Chinatown (1974)

Starring: Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, John Huston, Burt Young, Diane Ladd, James Hong, and Roman Polanski
Grade: Classic

On top of having one of the best screenplays of all time, Chinatown also had one of the best movie posters in the history of cinema. Look at that beauty!

Summary

In 1937 Los Angeles, California, private investigator J.J. “Jake” Gittes (Nicholson) shows his client Curly (Young) pictures that proves Curly’s wife was cheating on him. Curly was right about his assumptions but doesn’t handle the news too well. Once Jakes pours him a drink to calm him down, Curly says he’ll pay him the rest of the money next week. After Jake sees him out, his secretary Sophie (Nandu Hinds) lets him know that the mysterious “Evelyn Mulwray” is waiting in another room with his two operatives Walsh (Joe Mantell) and Duffy (Bruce Glover). Soon after Jake greets her, she says she believes her husband is seeing another woman. After answering affirmatively to his question of if she loves her husband, Jake tells her to forget about the whole thing because she’s better off not knowing. However, she insists, so he proceeds. She reveals that her husband is Hollis Mulwray (Darrell Zwerling), Chief Engineer for the Department of Water and Power for the city of Los Angeles. Once she says that the amount of money it will cost doesn’t matter to her, Jake takes the case. Later, he goes to a city hall meeting where Mayor Bagby (Roberts) proposes a plan for the Alto Vallejo Dam and Reservoir to save their desert situation and how $8.5 million is a fair price to pay to keep the desert “from our streets and not on top of them”. Next, they want to hear from the departments, so Hollis Mulwray goes first for Water and Power. Hollis brings up the 500 lives lost previously when the Van der Lip Dam gave way and talks about how core samples have shown that beneath the bedrock is shale similar to the permeable shale in the Van der Lip disaster. It couldn’t withstand this kind of pressure, so he refuses to build it.

Following this, a sheep farmer lets his sheep into city hall in protest, saying he doesn’t know where to take them because they have stolen water from the Valley, ruined the grazing, and starved the livestock. He yells at Hollis as he’s taken away.

Sometime after, Jake spots Hollis from afar as Hollis observes some dry land by a bridge. After a kid on a horse speaks with him, Hollis brings out some plans of some sort and takes a look at them on the hood of his car. Later, Jake follows him to a shore somewhere, watching Hollis from a cliff into the night. Around sunset, Jake is surprised to see a load of water drained out of some pipe next to him. Following this, he plants a pocket watch under the tire of Hollis’s car. This way, when Hollis drives away and unknowingly smashes the pocket watch, they’ll get the exact time he left. The next day in his office, Jake observes the pocket watch, and it turns out Hollis was there basically the whole night. Walsh agrees, saying he had to go back three times to pick up the watches. Among other things, Walsh says Hollis went to three reservoirs. In addition, he gives Jake pictures he took of an argument Hollis had with another man. The only word he could make out from the heated exchange was “apple core” (which we later find out was actually “Albacore”), though Jake isn’t impressed. Just then, Duffy calls in to say he’s spotted Hollis with a woman in a rowboat at Echo Park. Right after, Jake hangs in the rowboat with Duffy and acts as if he’s taking his picture, but he’s actually taking a picture of Hollis with the girl as they row past them. Later, Jake sits on a rooftop of the El Macondo apartment complex to take more pictures of Hollis with the girl, though he almost blows his cover after he nearly slipping off the roof. Always loving the publicity, Jake goes straight to the newspapers with the pictures and it’s everywhere.

Jake gets a shave while reading the headline he’s responsible for. The customer next to him who works for the mortgage department at the First National Bank makes a snide comment about the “honest living” Jake lives, so Jake takes offense to it and gets in his face. Jake’s argument is that he helps people in desperate situations while this guy tries to kick families out of their homes. Who’s really making the honest living here?

Point goes to Jake.

Anyway, the barber calms Jake down after telling him some dogshit joke. Jake goes straight back to the office to tell Duffy and Walsh the joke, telling Sophie to leave the room because it’s offensive. They try to get him to stop because he has a client, but Jake won’t let them get a word in until he’s finished. Once he realizes she is standing behind him following the punchline, he gets embarrassed. This woman is in fact the real Evelyn Mulwray (Dunaway). The other woman who hired him was an imposter. Since the real Evelyn never met Jake before and she’s never hired him to do anything, she’s pretty angry with him about his coverage of her husband Hollis. Because of this, she’s suing him. Following this, Jake goes to the office of Hollis to see him. His secretary says he’s not back from lunch yet, so Jake goes into his office to wait. In reality, he goes in there to snoop around. After a while, he finds a book Hollis has written in saying that on Tuesday night at the Oak Pass Reservoir, “seven channels were used”. He’s interrupted by Deputy Chief of the Water and Power Department Russ Yelburton (John Hillerman), who asks if he needs help. Though Jake insists it’s not a departmental matter, he agrees to wait in Yelburton’s office instead. They discuss Hollis’s recent publicity, but it doesn’t go anywhere. Since Yelburton doesn’t know where Hollis is having lunch, Jake goes to leave and says he’ll be back some other time. On the way out, he grabs a few of Yelburton’s business cards.

At the elevator, Jake runs into acquaintance Claude Mulvihill (Roy Jenson). He’s there because they shut his water off, so Jake makes fun of him. As Mulvihill gets in his face and Jake calms him down, Yelburton tells him that Mulvihill is working for them. Apparently, people have been threatening to blow up the city’s reservoirs because of the drought. They’ve had to ration water in the Valley and the farmers are desperate. As he gets onto the elevator, Jake makes fun of Mulvihill’s job performance when he was Sheriff of Ventura County. Next, Jake goes to the house of Hollis Mulwray and is let in by butler Kahn (Hong). He’s told to wait, but he wonders into the backyard to see the landscaper take something out of the pond because it’s “bad for the glass”. Jake sees an object in the pond that he considers fishing out, but Evelyn shows up. She sits down with Jake and says Hollis is at the office. Jake, who came there to talk to Hollis, explains that Hollis actually isn’t at the office and he’s not at the El Macondo either, though Evelyn insists that this isn’t his apartment. Jake tells her that whoever set Hollis up, set him up as well. Oddly enough, Evelyn says she’ll drop the lawsuit. Jake tells her not to and that he wants to talk to Hollis because someone has gone to a lot of trouble to do all of this, and he wants to find out who’s behind it. Additionally, he says Hollis’s girlfriend has disappeared and he suggests they may have disappeared together. Evelyn wonders why it even matters to him, but Jake says it’s not personal. He boils it down to the basics. This phony woman that hired him said she was Evelyn. Whoever put her up to it doesn’t have anything against Jake, but they’re out to get Hollis. Jake just wants to help him. Evelyn tells him to try the Oak Pass or Stone Canyon Reservoir.

Jakes goes to Oak Pass, but there are cops in front of the gate who have closed it to the public. Without hesitation, Jake uses Yelburton’s business card and acts like he’s him to get in. Jake walks into a crime scene and Det. Loach (Richard Bakalyan) gets in his face right away and tells him to leave before Det. Lou Escobar (Perry Lopez) sees him. Lou calls out Jake right away, and they start walking and talking as Loach follows. Lou gives him shit, so Jake asks if he’s still in Chinatown, but he hasn’t been since he made lieutenant. Finally, Lou asks what Jake is doing there, so he tells him he wants to talk to Hollis. Unfortunately, Hollis has been found dead in the reservoir.

Back at the police department, Lou discusses everything with Evelyn, and she denies it could have been a suicide. He asks if she knows the name or location of the girl Hollis was cheating on her with, but she insists she doesn’t. Though she does concede she knew of the girl as it’s someone they fought over, she never knew who she was. Lou doesn’t buy it and points out how she hired Jake, who is also there. As we know, it was actually the woman who was masquerading as Evelyn, but the real Evelyn agrees with this statement after making eye contact with Jake. Evelyn says she “hired” him to put an end to a ridiculous rumor that had no basis. When Lou asks when Jake informed her of a possible girl being involved, Jake jumps in and says it was before the newspaper covered it. Unfortunately, he doesn’t know the name or location of the other girl either. Evelyn is allowed to leave, so Jake walks her to the car and helps her get through the reporters. Before Evelyn drives away, she thanks Jake for going along with her and tells him she’ll send a check to make it official that she hired him. Upon getting back into the department, Jake investigates the newly brought in dead body in the hallway. Coroner Morty greets him and says that the body is that of the Water Commissioner who drowned. Then, Morty shows him another body. It’s a local drunk who drowned in the L.A. River under the Hollenbeck Bridge.

The problem with this is that L.A. River area is almost completely dry.

Even so, Morty says they found water in him, so he drowned according to them. Later, Jake investigates the L.A. River area and runs into the kid on a horse who Jake spotted talking to Hollis when the case began. Jake asks what the kid talked about with Hollis, and it turns out they talked about the water and how it comes in different parts of the river every night. That night, Jake drives up to the reservoir at Oak Pass and jumps the fence to see it for himself. Immediately, he’s shot at. He runs into a ditch for cover but it’s where the water runs through. Soon after, the water shoots out and he’s dragged until he grabs onto the fence and climbs to safety. He tries to climb another part of the fence to get back over, but Mulvihill shows up with a henchman (Polanski). Mulvihill beats up Jake and holds him, so the henchman can use his switchblade to cut Jake’s nose. He threatens to cut the whole thing off next time if Jake is seen there again. The next day at the office, a bandaged-up Jake talks with Duffy and Walsh. Walsh doesn’t understand why it’s a big deal that some contractor wants to build a dam and make some payoffs. They can’t nail Mulvihill either because they’ll get Jake for trespassing. Jake doesn’t want Mulvihill though. He wants the “big boys that are making the payoffs”, so he can sue them. Next, Jake gets a call from Ida Sessions (Ladd). Since Jake doesn’t know the name, he tells Sophie to take a number. However, Ida insists he does know her, so he takes the call. She admits she was the one who pretended to be Evelyn. She never expected Hollis to be killed from what happened and feels awful. However, she won’t give up her employer or her address. All she tells Jake is to look in the obituary column of the L.A. Post-Record, and she’ll find “one of those people”.

At a restaurant, Jake reads the newspaper and tears out the obituary column. Right after, Evelyn shows up and sits down with him. Jake thanks her for the check, but he thinks she short-changed him on the story. In fairness, it’s pretty odd that she sued him and dropped the lawsuit immediately following her husband’s death. On top of that, she asked him to lie to the police. She says it wasn’t much of a lie but if Hollis was killed, it was. It could look like she paid him off to withhold evidence. Jakes thinks she’s hiding something. Finally, Evelyn admits she knew about the affair and Hollis told her. Surprisingly, she was grateful because she was cheating too. Evelyn can’t tell Jake where she was when Hollis died though because she was with someone else. After she goes on a mini-rant about how she never wanted publicity in her life like this, Jake asks one final question. He pulls out the envelope of the check she sent, and he asks what the “C” stands for. It’s “Cross”, her maiden name. Upon exiting the restaurant and before they get in their cars, Jake asks her to come with him, but she declines. A bit agitated, Jake lays down the law. He says Hollis was murdered, and someone has been dumping thousands of tons of water from the city’s reservoirs even though they’re supposed to be in the middle of a drought. Hollis found out about it and was killed. The local drunk “drowning” suggests a city-wide conspiracy, and he’s pissed off, especially because he almost lost his nose because of it. After saying once again that he thinks Evelyn is hiding something, he speeds off before she was about to talk.

Jake goes to the Department of Water and Power to see Yelburton, so the secretary goes into his office to get him. Waiting around, he notices a picture on the wall of Noah Cross (Huston). The secretary comes out to say Yelburton will be busy, but Jake decides to wait and annoy her instead. As he does, he notices more pictures with Cross and Hollis together. Jakes asks the secretary a bunch of questions and he learns that Cross and Hollis were partners, and they owned the water department (the entire water supply for the city). However, Hollis thought the public should own the water and wrestled it away from Cross. After so many questions, the secretary goes back into Yelburton’s office and comes out to bring Jake in. They talk about how tough things have been in the department since Hollis’s death and when questioned about it, Jake says he was never working for Evelyn. In fact, he accuses Yelburton of “hiring” him or hiring Ida Sessions to hire him. Going along with this, Jake explains that Hollis didn’t want to build the dam and he found out Yelburton and others were dumping water at night and “drowned” because of it. Yelburton denies the accusation, but Jake threatens taking the ideas to the newspapers. Doubling down, he talks about how dumping thousands of gallons of water down the toilet in the middle of a drought would make for good news. Yelburton insists that they’ve only been diverting a little water to irrigate orange groves in the Northwest Valley. Since the farmers out there have no legal right to their water, they’ve been trying to help them out to keep them from going under. When they divert water, sometimes there’s a little run-off. Though he’s not able to give Jake an exact location of the orange groves, Jake says he’s not after him. He wants the people that put him up to it.

Giving him a few days to think about it, Jake leaves his card.

Jake goes back to his office to find Evelyn waiting for him. She asks how much his services are. It’s $35 a day, plus $20 for his associates, plus expenses, plus a bonus if he shows results. She asks why someone would go to all this trouble to kill her husband, and Jake simply says it’s about money. How they plan on making it by emptying reservoirs, he doesn’t know. Evelyn offers to pay his salary and an additional $5,000 if he finds out what happened to Hollis and who was involved. Jake agrees and asks Sophie to draw up a standard contract for her. Immediately after, he asks if Evelyn and Hollis got married before or after her father Noah Cross sold the water department. Visibly uncomfortable and pulling out a cigarette, Evelyn admits Noah is her father and says she was just out of grade school when they sold the water department, and her and Hollis got married sometime after. Jake takes note of her uncomfortableness, especially after having to remind her that she already has a cigarette hanging on the ashtray. Then, he asks if his talking about Noah bothers her. It does, though it’s because Hollis and Noah had a falling out over the Water Department and how Hollis wanted it to belong to the people as opposed to Noah. Actually, it was over the Van der Lip Dam, the dam that broke. Hollis never forgave Noah for talking him into building it. As they make their contract official and sign it, Evelyn says Hollis and Noah haven’t spoken since then. However, Jake knows she’s lying because they have the pictures to prove it, as the heated exchanged Hollis had with the man that Walsh photographed earlier in the film was Noah Cross.

Jake will now try to untangle this web of lies running deep into Los Angeles, but the twists and turns have just begun with Evelyn, Noah, and everyone else involved in the chaos.

My Thoughts:

Let me tell you a little a story about one of the greatest films of all time. Time and time again, we’ve seen many films considered the “Best”, whether it be from within their genre or the era in which it came out. Not all of these films live up to the hype nor do they feel as special as they did when they first came out. However, Chinatown isn’t one of those movies. When it came out, it was recognized as one of the best and to this very day, it continues to be one of the very best. The only reason it didn’t win the Academy Award for Best Picture was because it faced stiff competition from another one of the greatest films of all time in The Godfather Part II.

Talk about unlucky.

With minimal research at best, you will find that many consider screenwriter Robert Towne’s Chinatown screenplay as one of the finest ever produced. This isn’t hyperbole either. It’s a fact. Not since Casablanca have we seen a film so immaculately crafted quite like this. Without a wasted character or line, and a deep understanding of every element of this multifaceted mystery, the location, the time period, and every person involved, the audience is taken on a whirlwind journey as they peel back the layers of Los Angeles to find out who these corrupted officials are and what their motivation for control is, no matter the cost. Basically, it boils down to the rich and powerful looking to become even more rich and powerful by any means. In a rather important moment, our hero Jake Gittes straight-up asks Noah Cross why. If one is already worth well into the millions, why push even further? How much more do you need? What can you get that you don’t already have? Regardless of how things turn out for his case or how dangerous his statements may be, Jake has to ask why, echoing the questions citizens have asked the ungodly wealthy since the beginning of time. Well, it’s “the future” Mr. Gittes. It’s this thought process of wanting to be ahead of the curve, seeing what’s next, and never being satisfied in your current net worth to the detriment of others. This is how those in power stay in power. Unfortunately, those who think like this and have the dollar consume their lives tend to be the ones who run things behind the scenes. Seeing this firsthand can shock a good-natured person to their very core, as we see in this iconic tale.

This cynical outlook on American life and society in general, the struggle between good and evil, the darkness surrounding the underbelly of politics during the time period it represents (which is still relevant in some respects today), and the tragic reality of what can happen if someone is strong enough to try and fight this is what makes Chinatown such a remarkable film. It’s a bleak but very real message that can be translated in any era and hits harder with each passing year because of the outstanding overall handling of the production from director Roman Polanski.

With such an assault on the upper class and the ultra-powerful, it makes the skeptical Jake Gittes an even more memorable movie hero. He represents the middle class in a lot of ways. Initially, Jake doesn’t care about certain details. He has a history of it. When asked about what he did as a cop previously in Chinatown, he simply states, “As little as possible”. He quickly finds out that the city is dumping the water, he knows Hollis Mulwray was murdered by corrupt officials, and he knows there’s a larger conspiracy at hand, but he tells Evelyn that it’s fine by him. It’s only after his initial curiosity into the case, following being duped by Ida Sessions, that he was roped in. He wanted to do right by Hollis because he is a good guy but once Jake himself was attacked, they woke up the wrong beast. Jake knows he’s involved in something much deeper, but the true hero comes out in him because he now has to see it to the end and expose the dangerous individuals who have clearly targeted the Mulwray family in one way or another as well as himself for getting involved. Jake shows his heroic tendencies because of his need to push through in his investigation and his fearlessness in the face of villainy. As a viewer, you can’t get enough of it because you know as well as anyone how the wealthy and corrupt are scarier than any regular criminal because they can get away with just about anything if they pay off the right people. This eeriness is ever present in Jake’s mission, as it’s no secret that those in power are after him. If Jake is killed, he’ll just be another cover-up that will never be solved, but he can’t let them win regardless. He has to expose this corruption in some way. This is what makes Jakes such a badass, despite never pulling out a gun or weapon of any kind. He can fight, but he’s beaten down on numerous occasions like at the Oak Pass Reservoir (by Roman Polanski himself in a major scene) and at the orange groves. Even so, he only uses this as fuel to push further.

He never quits.

When he kicks Mulvihill’s ass outside of the rest home, you want to stand up and cheer. Jake is able to win us over because of his never-say-die attitude, confidence, intelligence, and pure moxie. Because of this, he’s very much a middle-class hero. You have to think that a loud enough citizen or group can make a difference in fighting those in power if they go about things the right way. Jake is the personification of this and his live-or-die attitude, despite being undermanned and underprepared is what endears us to him. It’s one of the very few roles where Jack Nicholson doesn’t have that subdued sleaziness about him that seems to emit from his pores. Here, he shows his abilities as a leading man, a hero, a tough guy, and someone you want on your side. Also, in terms of private detective trickery, I actually really enjoyed some of the tactics Jake comes up with in his mission like the whole thing with the pocket watches and him stealing the paper from the Hall of Records (where it shows all the new land sales out of escrow were recorded within the week, showing they’re all new owners and most of the Valley had been sold in the last few months) by using a ruler to rip the page out and coughing at the same time to mask the noise. Innovation in a neo-noir film is hard to come by, but this was something I’ve never seen before. It was a pretty genius move.

Of course, the best heroes only look as good as they are when matched against an equal counterpart. Well, John Huston’s Noah Cross was simply phenomenal. Huston was a well-respected figure in the film industry as a filmmaker, screenwriter, and actor. If he was going to be in a project not helmed directly by him, you know he took this role because of how juicy of a part it is. To put it lightly, Noah Cross is this exactly. Huston churns out an all-time performance, exuding power with presence. It’s not just in his look or the way he sounds (though he has a voice about as recognizable as Orson Welles’s), but the way he carries himself as an older man with minimal scenes is actually incredible to behold. If you’re an actor with a similar role of importance, the early scenes he has with Nicholson is something that should be studied. Just watch as his confidence never waivers, despite the audience and Jake knowing there’s more to him than meets the eye. Watch as he asks or responds to certain questions and statements in an intriguing enough manner to where he never leaves your field of vision. Then, he hits us with one very careful line to keep us on our toes with, “You may think you know what you’re dealing with, but you don’t”. Not fazed, Jake lets him know this is a line uttered to him almost verbatim by the district attorney when he used to work in Chinatown. This is the genius of this screenplay and is something that many films don’t understand. Avoiding on-the-nose dialogue is a must in a “great” film because it’s much more realistic.

Considering the characters in this scene, who they are in society, and what they represent in this movie, this is about as perfect of an example as there ever was in terms of writing a pivotal scene in establishing protagonists and antagonists.

With this scene alone, you become a private detective much like Jake because you can’t help but notice the details involving Cross, his mannerisms, expressions, and responses. Because of Cross, you already start to look at Evelyn differently, studying her face as she talks to see if you can uncover anything before Jake does. The energy Huston brings is that of something sinister but yet, understated. I’m not sure if one can learn the ways of how Huston is able to make Cross this overbearing figure without saying obvious statements that we’ve seen time and time again like “I own this city! Feel my wrath”. Somehow, Noah Cross is able to make an indelible mark on the history of cinema’s best villains purely by presence and being able to translate the feelings of wealth and power without saying anything directly to the point where it can give you goosebumps. Those final scenes where everything comes together in such a Shakespearean way is something that will stay with you for a lifetime. The sound of the horn, the screams of horror, the expressions of everyone involved, and the departing words is something that will never be forgotten. By the time it ends, I have no doubt that you will sit to yourself in silence for a few minutes and think “Wow”. Completing the triumvirate of this acting masterclass of Chinatown was Faye Dunaway. Being mysterious enough to catch the attention of Jake and the audience, while being seductive enough without even trying, uncovering the truth has never been more exciting than with Evelyn Mulwray and her family in this neo-noir classic. At first, you’re confused at all the details and wonder why Evelyn threatens the lawsuit on Jake but drops it in the instant he brings it up in private. It seems like a mistake, or an intriguing detail with a payoff that will surely end in sex.

It is the 70s after all. When you have two top stars like Nicholson and Dunaway shaping the movie, it’s bound to happen.

Regardless of this, their sexual relationship is so secondary to the overall story in an almost impressive manner. The audience becomes so invested in the story and how Jake will respond to everything, as well as the overall puzzle surrounding Evelyn, that it doesn’t even matter. If anything, it only complicates things to a thrilling degree. You know Evelyn is holding back some sort of information. This isn’t just because Jake tends to be right on things more often than not, but Evelyn’s general demeanor is that of a mystifying one. There’s more to her than what leads on. Even when things heat up between the two, the audience has this creeping suspicion that this could be all by design and Evelyn’s role in all of this may not be as innocent as we think. Dunaway plays the role with her usual elegance, but she truly shines when the character starts to unravel, and the holes are poked in her story. With this, we are given one of the finest twists in the history of film, completely changing the audience’s perception of the narrative. By this point, the train can’t be stopped and you’re on the edge of your seat until the very end.

The finish almost didn’t happen, as Robert Towne and Roman Polanski disagreed on how the movie should end. Without spoiling anything, I can say without question that Polanski made the right decision here. It may be a little harsh, but it took the film to a tier where only the greatest of films reside. It’s Polanski’s magnum opus, it contains arguably the best screenplay ever made, it’s one of the greatest private detective movies of all time, and it stars a prime Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, and John Huston at his wicked best. This is Chinatown, and it is everything.