Chinatown is a 1974 American neo-noirWasson, Sam. The Big Goodbye. Chinatown and the Last Years of Hollywood, Flatiron Books, 2020. mystery film directed by Roman Polanski and written by Robert Towne. It stars Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway, with supporting performances from John Huston, John Hillerman, Perry Lopez, Burt Young, Joe Mantell, Bruce Glover, James Hong and Diane Ladd. The film's story is inspired by the California water wars which were a series of disputes over Southern California water at the beginning of the 20th century that resulted in Los Angeles securing water rights in the Owens Valley. Produced by Robert Evans and distributed by Paramount Pictures, Chinatown was Polanski's final film made in the United States.
Released on June 20, 1974, the film received critical acclaim, with praise for the narrative and screenwriting, Nicholson and Dunaway's performances, cinematography, and Polanski's direction. Chinatown led the 47th Academy Awards with 11 nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director (Polanski), Best Actor (Nicholson), and Best Actress (Dunaway), with Towne winning for Best Original Screenplay. At the 32nd Golden Globe Awards, the film won 4 awards, including Best Motion Picture – Drama, Best Director and Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama (Nicholson). It also received 11 nominations at the 28th British Academy Film Awards, including Best Film, and won 3 awards: Best Direction (Polanski), Best Screenplay (Towne, who was also recognized at the same event for his screenplay for The Last Detail) and Best Actor in a Leading Role (Nicholson).
In 2008, the American Film Institute ranked Chinatown #2 on its list of the top ten mystery films. In 1991, it was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant." It is widely regarded as one of the greatest films ever made.
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 match the acclaim of its predecessor.
Plot In 1937 Los Angeles, a woman identifying herself as Evelyn Mulwray hires private investigator J. J. "Jake" Gittes to trail her husband, Hollis, the chief engineer at the Department of Water and Power. Gittes photographs Hollis in the company of a young woman and the pictures make their way into the Post-Record, exposing their apparent affair. Gittes is then confronted by the real Evelyn Mulwray, who threatens to sue him. He concludes that the impostor was using him to discredit Hollis.
Gittes crosses paths with his former colleague, LAPD Lieutenant Lou Escobar, when Hollis's corpse is found in a reservoir. Investigating further, he discovers that huge quantities of water are being released from the reservoir each night, despite the fact that the city is in the midst of a drought. Water Department Security Chief Claude Mulvihill warns him off, and he has his nose slashed by one of Mulvihill's henchmen.
Gittes receives a call from Ida Sessions, the woman who posed as Evelyn. She refuses to say who hired her, but urges Gittes to check the Post-Record obituary section. Now working for Evelyn, Gittes investigates Hollis's death. He learns that Hollis was once the business partner of Evelyn's wealthy father, Noah Cross. Cross offers to double Gittes's fee if he finds Hollis's supposed mistress, who has disappeared.
Public records reveal that much of the Northwest Valley has recently changed ownership. Gittes recognizes one of the buyers' names from the obituary section; the obituary indicates that he had been dead for a week when the deal was closed. Gittes and Evelyn bluff their way into the retirement home where the buyer had lived and discover that many of the other residents are "buyers" too, although they have no knowledge of this fact. A suspicious staff member calls Mulvihill, but Gittes and Evelyn escape him and his thugs and hide at her mansion, where they sleep together. Later that night, Gittes follows Evelyn to a house where he sees her comforting the missing girl. When confronted, Evelyn claims the girl is her sister, Katherine.
A call from Escobar summons Gittes to Ida's apartment; she has been murdered. Escobar reveals that Hollis had saltwater in his lungs, indicating that he did not drown in the reservoir. He suspects Evelyn is responsible for her husband's murder and tells Gittes to produce her quickly. At the Mulwray residence, Gittes retrieves a pair of bifocals from the saltwater garden pond.
Gittes confronts Evelyn about both Katherine, who she now claims is her daughter, and her husband, whom she denies murdering. Frustrated, he repeatedly slaps Evelyn until she breaks down and reveals that Katherine is both her sister and daughter; the girl's father is Cross, who impregnated Evelyn when she was 15. She tells Gittes that the glasses he found did not belong to Hollis, because 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 estate, having deduced that Cross dropped his bifocals when he drowned Hollis in the pond. Cross reveals that he is behind both the water shortage and the land grab in the Northwest Valley. Once the land is his, he will obtain a contract from the city to build a reservoir there. He discredited and killed Hollis when the latter came close to uncovering the scheme.
Cross has Mulvihill take the glasses from Gittes at gunpoint. Gittes is then forced to drive them to the rendezvous in Chinatown, where the police are waiting. Escobar detains Gittes as Cross attempts to claim Katherine. Evelyn shoots Cross in the arm and tries to escape with Katherine, but the police open fire, killing her. Cross takes a distraught Katherine away, and Escobar orders Gittes released. As Gittes is led away by his associates, one tells him, "Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown."
Cast
Jack Nicholson as J. J. "Jake" Gittes Faye Dunaway as Evelyn Cross-Mulwray John Huston as Noah Cross Perry Lopez as Lou Escobar John Hillerman as Russ Yelburton Burt Young as Curly 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 Loach Joe Mantell as Lawrence Walsh Bruce Glover as Duffy Nandu Hinds as Sophie James O'Reare as lawyer James Hong as Kahn Beulah Quo as Maid Jerry Fujikawa as Gardener Belinda Palmer as Katherine Cross Roy Roberts as Mayor Bagby Noble Willingham as Councilman Rance Howard as Irate farmer Elizabeth Harding as Curly's wife Paul Jenkins, Lee de Broux, and Bob Golden as policemen
Production 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 Evans for $25,000 to write his own story, Chinatown, to which Evans agreed.* Thomson, David (2005). The Whole Equation: A History of Hollywood. Towne had originally hoped to also direct Chinatown, but realized that by taking Evans' money, he would lose control of the project's future and his role as a director.
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 was inspired by and loosely based on Irish immigrant William Mulholland (1855–1935) according to Mulholland's granddaughter."William Mulholland Gave Water to LA and Inspired Chinatown " by Jon Wilkman, The Daily Beast, February 28, 2016 Mulholland was the superintendent and chief engineer of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, who oversaw the construction of the aqueduct that carries water from the Owens Valley to Los Angeles."Catherine Mulholland dies at 88; historian wrote key biography of famed grandfather " by Elaine Woo, Los Angeles Times, July 7, 2011 Mulholland was considered by many to be the man who made Los Angeles possible by building the Los Angeles Aqueduct in the early 1900s. The feat of engineering brought the water necessary for urban expansion from the Owens Valley to Los Angeles, whose growth was constrained by the limits of the Los Angeles River. Mulholland credited Fred Eaton, then mayor of Los Angeles, with the idea to secure water for the city from the Owens Valley.
Although the character of Hollis Mulwray was relatively minor in the film and he was killed in the early part of the movie, the events of Mulholland's life were portrayed through both the character of Mulwray and other figures in the movie. This portrayal, along with other changes to actual events that inspired Chinatown, such as the time frame which was some thirty years earlier than that of the movie, were some of the liberties with facts of Mulholland's life that the movie takes.
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",Brook, Vincent. Land of Smoke and Mirrors: A Cultural History of Los Angeles; Rutgers University Press; 2013; 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 hundreds of deaths. This alludes to the St. Francis Dam disaster of March 12, 1928. Unlike the character of Mulwray, who was concerned about the dam in Chinatown, Mulholland's role in the disaster diverged from the events in the film. Mulholland had inspected the St. Francis Dam after the dam keeper Tony Harnischfeger requested it, when Harnischfeger became concerned about the safety of the dam upon discovering cracks and brown water leaking from its base, which indicated to him the erosion of the dam's foundation. Mulholland inspected the dam at around 10:30 in the morning, declaring that all was well with the structure. Just before midnight that same evening, a massive failure of the dam occurred. The dam's failure inundated the Santa Clara River Valley, including the town of Santa Paula, with flood water, causing the deaths of at least 431 people. The event effectively ended Mulholland's career.* Reisner, Marc (1986). Cadillac Desert.
The plot of Chinatown is also drawn from another event. In the movie, water is being purposely released in order to drive the land owners out and create support for a dam through an artificial drought. The event that the movie refers to occurred in late 1903 and 1904 when underground water levels plummeted and water usage rose precipitously. Rather than a deliberate release, Mulholland was able to figure out that because of faulty valves and gates in the water system, large quantities of water were being released in the overflow sewer system and then into the ocean. Mulholland was able to stop the leaks.
Script