in deep shadow. Finally, the tragic ending to the film, though reminiscent of The Maltese Falcon in the separation of the detective and the femme fatale, provides a dramatic departure from classic film noir in the triumph of the forces of evil, Noah Cross, over the forces of good, Evelyn (and to some extent, Gittes). Despite having solved the case, no one will listen to Gittes' explanation, and the film's final line, "Forget it, Jake, it's Chinatown" implies that Cross will never be brought to justice.

Besides the homage to the noir movies, Chinatown can be seen, and often is, as a tragedy in the Greek sense. Certain portions of the film are allegorical, reminiscent of the works of Sophocles, especially Oedipus Rex, in that well meaning characters fight against a cruel fate but are unable to change it and their struggle against fate leads to their own doom or to the doom of those in their care.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Chinatown (film) ]

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