Chinatown, Essay Example

Director Roman Polanski’s 1974 film, Chinatown, may be said to have two themes.  The first is an obvious tribute to the great detective movies of the 1930s and 1940s, and film noir classics like Double Indemnity.  Everything about its mood, pacing, style, and the era in which the action takes place reinforces this, so the film could be said to be about “style” itself, and the integrity of the genre.  At the same time, there is a deeper theme, and one also reflecting the classic films Chinatown honors.  It is that nothing is ever what it appears to be, and great harm may be done because of ignorance of this.  The movie is a kind of beautiful warning, in a sense, and it accomplishes this through a consistent commitment to building suspense, as it also reveals layer upon layer of mystery.

At the heart of this process is the lead character of J.J. Gittes, a small-time detective in 1930s Los Angeles.  Gittes is cynical and has a rough past, but he is essentially a decent man.  As he moves through the strange encounters and increasing confusions of an investigation, then, he is drawn more deeply into a world beyond his understanding, and one that is far tougher than anything he has known.  This greatly emphasizes the theme, merely because Gittes is no innocent; since he is somewhat dark himself, the darkness he deals with becomes all the more powerful.  No scene better expresses this than when, toward the conclusion, the character of Evelyn Mulwray reveals that the girl she been seeking to protect is both her daughter and her sister.  When Gittes then learns that the child was not the result of incestuous rape, he believes he now understands the depths of the scenario.  Nonetheless, he still thinks he can do good and save the situation, and his actions lead to the death of Evelyn.  Only then, in the final moments, is the theme fully realized.  Good intentions are not good enough in a world essentially corrupted, and underestimating the power of that corruption may do great harm.

All of the elements of Chinatown come together to create a uniform and stylish mystery.  While many of these elements are technical, it must be said that the greatest force of the movie is the script by Robert Towne.  The plot unfolds in a complex and completely linear way, as the unraveling of one mystery only leads to the discovery of others.  There are no flashbacks, but there is a recurrent element of one often hinted at, in terms of a tragedy Gittes was a part of, years earlier in Chinatown.  This element gains power as it becomes evident that something of the same thing is happening again, and Gittes is causing danger in trying to save an innocent woman.  Suspense is the key here, and Polanski maintains it at just the right pace.

The acting is excellent all around, and that much of it is mannered, or seems a little artificial, is actually in keeping with the true natures of the characters.  Faye Dunaway’s Evelyn Mulwray, for example, is elegant and mysterious, but the air of mystery is a behavior that has become a necessary part of her life.  Similarly, Jack Nicholson’s Gittes is overtly the “tough guy,” but his life and his job demands that he present himself this way.  Interestingly, the acting in both cases here evolves, as Gittes softens and Mulwray panics into desperate fear, and these evolutions provide a stark contrast to John Houston as Evelyn’s father, Noah Cross.  His persona never changes, and this all the more accentuates how monstrous the man is.  The cinematography is, in a word, beautiful.  It is lush and vivid, capturing a kind of glamor even in the seediest locations.  In one striking example of the subtlety of the camera work, Gittes and Evelyn are in bed.  He is telling her something of his past trouble in Chinatown, and Evelyn turns her head to look at the ceiling, blowing smoke from her cigarette.  In that instant, Dunaway’s cheekbones flare and she suddenly takes on an Asian look.  The visual shock reinforces powerfully the mystery of all that Evelyn represents.  The editing as well stays true to the tempo of a noir film, alternately quick-paced and  in an easy rhythm.  The dual effect is most evident when Gittes and Evelyn are trapped in the lobby of the rest home they visit to gain information.  The scene is tightly shot, as Gittes understand he is about to be beaten, or worse.  The editing when Evelyn speeds up the drive to rescue him is exciting and realistic, as the action stays on a human scale.  Equally importantly, as noted, every physical component of the film creates an atmosphere both realistic and stylized.  As Evelyn is wealthy, she wears beautiful clothes, just as Gittes always has a shabby look to him.  The sets present a very 1930s California, from modest bungalows to Spanish-style estates, and all of this has a real texture to it.  If Polanski is creating an illusion of a bygone place and time, he creates it down to the last detail.

Polanski’s style, or the style he adopts for this film, is reflected in almost every scene.  One vivid example of this is when Evelyn first goes to Gittes’s office.  He has been led to believe another woman is Evelyn, and the real one is there to warn him to stay out of her affairs.  The plot point aside, the scene works because Polanski keeps his camera in the grungy office space tightly, and this reinforces how out of place the elegant Evelyn is in this setting.  The tightness also emphasizes the beginnings of powerful tension, sexual and otherwise, between the main characters.  Another scene that reveals Polanski’s confidence is in the garden of the Cross home.  The sun is shining, and the Asian gardener is muttering something about “glass” being bad for the pond.  The scene seems like an idle moment, but the viewer senses, because of the tautness of the film, that an important clue is somewhere here.  Gittes is a little puzzled, but he is not aware of this importance, and this further encourages the viewer to pay attention.

Then, towards the film’s end, the momentum builds to present truly striking scenes.  In an understated way, Gittes’s confrontation with John Houston’s character may be the most important scene in the film, and Polanski’s direction and Towne’s writing keep it moving like a dangerous turn in the road.  Here, Gittes is lost, and he cannot fathom why Cross would go to such lengths to divert the city’s water supply..  Cross replies in a way equally baffled, saying it is for the future.  In this moment, basic decency confronts sheer ambition, and there can be no good outcome.  Finally, after Gittes seeks to intervene and urges Evelyn and her daughter to flee in a car, the culmination occurs in a stunning sequence.  Shots are fired after them, as we see the car drive on down the road.  Then the car, while distant, can be seen to have stopped, and over the street sounds come the twin noises of a girl screaming and a car horn going on and on.  This is a powerfully inventive way of presenting what is a murder, and the emotional impact is all the stronger because there is, in only a few moments, the real sense that Evelyn is getting away.

Perhaps the film’s most famous scene occurs just before this attempted escape, when Gittes demands to know from Evelyn the identity of the girl she is hiding.  He has assumed the girl was a lover of her late husband, even as he also knows a great deal more is going on.  She tells him the girls is her daughter; he smacks her face, hard.  She then says the girl is her sister, he strikes her again, and she then alternately keeps making both claims until the truth is understood.  What makes this scene so excellent is that the inherent drama of it is never overblown.  It is simply an angry man hitting a woman, and one who feels no need to strike back because her secret is so terrible.  Reinforcing the scene’s power is the momentum beneath the surface.  More exactly, even as Gittes is stunned, there is no time to take everything in, and he can only try to save her by instinct.  All of this comes across because Polanski honors the integrity of the moment as the complex and disturbing reality it is.  He trusts the writing, the acting, and the simple living room set to accomplish all they are capable of, and this confidence is brilliant direction.

On a personal level, Chinatown is a film that generates a conflict in me, and ironically because it is so well-made.   The entire movie, from the writing to the make-up, is superbly crafted, as the story it tells unfolds in a masterful and dramatic manner.  The characters are revealed as people are known in life, as events occurs and their true natures are uncovered.  The dialogue is authentic to the period without being obviously so, or labored.  Beyond all of this, the film takes the reader into the being of Gittes.  We journey with him, feeling his frustrations as he tries to make sense out of a mystery that seems to grow ever larger.  We may not like him, but we can easily understand him.  Add to this a stunning revelation, and what remains is nearly a perfect film.

I admire Chinatown, then, very much.  Scenes from it will stay with me, I am sure, and it is gratifying to see the result when so much brilliant talent comes together on a film.  This is also why, however, I have a conflict.  There is no way around despair as being the ultimate message of Chinatown.   In many films, the forces of evil or greed do triumph in the end, but there are still reasons to value decency left.  With this movie, all the viewer can hope for is that only the knowledge that something good was attempted can be enough.  Victims are left to survive, but the great good that was sought, that of releasing Evelyn and her daughter from the grip of Cross, is destroyed, and the final words spoken to Gittes reaffirm the pointlessness of struggling against evil.  It is, he is told, the way things happen in Chinatown.  That Cross then takes his surviving daughter/granddaughter away crowns the ultimate loss of decency.  The audience, just like Gittes, is told to move on and simply accept another crushing defeat.  While no other ending could do justice to the film, and while I believe Chinatown ranks as a modern masterpiece, I must confess that it is an extremely depressing one.