Story of movie Chinatown 1974 Film :
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. The film 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. The Robert Evans production, a Paramount Pictures release, was the director's last film in the United States and features many elements of film noir, particularly a multi-layered story that is part mystery and part psychological drama.
| Chinatown | |
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Theatrical release poster | |
| Directed by | Roman Polanski |
| Produced by | Robert Evans |
| Written by | Robert Towne |
| Starring |
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| Music by | Jerry Goldsmith |
| Cinematography | John A. Alonzo |
| Edited by | Sam O'Steen |
Production company |
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| Distributed by | Paramount Pictures |
Release date |
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Running time | 131 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $6 million |
| Box office | $29.2 million |
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. At the 47th Academy Awards, it was nominated for 11 Oscars, with Towne winning Best Original Screenplay. The Golden Globe Awards honored it for Best Drama, Best Director, Best Actor, and Best Screenplay. The American Film Institute placed it second among its top ten mystery films in 2008.
A sequel, The Two Jakes, was released in 1990, again starring Nicholson, who also directed, with Robert Towne returning to write the screenplay. The film failed to generate the acclaim of its predecessor.
Screenplay
A woman identifying herself as Evelyn Mulwray hires private investigator J.J. "Jake" Gittes to follow her husband, Hollis Mulwray, chief engineer for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. Gittes tails him, hears him publicly refuse to create a new reservoir that would be unsafe, and shoots photographs of him with a young woman, which are published on the front page of the following day's paper. Back at his office, Gittes is confronted by a woman who informs him she is the real Evelyn Mulwray and that he can expect a lawsuit.
Realizing he was set up, Gittes assumes that Hollis Mulwray is the real target. Before he can question him, Lieutenant Lou Escobar fishes Mulwray, drowned, from a reservoir. Under retainer to Mrs. Mulwray, Gittes investigates his suspicions of murder and notices that although there is a drought, huge quantities of water are being released from the reservoir every night. Gittes is warned off by Water Department Security Chief Claude Mulvihill and a henchman who slashes one of Gittes' nostrils. Back at his office, Gittes receives a call from Ida Sessions, who identifies herself as the imposter Mrs. Mulwray. She is afraid to identify her employer but tells Gittes to check the day's obituaries.
Gittes learns that Mulwray was once the business partner of Mulwray's wife's wealthy father, Noah Cross. Over lunch at his personal club, Cross warns Gittes that he does not understand the forces at work, and offers to double Gittes' fee to search for Mulwray's missing mistress. At the hall of records, Gittes discovers that much of the Northwest Valley has recently changed ownership. Investigating the valley, he is attacked by angry landowners who believe he is an agent of the water department attempting to force them out by sabotaging their water supply.
Gittes deduces that the water department is drying up the land so it can be bought at a reduced price and that Mulwray was murdered when he discovered the plan. He discovers that a former retirement home resident is one of the valley's new landowners who seemingly purchased the property a week after his death. Gittes and Evelyn bluff their way into the home and confirm that the real-estate deals were surreptitiously completed in the names of several of the home's residents. Their visit is interrupted by the suspicious retirement-home director, who has called Mulvihill.
After fleeing Mulvihill and his thugs, Gittes and Evelyn hide at Evelyn's house and sleep together. During the night, Evelyn gets a phone call and must leave suddenly; she warns Gittes that her father is dangerous. Gittes follows Evelyn's car to a house, where he spies her through the windows comforting Mulwray's mistress, Katherine. He accuses Evelyn of holding the woman against her will, but she says Katherine is her sister.
The next day, an anonymous call draws Gittes to Ida Sessions' apartment, where he finds her murdered and Escobar waiting for Gittes' arrival. Escobar tells him the coroner's report found salt water in Mulwray's lungs, indicating that he did not drown in the fresh water of the reservoir. Escobar suspects Evelyn of the murder and tells Gittes to produce her quickly. At Evelyn's mansion, Gittes finds her servants packing her things. He realizes her garden pond is salt water and discovers a pair of bifocals in it. He confronts Evelyn about Katherine, whom Evelyn now claims is her daughter. After Gittes slaps her, she tells him that Katherine is her sister and her daughter: her father raped her when she was 15. She says that the glasses are not Mulwray's, as he did not wear bifocals.
Gittes arranges for the women to flee to Mexico and instructs Evelyn to meet him at her butler's home in Chinatown. He summons Cross to the Mulwray home to settle their deal. Cross admits his intention to annex the Northwest Valley into the City of Los Angeles, then irrigate and develop it. Gittes accuses Cross of murdering Mulwray. Cross has Mulvihill take the bifocals at gunpoint, and they force Gittes to drive them to the women. When they reach the Chinatown address, the police are already there and detain Gittes. When Cross approaches Katherine, Evelyn shoots him in the arm and starts to drive away with Katherine. The police open fire, killing Evelyn. Cross clutches Katherine and leads her away, while Escobar orders Gittes released. Lawrence Walsh, one of Gittes's associates, tells him: "Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown."
- Jack Nicholson as J.J. "Jake" Gittes
- Faye Dunaway as Evelyn Cross Mulwray
- John Huston as Noah Cross
- Perry Lopez as Lieutenant Lou Escobar
- John Hillerman as Russ Yelburton
- Darrell Zwerling as Hollis I. Mulwray
- Diane Ladd as Ida Sessions
- Roy Jenson as Claude Mulvihill
- Roman Polanski as Man with Knife
- Dick Bakalyan as Detective Loach
- Joe Mantell as Lawrence Walsh
- Bruce Glover as Duffy
- Nandu Hinds as Sophie
- James Hong as Kahn, Evelyn's Butler
- Beulah Quo as Maid
- Belinda Palmer as Katherine Cross
Background
In 1971 producer Robert Evans offered Towne $175,000 to write a screenplay for The Great Gatsby (1974), but Towne felt he could not better the F. Scott Fitzgerald novel. Instead, Towne asked for $25,000 from Evans to write his own story, Chinatown, to which Evans agreed.
Chinatown is set in 1937 and portrays the manipulation of a critical municipal resource—water—by a cadre of shadowy oligarchs. It was the first part of Towne's planned trilogy about the character J.J. Gittes, the foibles of the Los Angeles power structure, and the subjugation of public good by private greed. The second part, The Two Jakes, has Gittes caught up in another grab for a natural resource—oil—in the 1940s. It was directed by Jack Nicholson and released in 1990, but the second film's commercial and critical failure scuttled plans to make Gittes vs. Gittes, about the third finite resource—land—in Los Angeles, circa 1968.
Origins
The character of Hollis Mulwray is presumed to have been inspired by and loosely based on Irish immigrant William Mulholland (1855–1935), the superintendent and chief engineer of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, who oversaw the construction of the 230-mile aqueduct that carries water from the Owens Valley to Los Angeles.
Author Vincent Brook considers real-life Mulholland to be split, in the film, into "noble Water and Power chief Hollis Mulwray" and "mobster muscle Claude Mulvihill," just as Land syndicate and Combination members, who "exploited their insider knowledge" on account of "personal greed," are "condensed into the singular, and singularly monstrous, Noah Cross."
In the film, Mulwray opposes the dam wanted by Noah Cross and the city of Los Angeles, for reasons of engineering and safety, arguing he would not repeat his previous mistake, when his dam broke resulting in the deaths of hundreds. This alludes to the St. Francis Dam disaster of March 12, 1928, when the dam had been inspected by Mulholland on the day of its catastrophic failure. The dam's failure inundated the Santa Clara River Valley, including the town of Santa Paula, with flood water, causing the deaths of as many as 600 people (including 42 school-aged children). The event effectively ended Mulholland's career.
Script
According to Robert Towne, Carey McWilliams's Southern California Country: An Island on the Land (1946) and a West magazine article called "Raymond Chandler's L.A." inspired his original screenplay. In a letter to McWilliams, Towne wrote that Southern California Country "really changed my life. It taught me to look at the place where I was born, and convinced me to write about it."
Towne wrote the screenplay with Jack Nicholson in mind. He took the title (and the exchange, "What did you do in Chinatown?" / "As little as possible") from a Hungarian vice cop who had worked in Chinatown and explained to the writer that the complicated array of dialects and gangs in Los Angeles's Chinatown made it impossible for the police to know whether their interventions were helping victims or furthering their exploitation.
Polanski learned of the script through Nicholson, with whom he had been searching for a suitable joint project. Producer Robert Evans wanted Polanski to direct for his European vision of the United States, which Evans believed would be darker and more cynical. Polanski, a few years removed from the murder of his pregnant wife, Sharon Tate, in Los Angeles, was initially reluctant to return but was persuaded on the strength of the script.
Evans wanted Cross to die and Evelyn Mulwray to survive. The producer and director argued over it, with Polanski insisting on a tragic end. "I knew that if Chinatown was to be special," Polanski said, "not just another thriller where the good guys triumph in the final reel, Evelyn had to die." They parted ways over this dispute and Polanski wrote the final scene a few days before it was shot.
The original script was more than 180 pages and included a narration by Gittes; Polanski cut that and reordered the story so the audience and Gittes unraveled the mysteries at the same time.
Characters and casting
- "J. J. Gittes" was named after Nicholson's friend, producer Harry Gittes.
- "Evelyn Mulwray" is, according to Towne, intended to initially seem the classic "black widow" character typical of lead female characters in film noir, yet is eventually made the only selfless character in the film. Jane Fonda was strongly considered for the role, but Polanski insisted on Dunaway.
- "Noah Cross": Towne said that Huston was, after Nicholson, the second-best-cast actor in the film and that he made the Cross character menacing, through his courtly performance.
- Polanski appears in a cameo as the gangster who cuts Gittes' nose. The effect was accomplished with a special knife which indeed could have cut Nicholson's nose if Polanski had not held it correctly.
Filming
William A. Fraker accepted the cinematographer position from Polanski when Paramount agreed. He had worked with the studio previously in Polanski's Rosemary's Baby. Robert Evans, never consulted about the decision, insisted that the offer be rescinded since he felt pairing Polanski and Fraker again would create a team with too much control over the project and complicate the production. Fraker was replaced by John A. Alonzo.
In keeping with a technique Polanski attributes to Raymond Chandler, all of the events of the film are seen subjectively through the main character's eyes; for example, when Gittes is knocked unconscious, the film fades to black and fades in when he awakens. Gittes appears in every scene of the film.
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