Chinatown (1974 film)
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Chinatown (1974 film)
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This film has been preserved in the National Film Registry in 1991.
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 "Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown."
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Chinatown is a 1974 American neo-noir mystery film directed by Roman Polanski from a screenplay by Robert Towne, starring Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway. It was inspired by the California Water Wars, a series of disputes over southern California water at the beginning of the 20th century, by which Los Angeles interests secured water rights in the Owens Valley.
In 1991, the film was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the United States National Film Registry as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant" and it is frequently listed as one of the greatest films of all time.
Plot
In 1937, Mrs. Mulwray hires Detective Jake, who specializes in matrimonial cases, to spy on her husband, the builder of the city's water system. He finds himself in a web of deceit when Mr. Mulwray dies.
Why It Rocks
- It is one of the most successful 1970s noir films set in the 1930s movie appears realistic.
- As a 1974 film noir set in Depression-era Los Angeles, it’s a fiendishly clever merging of Raymond Chandler, Franz Kafka, and Sophocles. It is both a definitive American film and distinctly un-American-like, especially by today’s industry standards.
- Amazing writing, and a script that's a masterclass in screenwriting, while at the same time, can also serve as a deconstruction of the usual film noir tropes, for various reasons:
- J.J. "Jake" Gittes is imagined as the tough-guy detective archetype Humphrey Bogart would play, but unlike the gunsels and low-rent tough guys Bogart fought against, Gittes fights state and corporate villainy and only barely understands the scheme of which he is so low and unimportant that it does not matter to the bad guys that he knows the truth or not, they know that he can do nothing and that he won't do anything to stop them. In the end, he gets a powerful reality check and reveals that under that façade of a tough hard-boiled detective is a vulnerable, lonely, and embittered man. Likewise, the misogynistic assumptions about femme fatale and bad girls in the classic noir are turned on its head, when it's those same assumptions that lead Gittes to unwittingly cause Evelyn's death. Also Jake acts like a snarky wisecracker who always gets the last word in, but the film shows that his mouth keeps getting him into trouble, as he repeatedly irritates and insults his colleagues and associates, and gets punched out once. Plus, he's super incompetent as a private detective as he's always missing clues and making mistakes.
- As per Robert Towne, the film is a more accurate portrayal of the private detective archetype than seen in the works of Raymond Chandler. Where the likes of Philip Marlowe are noble "tarnished knights" or knights in sour armor, J. J. Gittes does actual detective work, as in, taking seedy and sleazy pictures of adulterous spouses for suspicious clients, illegal surveillance and voyeurism, and generally living a very well-heeled existence. Gittes defends his line of work by pointing out that the police are equally sleazy and corrupt while he is honest. But the film casts doubt on this. For instance, the client at the start of the film, on finding out that his wife cheated on him is shown to later beat his wife, giving us some sense of why his wife cheated on him to start with, and making us understand that it's unlikely any of Gittes' work is truly innocent or qualifies as "honest living" as he insists at the start.
- Moreover, noir stories often had the hero get entangled in stories and have the detective try and solve the mystery to unearth a conspiracy. In this film, the detective is himself an unwitting pawn to the real conspiracy, and had he done "As little as possible", the heroine could perhaps have lived and made it across the border anyway. Plus the central villain is so rich and powerful, that Gittes is powerless to stop him, and escapes to continue his crimes. While most noirs would have the protagonist succeed in resolving the crime/issue, here Gittes leaves town after failing.
- Evelyn Mulwray is an attack on the concept of the femme fatale. A beautiful elegant woman who is cold and aloof in public is some villainous slutty vamp rather than a deeply vulnerable victim of abuse trying to hide her suffering from an uncaring world and society. Evelyn has no one to turn to in the patriarchal America of her time, and the great effort that she makes to help her and her daughter/sister comes undone precisely because of the misogynistic assumptions that even the hero Jake Gittes shares and upholds.
- The film likewise underscores the racism, sexism, and classism that a period film noir usually leaves out. As bad as Noah Cross is, the world around him is hardly better, with the upper-crust being anti-Semites, Gittes' lower-class clients being wife-beaters and giving a sense of how genuinely a city noir setting is a horrible world, and subverting the retro nostalgic appeal noir fashions usually attract.
- Incredible acting, also Jack Nicholson gave an amazing performance as J.J. "Jake" Gittes. Plus one thing that makes Gittes stand out from other detectives is that he's never seen with a gun in his hands like most fictional detectives.
- Top-notched editing from Sam O’Steen: He uses techniques to create subtext in the relationships between characters, like that of Jake Gittes and Evelyn Mulwray. Nothing is wasted; every close-up and quick cut to reaction shot creates an unsettling mood, particularly for the notorious reveal in the film’s last act.
- With its soundtrack that was composed by Jerry Goldsmith, that still retains a film noir theme, camerawork that helps to set the mood of the background (via oddly ominous, gently bobbing), a sense of history as a recurring nightmare, and its Polish-Jewish film school graduate and Holocaust survivor Roman Polanski, Chinatown is an art-house movie in American mainstream drag. Very rarely since Hitchcock’s prime had a director displayed such a facility for making a commercial movie that is also a work of art.
- Well done scenery. The setting of late 1930s Los Angeles and the nearby countryside are well creative, which is very faithful to the 1930s decade.
- The scene where tons of sheep go into the courtroom is really funny, and that being said, the comedy isn't that overused.
- The recreating of the late-1920s opening sequences, especially with an old soundtrack is amazing, making it look as if you're watching an old film.
- Noah Cross and his gangsters are very convincing villains. On top of that, Noah's name sounds both biblical and like a negation of Christianity -- a possible reference to a previous Polanksi film (Rosemary's Baby).
- The film is a virtual catalog of the Seven Deadly Sins, beginning with Lust in a comic scene in which the jaded private detective and former policeman J.J. Gittes sits languidly smoking while his client Curly gasps in anguish at photographs of his wife screwing a male stranger (in this scene, Jake casually refers to his office’s new Venetian blinds, the signature prop and visual trademark of film noir).
- The director has an interesting cameo where he plays a minor, yet pivotal role in the story.
- The ending is pretty devastating and controversial. It also serves as yet another deconstruction of the usual noir trope, as while most of these stories would receive narrative closure, this film in particular doesn't get a resolution.
Reception
Box Office
The film earned $29 million at the North American box office.
Critical Response
The film received critical acclaim, and it holds a 99% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 72 reviews, with an average rating of 9.34/10. The website's critical consensus reads: "As bruised and cynical as the decade that produced it, this noir classic benefits from Robert Towne's brilliant screenplay, director Roman Polanski's steady hand, and wonderful performances from Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway." On Metacritic, it has a 92/100, based on 22 critics, indicating "universal acclaim". Roger Ebert added it to his "Great Movies" list, saying that Nicholson's performance was "key in keeping Chinatown from becoming just a genre crime picture", along with Towne's screenplay, concluding that the film "seems to settle easily beside the original noirs".
Trivia
- At the time of filming, Jack Nicholson had just embarked on his longstanding relationship with Anjelica Huston. This made his scenes with her father, John Huston, rather uncomfortable, especially as the only time Anjelica was on set was the day they were filming the scene where Noah Cross interrogates Nicholson's character with "Mr. Gittes...do you sleep with my daughter?"
- This was the final film that Roman Polanski made in the United States, as he fled to France in February 1978, shortly before he was due to be sentenced for unlawful sexual intercourse with a thirteen-year-old girl named Samantha Gailey. He has avoided visiting any country likely to extradite him to the U.S. since then.
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