38. Chinatown

Roman Polanski, 1974

“Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.”

In the sixties and seventies, there were a number of movies, like The Wild Bunch, Once Upon a Time in the West, and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, which turned the Western genre on it’s ear by being movies not about the West but about the end of the West. In many ways, I think of Chinatown as doing the same sort of thing with the noir genre. The typical noir detective film is about a courageous, gutsy detective who hits the streets, gets in over his head, but, through asking all the right questions, solves the mystery and wins out in the end. Ultimately, what many of these detective movies are saying is that it’s good to ask questions. Asking questions saves the day.

Then there’s Chinatown, a movie where every question detective Jake Gittes asks reveals another black scar. It is also a movie which builds to a tragic conclusion that makes both Jake and ourselves wonder if it was at all worth it. The film seems to be saying that maybe it’s better to just leave well enough alone, not for the sake of justice, but for the sake of sanity and for the preservation of the lives of those involved as well as the fragile lies on which those lives are based.

If you haven’t seen Chinatown, you may want to stop reading. From here on out, I’m going to be discussing the film’s conclusion. You see, Chinatown does a number of things the typical sort of film noir detective story avoids (by the way, I want to make an exception for revolutionary noir films like The Maltese Falcon right now). Perhaps most noticeable is the lack of a voice over narration on the part of Gittes. Instead of his flashing back and telling us what’s going on, making sure we’re caught up with what’s going on at every moment, a la Sunset Boulevard, the film simply follows Gittes in his investigation, letting us discover clues as he does so that we can come to the same shocking conclusions he does at the same time he does. Indeed, the film builds to a terrific close that only would have been diluted by the inclusion of omniscient narration, which may well have tipped the hat too early. You see, the film follows Gittes, played by the incomparable Jack Nicholson, as he investigates the murder of the head of the Water Department in Los Angeles. He knows that the man, Hollis was seeing a girl. This girl is of peculiar interest to both Hollis’ widow Evelyn, Faye Dunaway in probably her best film role, and Evelyn’s father, Noah Cross, played by the always terrific John Huston, no relation. Well, Jake eventually starts to have an affair with Evelyn, this is a film noir after all, as he discovers Noah’s plan to buy up huge amounts of unwatered land which he will then run water to and make millions. Meanwhile, this girl is floating around. Soon enough, he figures out that the girl is in a house with Evelyn. Now, here comes the end of the film. Normally, I wouldn’t go into it, but this is a big part of why I love this movie. It’s such a smart, tragic development and it is one of those film scenes, this coming scene when Jake figures it out, that lives in my mind. So, Jake goes to this house and confronts Evelyn. He starts smacking her around, pretty brutally, wanting to know who the girl is. “She’s my sister,” says Evelyn. Smack. “She’s my daughter.” Smack. “She’s my sister.” Smack. “She’s my daughter.” Evelyn is in hysterics, but what she’s saying is the truth. The girl is Evelyn’s sister and her daughter: the product of an affair between herself and her father. In the end, Evelyn tries to take her daughter/sister away in a car. Noah doesn’t want her to go and despite Jake’s accusations and evidence there in the streets of Chinatown, the police won’t arrest Noah. Evelyn speeds of with her and Noah’s daughter. The police aim and fire, killing Evelyn and ensuring that Noah will get a hold of his daughter. There is no justice. No one wins. That’s Chinatown.