Chinatown (film)
Chinatown is a 1974 film directed by Roman Polanski
featuring many elements of the film noir genre, particularly a multi-layered story
that is part mystery and part psychological drama. The movie won several high-profile
awards, including an Academy Award in 1975 for Best Original Screenplay for Robert
Towne.
Chinatown stars Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, and John Huston and
also features a cameo appearance by its director, Roman Polanski. Also appearing
in the film are John Hillerman, Diane Ladd, Perry Lopez, James Hong, Joe Mantell,
Bruce Glover, Burt Young, and Noble Willingham. The film has been selected for
preservation in the United States National Film Registry. A sequel, called The
Two Jakes, was released in 1990, starring Jack Nicholson (who also directed it),
with a screenplay written by Robert Towne.
Academy Awards
- 1974
Wins:
Best Original Screenplay - Robert Towne
Nominations:
Best
Picture - Robert Evans
Best Director - Roman Polanski
Best Actor - Jack
Nicholson
Best Actress - Faye Dunaway
Best Film Editing - Sam O'Steen
Best Art Direction - Richard Sylbert, W. Stewart Campbell, Ruby Levitt
Best
Costume Design - Anthea Sylbert
Best Cinematography - John A. Alonzo
Best
Sound Mixing - Bud Grenzbach, Larry Jost
Best Music Score - Jerry Goldsmith
[edit] Golden Globes - 1974
Wins:
Best Motion Picture - Drama
- Robert Evans
Actor in a Motion Picture - Drama - Jack Nicholson
Best
Director - Roman Polanski
Best Screenplay - Robert Towne
Nominations
Actor
In A Supporting Role - John Huston
Best Actress - Motion Picture Drama - Faye
Dunaway
Best Original Score - Jerry Goldsmith
Cast
Jack Nicholson - J.J. 'Jake' Gittes
Faye Dunaway - Evelyn Cross Mulwray
John Huston - Noah Cross
Perry Lopez - Lieutenant
Lou Escobar
John Hillerman - Russ Yelburton
Darrell Zwerling - Hollis
I. Mulwray
Diane Ladd - Ida Sessions
Roy Jenson -
Claude Mulvihill
Roman Polanski - Man with Knife
Richard
Bakalyan - Detective Loach (as Dick Bakalyan)
Joe Mantell - Lawrence Walsh
Bruce Glover - Duffy
Nandu Hinds - Sophie
James
O'Rear - Lawyer
James Hong - Kahn
Plot
A Los Angeles private investigator named Jake 'J.J' Gittes (Nicholson) is hired to spy on Hollis Mulwray, the chief engineer for the city's water department. The woman hiring Gittes claims to be Evelyn Mulwray, Hollis' wife. Mr. Mulwray spends most of his time investigating dry river beds. Mr. Mulwray also has a heated argument with an elderly man. Gittes finally catches Mulwray during an outing with a young blonde and photographs the pair, which becomes a scandal in the press. After the story is published, Gittes learns that the woman who hired him was not the real Evelyn Mulwray.
Clues suggest a scandal in the city government: Despite a serious drought and an expensive proposal to build a new dam, the Water and Power department is dumping fresh water into the ocean at night.
On a tip, Gittes seeks out Mr. Mulwray at a reservoir but finds the police there instead, investigating Hollis Mulwray's death from drowning. When the police speak to Mrs. Mulwray about the death, they assume she hired Gittes, which Gittes corroborates. She thanks him and hires him to investigate what happened to her husband.
Later that night, while breaking into the reservoir's secured area, Gittes is confronted by water department security, Claude Mulvihill, and a thug (a cameo by Polanski himself), who slashes Jake's nose for being a "very nosy fella." Gittes receives a call from Ida Sessions, the woman who was hired to pretend to be Mrs. Mulwray, who suggests that Gittes look at the obituary column. At the water department, Gittes notices photographs of the elderly man Mulwray quarreled with a few days before his death, Noah Cross (Huston). Cross, who is Evelyn Mulwray's father, used to own the water department as Mulwray's business partner. Cross ended his association with the department when the partners sold it to the city.
Cross hires Gittes to find the blonde girl Hollis had been seeing, saying that she might know what happened to him. Acting on a hint from Sessions, Gittes begins to unravel an intricate water scandal. Cross and his partners have been forcing farmers out of their land so they can buy it cheap, after which a newly-built (and controversial) dam and water system would start redirecting much of L.A.'s water supply to that land, dramatically increasing its value. Since Cross wants no record of such transactions, he has partnered with a retirement home community in such a way that many of the eldest residents within (one of whom is mentioned in the obituary column) would legally, but unknowingly, own the land.
Gittes follows Evelyn to a middle-class house and sees Mulwray's girlfriend crying. Evelyn claims this is her sister, who was crying because she had just learned about Hollis' death. Later that night, Sessions is murdered. Escobar points out that the coroner's report proves that salt water was found in Mulwray's lungs even though the body was found in a freshwater reservoir.
Gittes returns to Evelyn's mansion, where he discovers a pair of eyeglasses in a garden saltwater pond. Gittes confronts Evelyn, who reveals that the blonde girl, Katherine, is both her sister and her daughter; Gittes asks Evelyn if her father raped her and she shakes her head no. Gittes then chooses to help Evelyn escape. Evelyn remembers that the eyeglasses could not have been her husband's because they are bifocals. Gittes arranges for the two women to flee to Mexico and instructs Evelyn to meet him at her butler's address in Chinatown. Evelyn leaves, and Cross arrives with Mulvihill under the pretext that Gittes has found the girl; however, Gittes confronts Cross with the accusation of murder and the glasses. Mulvihill takes away the eyeglasses that are the only physical evidence. Cross forces Gittes to take him to the girl. When Gittes arrives at Evelyn's hiding place in Chinatown, the police are already there.
When Cross approaches the girl, demanding custody of her, Evelyn pushes him back, shoots him in the arm and starts her car. The police arrest Gittes, and as Evelyn drives away, they open fire and Evelyn is shot and killed. Cross clutches Evelyn's shrieking daughter as a devastated Gittes is comforted by his associates, one of them saying, "Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown."
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.
Chinatown was the first part of a planned trilogy written by Robert Towne about J.J. Gittes and L.A. The second part, The Two Jakes, about the natural gas business in Los Angeles in the 1940s, was directed by Nicholson and released in 1990. However, this film's commercial and critical failure scuttled plans to make Cloverleaf, a film about the development of the area's freeway system (this plot actually became the basis of the live action/animation film Who Framed Roger Rabbit,
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