History Film / Chinatown

[[JustForFun/IThoughtItMeant For the kind of place]], see FriendlyLocalChinatown. Don't confuse this with ''Film/BigTroubleInLittleChina'', however tempting it may be.

A seminal neo-noir film, and considered by many to be among the best examples of FilmNoir in general, ''Chinatown'' (1974) was written by Creator/RobertTowne and directed by Creator/RomanPolanski. The film stars Creator/JackNicholson, Creator/FayeDunaway, and Creator/JohnHuston. It is a ''[[CrapsackWorld dark]]'' film, even for the '70s.

* NeverSuicide: The villain attempts this more or less unsuccessfully. The method of Hollis' death is something that seems logical on its surface, but then the saltwater in his lungs is the smoking gun for the cops to realize that someone set Hollis up for adultery to make his death look like a suicide. So Gittes doesn't have to prove it was suicide, he only had to prove it was [[spoiler:Cross] which he ultimately [[FailureHero fails to accomplish]].

* AdultFear: Got evidence of corruption in the government? The rich and powerful will just cover it up. Not fair? Too bad; you're a nobody, so forget it, or even better "do as little as possible".

[[caption-width-right:310:''"[[{{Tagline}} You get tough. You get tender. Maybe you even get close to the truth]]."'']]

A seminal Neo-Noir film, and considered by many to be among the best examples of FilmNoir in general, ''Chinatown'' (1974) was written by Creator/RobertTowne and directed by Creator/RomanPolanski. The film stars Creator/JackNicholson, Creator/FayeDunaway, and Creator/JohnHuston. It is a ''[[CrapsackWorld dark]]'' film, even for the '70s.

* ShootTheShaggyDogStory: [[spoiler:Jake tries to help Evelyn escape California with Katherine but unfortunately he already called the police. Despite his numerous attempts to avoid them, Noah and the police eventually catch up with them anyway, moments before they were due to leave. Recognizing it as hopeless, Evelyn tries to take the last stand of threatening them with a gun so that she can take Katherine. This plays right into Noah's already-executed plan of making Evelyn look like a HystericalWoman who killed her husband [[IfICantHaveYou out of insane jealousy]], the police shoot and kill Evelyn, and the hysterical Katherine is dragged away from her mother's body towards the triumphant Noah, who, inevitably, is going to rape her and perpetuate the cycle using the huge amount of money he's already earned.]]

** The sepia-toned opening titles, complete with 4:3 aspect ratio, vintage Paramount logo, and old-fashioned scrolling credits.
** The first shot of the film is a closeup of a series of black-and-white photographs (albeit far more sexually explicit than anything shown in the [[UsefulNotes/TheHaysCode Old Hollywood]]), and then the camera pulls back to reveal cinematographer John Alonzo's lush amber period glow that looks a bit like Technicolor but is much richer.

* CantSpitItOut: Evelyn struggles many times throughout the film to communicate some of her discomfort to Gittes but never quite gets herself to admit it fully until it's too late. This is understandable, on account of [[spoiler:the trauma she experienced and the social stigma of being not only a rape victim, but being raped by her rich and powerful father and fathering a child of incest, would make it difficult to confess to anyone, leave alone to Gittes, who initially came across as a snarky snooping gumshoe with a sleazy profile]].

Fun fact: this film was co-financed by Bob Guccione, the publisher of the famous pornographic magazine ''Penthouse''. It was nominated for 11 UsefulNotes/{{Academy Award}}s (winning for Best Original Screenplay), 7 UsefulNotes/{{Golden Globe Award}}s (winning for Best Picture, Actor, Director, and Screenplay), and 7 UsefulNotes/{{BAFTA}}s (winning for Best Actor, Director, and Screenplay, with Nicholson and Towne earning their awards for both this film and ''Film/TheLastDetail''). A lesser-known -- and much less well-regarded -- {{sequel}}, ''The Two Jakes'', was directed by Jack Nicholson and released in 1990.

[-[[caption-width-right:310:''"[[{{Tagline}} You get tough. You get tender. Maybe you even get close to the truth]]."'']]-]

The setting is 1937 UsefulNotes/LosAngeles. J.J. "Jake" Gittes (Nicholson), a former cop turned PrivateDetective, is hired by a woman claiming to be Evelyn Mulwray, the wife of the city's water commissioner, to prove that her husband is having an affair. It seems like a simple enough job. But it isn't. It turns out that the woman who hired him isn't really Mrs. Mulwray. Then the water commissioner ends up dead and the real Mrs. Mulwray (Dunaway) hires Gittes to find out what really happened. He may ''think'' he knows what he's dealing with. But -- as Noah Cross (Huston), Mrs. Mulwray's father and her late husband's former business partner, warns him -- he really doesn't.

* AmbiguousTimePeriod: While the film is nominally set in 1937, its portrayal of Los Angeles plucks bits and pieces from multiple eras (as noted in [[http://www.rouge.com.au/11/chinatown.html this article]]). The water rights problem was an issue of the [=1910s=] and [='20s=], while Gittes makes reference to "Okies" (an insulting word for Dust Bowl-era migrant farmers from Oklahoma) and we see a large portrait of [[UsefulNotes/FranklinDRoosevelt FDR]].

* AmbiguousConsent: In-universe. While Evelyn claims that she had an [[spoiler: abusive, but consensual, sexual relationship with Noah, the audience and other characters understand that it was rape because she was too young to consent. She doesn't see it that way because of Noah's manipulative behavior.]]

* When Evelyn is treating Jake's nose wound, he asks about her flawed eye. [[spoiler:In the end of the film, Evelyn is shot through that same eye.]]

* AmbiguousConsent: In-universe. While Evelyn claims that she had an [[spoiler: abusive, but consensual, sexual relationship with Noah, the audience and other characters understand that it was rape because she was too young to consent. She doesn’t see it that way because of Noah’s manipulative behavior.]]

* MetaCasting: Creator/JohnHuston, the director of many of the FilmNoir classics, [[spoiler:in the role of the villain]].

** The casting of Creator/JohnHuston, the director of many of the great, early noirs including ''Film/{{The Maltese Falcon|1941}}'' and ''Film/KeyLargo'', as Noah Cross.

* RedHerring: [[spoiler:Hollis not wearing his glasses when his body is recovered. Gittes finds a pair of glasses and assumes they belong to him, when in fact they belong to his killer.]]

* MissingWhiteWomanSyndrome: At the beginning of the film, farmers are campaigning for the construction of a new dam which will allow for better irrigation. Hollis explains that the proposed site for the new dam has a shale base, as did the previous dam in the area, which collapsed and killed five hundred people. In a line of dialogue [[AllThereInTheScript present in the screenplay but not the film itself]], Escobar explains that the reason this collapse and all the deaths it caused didn't get sufficient publicity was because most of the people killed were Mexican immigrants.

* FacialHorror: Gittes' being "nosy" gets a thug played by Polański himself to slice up his nose.

* AsianSpeekeeEngrish: "Bad for glass" or "bad for grass"? Considering salt water is bad for ''both''...

* DeathByIrony: [[spoiler:Mrs. Mulwray is shot through her flawed eye.]]

* MetaCasting: John Huston, the director of many of the FilmNoir classics, [[spoiler:in the role of the villain]].

** The first shot of the film is a closeup of a series of black-and-white photographs (albeit far more sexually explicit than anything shown in the Old Hollywood), and then the camera pulls back to reveal cinematographer John Alonzo's lush amber period glow that looks a bit like Technicolor but is much richer.

* SmokingHotSex: Between [[spoiler:Gittes and Evelyn.]]

* WhatHappenedToTheMouse: We never learned who killed [[spoiler: Ida Sessions]], although it was probably [[spoiler:Mulvahill and/or The Man With the Knife]]

* ArmorPiercingQuestion: [[spoiler: Jake interrogating Mrs. Mulwray on her relations with the mystery woman Katherine.]]

* ExtremelyShortTimespan: The bulk of the action takes place over three really long days, starting from Evelyn's visit to Gittes' office where she officially hires him, and proceeding from there.
* ExactWords: [[spoiler: When Jake pushes Mrs. Mulwray for the answers to whom Katherine is, she keeps telling him "she's my sister... she's my daughter...my sister...my daughter..."]]

* NoWomansLand: Basically none of the women on-screen have it good for them. [[spoiler:The Fake Mrs. Mulwray, the actress Ida Sessions, gets whacked to tie up loose ends. Evelyn Mulwray dies ignominiously like a criminal, her daughter/sister Katharine enters Noah Cross' clutches[[note]]Fortunately, she's escaped his grasp in ''The Two Jakes''[[/note]], very likely being raped in turn. Even Curly's wife, the woman who was caught cheating by Jakes at the start of the film, is revealed to sport a very new and fresh-looking black-eye, hinting that Jake's investigation condemned her to a life of DomesticAbuse, and she has nothing but contempt for the "hero"]].

* NonIndicativeName: Only the very last scene of the movie takes place in that neighborhood of Los Angeles. However, it is used by Gittes [[WretchedHive as a metaphor for the crime-ridden nature of Los Angeles]] in the film.

* {{Symbolism}}: During a scene where Jake and Evelyn are making out, Jake points out a black mark in the green part of Evelyn's eye that's apparently a flaw in the iris. The flaw in Evelyn's eye symbolizes the flaw in the system itself — Evelyn's a good character, but she's personally experienced the corruption bred by greed and by the hunger for power. Her father is stealing the city's water, and he's had a child with her through incest. From a distance, everything probably looks okay — but when you look closely, something's off. That's been Jake's experience throughout the whole movie. He sees that Hollis' death isn't a suicide and that he's been set up…after he learns that the woman who hired him wasn't really Evelyn. These inconsistencies eventually reveal an even more corrupt and evil state of appears than Jake could've realized. [[spoiler:The flaw in Evelyn's iris initially suggests that there's something wrong with her—like maybe she's in on her father's scheme. But in reality, the flaw lies in the family she comes from, specifically in her monstrous father]].

* AbusiveParents: [[spoiler: Noah Cross raped and impregnated his own daughter Evelyn Mulwray when she was 14 and attempted to do the same with his daughter/granddaughter Katherine]].

--> ''Chinatown'' is a ‘70s image of a ‘40s image of the ‘30s, apparently based, in turn, on Los Angeles water politics from an earlier period again and complete with a kind of indeterminate post ‘50s soundtrack.
* AmbiguouslyJewish: Gittes; there are hints given in both films.

* BigBad: [[spoiler:Noah Cross]] is the corporate mastermind responsible for not only buying up the farmers' newly-drained land to control the water supply for his business partners but also raped his own daughter Evelyn Murray.

* ChildByRape: [[spoiler: Katherine is this, due Noah Cross's ParentalIncest on Evelyn Mulwray when she was 14.]]

* DarkAndTroubledPast: Both Jake and Evelyn turn out to have one. [[spoiler: Evelyn was raped by her father and ran away at 15. Jake's is less elaborated upon, but his work in Chinatown prior to the start of the movie is treated as one. This is especially relevant in the scene where he remarks that Chinatown still bothers everyone who was assigned there.]]

* DeadpanSnarker: Jake is master of this.

* DirtyCop: Gittes strongly implies that Mulvihill was one during his time as [[TheSheriff sheriff]] of Ventura County. In their first scene together, Gittes mentions that when Mulvihill served (during Prohibition) "the rumrunners landed hundreds of tons of booze on the beach and never lost a drop," hinting that he was on the take.
* DirtyOldMan: A throwaway gag has an old man at the nursing home pinching a nurse's bottom. ("Charlie, you know better than that.") [[spoiler: Noah Cross is an ''[[ParentalIncest especially]]'' grotesque example of this]].

* EvilSoundsDeep: [[spoiler:Just ''listen'' to Creator/JohnHuston's voice.]] Screenwriter Robert Towne once expressed that [[spoiler:Huston]] was the second best-cast actor in the film, next to Creator/JackNicholson. [[spoiler:Huston]]'s performance, he claimed, elevated [[spoiler:Cross]] above the portrayal in the script and made him truly memorable.

* FailureKnight:
** Jake is quite smart, basically competent and if he were handling a simple case or a simpler situation than he might have succeeded, but in the end [[spoiler:he confronts forces of commerce, economics and political corruption bigger than he can comprehend or do anything about and just doesn't quite let go]].
** Incidentally, there's also the question of whether Jake's "successes" are a good thing. In the first scene he provides photographs of a client's wife committing adultery in the park and consoling the husband. Later Jake [[spoiler:seeks out his house as a way to get past Cross' goons and he sees the wife with a visible black eye, implying that his regular joke of taking photographs of cheating couples is not quite as decent he thinks it is]].

* FauxAffablyEvil: This is the facade that [[spoiler:Noah Cross]] hides behind. Beneath, [[spoiler:Cross]] is a living example of what a man is capable of doing if he had no moral scruples and no law to stop him.
-->[[spoiler:'''Cross:''']] See, Mr. Gittes, most people never have to face the fact that, at the right time, and the right place, they're capable of ANYTHING.
* FemmeFatale: Everyone thinks Evelyn Mulwray is one of these. [[spoiler:[[SubvertedTrope She is the exact opposite]]]].

* GruesomeGrandparent: [[spoiler:Noah Cross ends up taking his granddaughter Katherine in after her mother Evelyn's death, clearly planning to rape her as he did to her mother, [[ParentalIncest resulting in Katherine's birth]].]]
* GuileHero: While "hero" might be something of a stretch, the fact is that Jake is VERY good at making people slip up so he can wring info out of them, and has so many tricks up his sleeve he'd do Franchise/{{Batman}} proud.
* HardboiledDetective: Jake Gittes, or at least he ''tries'' to assume this persona to hide the fact that he's very vulnerable, lonely and bitter, and to cover up [[spoiler:how truly powerless he feels, which he finally confronts at the end]]. Indeed, Jake's insistence on putting on that macho, wiseacre personality likely [[{{Deconstruction}} makes him harder to be trusted and taken seriously]] by both Evelyn and the police.

* KarmaHoudini: [[spoiler:Part of the Downer Ending is that Noah Cross gets away scot-free for his crimes, and even takes Katherine, his daughter/granddaughter, away at the end. It's implied that he'll go on to molest her the same way he did his daughter.]]

* MeaningfulName:
** "'''Holl'''is '''Mul'''wray" is derived from William '''Mulholl'''and, the name of one of the men involved in the real events which the film fictionalizes (see VeryLooselyBasedOnATrueStory) and who also gave his name to [[Film/MulhollandDrive a famous road in California]].
** [[spoiler:''Noah'' Cross, who is trying to gain control of all the water in Los Angeles. Noah Cross' original name in the script was Julian, so someone on the team probably decided to change the name sometime during production in realization.]]
** The coroner's name is Morty (''Mort'' is French for "dead").

* SmallRoleBigImpact: The "Man with a Knife" (played by the film's director) only appears in one scene with only one line of dialogue (he barely appears later in the background of a sequence), but also sports one of the most memorable lines and is memorably creepy and jumpy, as well as [[spoiler: scarring Jake's face for the remainder of the film]]. His role is even more memorable as one of the two roles by famous and influential film directors.
** Also Ida Sessions [[spoiler: aka the fake Evelyn Mulwray]], who -- despite only appearing in the film onscreen and [[spoiler: alive]] once -- convinces Gittes to spy on Hollis Mulwray and thereby sets the plot into motion.

* TheSociopath: [[spoiler: Noah Cross]] will go down in history as one of the most heartless villains ever put to film.

* VillainousIncest: One of several things that really helps to cement [[spoiler:Noah Cross]] as a thoroughly nasty villain.
* VisionaryVillain: [[spoiler:Noah Cross.]] See AndThenWhat, above.

* WouldHitAGirl: Jake slaps Evelyn repeatedly to get the truth out of her. When he comes to call in a favor from a man that hired him to find out if his wife was cheating on him, the wife opens the door sporting a huge black eye. In keeping with the DeliberateValuesDissonance, neither of these instances spark much outrage in-universe.

* RuleOfSymbolism:
** Despite the film's title, it takes several hours to get to the actual ''Chinatown''. Only the final scene of the movie is actually set there. But before then, Jake talks with Evelyn about how he used to work in Chinatown as a cop, saying that he did "as little as possible" on the job. He said: "[he] thought [he] was keeping someone from being hurt and actually [he] ended up making sure she was hurt." [[spoiler:A similar scenario happens at the ending, were Evelyn's been shot and Noah's captured his daughter/granddaughter, Walsh ushers the signature line "Forget it Jake, it's Chinatown". In this case, "Chinatown" refers to a situation that can't be helped … because the person trying help is out of their depth. Even though Jake's realized the truth about what's happening, he's too late — and the cops are too unwilling to give him a fair hearing. At the end of the movie, Jake's suffered the same nauseating defeat that he initially suffered when he worked as a cop in Chinatown the first time]].
** The bad guys in the film want to steal water which is a natural element already free in nature. But when you live in a desert community in California, the need for water can become desperate, especially when you consider that, in the film, L.A.'s in a drought. Hollis Mulwray wanted to make sure that the water would be publicly owned, but Noah Cross, his greedy partner, wanted to continue to own the water company privately so he'd be able to make a profit and, maybe more importantly, maintain power and control over the city via the water supply. [[spoiler:Cross's]] trying to dominate a crucial natural resource, because if you can control one thing that's necessary for life (like water) naturally you can control everything else, outstripping or buying out the power of the mayor and others. [[spoiler:Noah]] ultimately wants more than money — he wants absolute power.
** [[spoiler:Noah's]] incest of Evelyn when she was around 14 reflects the above point near perfectly. The incest is the same sort of crime as water theft, except on a personal level. [[spoiler:Noah's]] secretly stealing water by misappropriating it and letting it run down channels and aqueducts at night. He's also misusing the nourishing power of water by hiding on his own land instead of letting it go to the people who are meant to have it. This can be seen as a metaphor for what he's doing to his own daughter—he's abusing her and mistreating the human power to bring forth life in the same way that he's abusing and mistreating a natural resource and its ability to bring forth life.
** During a scene where Jake and Evelyn are making out, Jake points out a black mark in the green part of Evelyn's eye that's apparently a flaw in the iris. The flaw in Evelyn's eye symbolizes the flaw in the system itself — Evelyn's a good character, but she's personally experienced the corruption bred by greed and by the hunger for power. Her father is stealing the city's water, and he's had a child with her through incest. From a distance, everything probably looks okay — but when you look closely, something's off. That's been Jake's experience throughout the whole movie. He sees that Hollis' death isn't a suicide and that he's been set up…after he learns that the woman who hired him wasn't really Evelyn. These inconsistencies eventually reveal an even more corrupt and evil state of appears than Jake could've realized. [[spoiler:The flaw in Evelyn's iris initially suggests that there's something wrong with her—like maybe she's in on her father's scheme. But in reality, the flaw lies in the family she comes from, specifically in her monstrous father]].
** If [[spoiler:Noah]] had just chucked Hollis' dead corpse into the ocean, Jake Gittes never would've been able to figure out most of the mystery. After the police pull Hollis' drowned corpse out of the reservoir, Jake goes to see the dead body at the city morgue. The mortician—appropriately named Morty—notes the irony of the situation, commenting to Jake they were in the middle of a drought, and the water commissioner still somehow drowned. The method of death is something that seems logical on its surface, but the cops are able to look into it enough to realize that someone set Hollis up for adultery to make his death look like a suicide. Yet, they don't discover as much as Jake, and don't realize that Evelyn didn't kill Hollis—the murderer was [[spoiler:Noah]].
** The American Dream in this film is really an American Nightmare. And the entire populace—with the exception of Jake Gittes—is totally blind and oblivious to all of this. We see a trippy photonegative version of the American Dream. There's see a super-rich guy, Noah Cross, devouring the economy with the help of a bunch of henchmen like Claude Mulvihill and willing white-collar drones like Russ Yelburton. People lower down on the economic scale, like the prostitute Ida Sessions, end up getting used (and/or killed). And the old people in the retirement home who unwittingly cover up [[spoiler:Noah's]] water-theft scheme? They're being gamed too. If the American Dream is dead, [[spoiler:Noah]] and his boys are the worms eating its corpse. All that the hero, Jake, can do is try to help Evelyn [[spoiler:escape the horror of life with her father—and he even fails at that]]. He has no aspirations towards the American Dream of his own that we see, no house on the hill he's striving for. Aside from trying to save the innocent, Jake's one motive is survival. He's like a more desperate, less-physically-skilled Bear Grylls.

* ItIsPronouncedTroPAY: Noah Cross constantly mispronounces Jake's last name as "Gits".[[note]]For those who haven't seen the movie, it's supposed to be pronounced "Git-eez"[[/note]]

* FamilyRelationshipSwitcheroo: [[spoiler: Katherine is thought to be Evelyn Mulwray's sister. Then she is thought to be her daughter. Turns out Katherine is both Mrs. Mulwray's sister and daughter.]]

'''Jake Gittes:''' Why are you doing it? How much better can you eat? What could you buy that you can't already afford?\\
[[spoiler:'''Noah Cross:''']] [[VisionaryVillain The future, Mr. Gittes! The future]].

--> '''Gittes:''' Why are you doing it? How much better can you eat; what can you buy that you can't already afford?
--> '''[[spoiler:Noah Cross:]]''' The future, Mr. Gitts! The future!

[[spoiler:'''Noah Cross:''']] Oh my, yes!\\

--> '''[[spoiler: Cross:]]''' The future, Mr. Gits! The future!