Our subject today is a legendary film noir and an American classic of the seventies; from a legendary and highly controversial director it. With high critical acclaim and a lot of fanfare it's a multi-layered and expertly executed film noir. Portraying a dark, sinister, and corrupt underworld, the inspiration and background of this film are even more tragic and unfortunate. Featuring phenomenal acting, an iron-clad script, and flawless direction it stirs emotions in its audience just as it did upon release on its fiftieth anniversary.
So if you're like me and you enjoy film and the impact and emotions they convey then grab a glass of your preferred liquid and join me for the next little while. For me that's a glass of bourbon from our friends at Buffalo Trace distillery in Kentucky. So sit back, relax, and let's talk about the love of film. Welcome to Glazed Cinema.
Ah Chinatown, a classic film noir featuring one of my favorite actors. This episode comes to us by way of recommendation from one of our listeners, ReBecah. ReBecah, if you're listening I hope you enjoy the show today and thanks for your support. Chinatown follows one private investigator down a rabbit hole of deceit, corruption, withheld abuses, and violence.
Our film begins with a man looking at pictures of two people making love in in the woods. As he rifles through the photos the camera pans out as he throws them over his shoulder, distraught by the reality he has been confronted with. Sitting in a chair across from him is a man in a white suit. Spinning around he pops open a cabinet and grabs a bottle whiskey, pouring a glass for the now crying man. After some consoling he politely sees the man out of his office before a woman is called in behind him. The man in the white suit is J.J. Gittes, otherwise known as Jack and this is his place of business. We can tell that his next client up for consult is wealthy as she dons a fur coat, pearl bracelets, and a pearl necklace. She is suspicious that her husband, Hollis Mulwray is cheating on her with another woman. After agreeing to take on the case Jack sets out to monitor her husband and get proof as to if he is or is not cheating. As he gets deeper and deeper into the case however he finds himself entrenched in a world unfamiliar and far more cut throat than he could have ever imagined.
Chinatown is a neo-noir film that takes place in Los Angeles during the 1930s. Like the noir films of old our subject today features a lot of the same attributes, themes, and tones. Traditionally noir films are veiled in a brooding sense of doom, shot in black and white and bathed in shadow. The main characters usually exude a sense of cool calmness with a boiling intensity, brought about by the aggression of the world they inhabit. Classics of the genre include The Maltese Falcon, Dial M for Murder, The Big Sleep, and Kiss Me Deadly among others.
Chinatown is among the finest products of the New Hollywood movement. If that sounds familiar there's likely good reason. Some of the best American films in history emerged from it like The Graduate, Midnight Cowboy, and The Godfather. We also dipped our toes into with some of our previous episodes including Five Easy Pieces and The Last Picture Show. Before we get too much more into our subject today we should pause for a bit and discuss what was behind this film. Things including the source of the plot and what influenced the artistic expression that was the driving force behind it.
This film being a noir deals with a dark and shady underworld, hidden under the surface of society and in depicting a dark world there are bad people depicted. As a warning, for those sensitive to subjects of abuse of a minor or rape, they might find certain themes within this movie unsettling. The themes inclusion is to create apathy with the film's villain and while these themes are mentioned nothing is shown visually.
With Chinatown the director reveals a higher level of his creative mind than previous efforts and the reason for this can be reveled in his past. To learn about this though we have to travel eight years before this project began.
1969 was a year of excitement and turmoil in America. Nixon had become president, protests over Vietnam and civil rights erupted on campuses across the country, Neil Armstrong inspired the world by walking on the moon, and in a small town in New York State over 400,000 gathered to celebrate music, peace, and harmony at Woodstock. At the height of the summer Polanski was visiting friends and family in Europe. At that time he was a very famous and highly sought after director, having made critically acclaimed films like Repulsion, Knife in the Water, and a horror classic that debuted the year prior, in 1968, Rosemary's Baby. While in Europe tragic news from back home in Los Angeles would dismantle the world as he knew it. On August 9th, his home had been invaded by a group of people with nothing but chaos, destruction, and evil in their minds. His wife Sharon Tate, who was pregnant a the time and two of their mutual friends were murdered in the early morning hours by those who would become know as the Manson family. Worse, an ill-experienced press media suggested that he was behind the murders, incorrectly pointing to Rosemary's Baby as a connection, which was as much of a paper thin and baseless connection one can make. This along with the tragic loss of his wife and unborn baby made him spiral into grief and solitude.
Following that tragic day in August, Polanski returned to directing two years later. He released efforts that were abstract, tragic, and what some have coined nihilistic. These efforts weren't commercially successful and were considered a flop, especially the latter of them, which only made $64 in its opening week. Producer Robert Evans saw an opportunity to provide the director a better canvas and a reboot to his career and coaxed him to direct today's subject. So in walks Polanski, returning to the noir genre after in a moment in twelve years, emotionally raw, creatively open, and working with an all-star ensemble.
It takes a village as they say and making a movie is no different. For this effort that village was pretty star studded and the performances of its main players make it shine. Of those main players is Jack Nicholson, Noah Cross, and Faye Dunaway. Huston plays Noah Cross, the villain in this movie. Cross is an old man who is extremely wealthy and believes that what he does is righteous. Cross alongside Mulwray helped build the water department and his reputation is built on that history. Despite his exterior of a well to do and respected man, underneath the surface he is arrogant, selfish, ruthless, and shady. Dunaway plays Evelyn Cross Mulwray who is married to the man Gittes tails, Hollis Mulwray. Dunaway is an attractive and well to-do woman, but also very down to earth. She also plays her cards close to the chest and as the movie goes on we come to understand why. Dunaway plays Evelyn extremely well and acts the various tones and emotions of Evelyn throughout the film perfectly. Nicholson plays our lead role of Jake Gittes. Gittes, is on a new case, tailing his wealthy client's husband to see if he's cheating on her. His client's husband is a an engineer who is currently working for the city on a project to bring water into the sad and nearly dried up LA river. Nicholson plays Jake as only he can, which is to say that his range and perfection of delivery is such a signature of his that I really enjoy. The character appears in every scene, so we have to want to follow him and thanks to the dialogue and Nicholson's performance, we are glad to do so. As Gittes follows him around town we follow him into various settings. One minute we're inside a government meeting, the next we're outside on the river bed itself. Soon Gittes finds a lot more than what he signed up for. Somehow the web of mystery and danger he finds himself entrapped somehow keeps unfurling new twists and turns.
This film was written by Robert Towne, who by the time this project began had wrote the screenplay for Drive He Said, The Last Detail, and the groundbreaking Bonnie and Clyde. The latter of which is widely considered the spark of the New Hollywood movement. The script that Towne put to paper is quite extraordinary and earned him several awards for screenwriting, including an Academy Award. There are several instances of irony, foreshadowing, and nods to a past unseen, which are great drivers of plot, interest, and depth. Every scene's dialogue hints at something, offers multiple purposes, and more importantly rolls the plot along like a well-oiled machine. The screenplay is often considered among the greatest of all-time and for good reason.
One of the more intriguing things about this movie is the neighborhood which the movie shares its namesake. Chinatown has a connection to Jake's unseen, but whispered past. Within those whispers is the connection between Gittes and Chinatown, where he used to be a police officer. There are mentioning of his previous dealings, the troubles he experienced, and the rather sour taste in his mouth, but nothing concrete is ever offered by him about this point in his life. Through these instances Gittes and Chinatown become more mysterious, but those mysteries offer different dividends to their subjects. The mystery around Gittes offers an empathetic view while Chinatown looms like a warning or urban legend. Outside of basing some connection to the neighborhood of Chinatown, the script also touches on history of LA. In fact, a decent portion of the mystery that surrounds it is inspired by historical events from Southern California's water history.
The mystery that Gittes finds himself entangled within mirrors historical events of Los Angeles involving the impetus of the Los Angeles River. Now the LA River was always around, but it in 1904 it started to become clear to the city that they needed a more reliable source. The reason why this was needed was fairly simple and straight-forward. You see the city's population at that time was around 200,000 strong, a growth of approximately 150,000 people in just ten years. People were flocking west to the city of Angels and this tremendous growth was wreaking havoc on the river. Scientists could see that if they didn't start making a plan now the city's future water could be nearly tapped out.
To solve this the city hired a man named William Mulholland to supply water to the city using a sustainable source...no easy task. Mulholland's idea was to take water from other water supported lands by building a channel to take the more sustainable water source to the City of Angles. After some consideration he and the then LA mayor Fred decided that their new source of water would come from the Owens River, miles northeast of the city. Owens River Valley at the time played host to a small agricultural community that depended on the water of the region. The aqueduct project took three years and over $20,000,000 to complete. Once it did the city began to grow even faster, growing to one million inhabitants in 1920. There came a day though when more water was needed and Mulholland returned to Owens River. This time however the area's farmers and residents had had enough.
The city had already been damaged by the aqueduct as businesses, schools, and farms had closed down. Banks even stopped giving out loans, but now the city was after the local lake. The residents rebelled and the tensions between the two cities mounted in what would be coined the Water Wars. The conflict saw parts of the aqueduct bombed by Owens River locals in an attempt to return their water. Unfortunately LA had its water and Owens River Valley community all but became a ghost town. There's a lot of crazy things that happened during that period and if you'd like to read more it's an interesting dive into history.
In Chinatown Hollis Mulwray Mulholland and early on in the movie we see references to the Owens River Valley residents. One of which is pretty memorable as he unleashes his flock of sheep on the government assembly floor. This nod to LA's history makes a clever plot point and unearths a very touchy and controversial subject matter form the area's past.
Chinatown had been a maybe on my list when I first compiled it before I started Glazed Cinema back in 2020. It's a great movie and one worthy of a deep dive and recommendation, but my reservations have and always will lie with the director...but I'll get into more of that later on.
Apart from the history of Polanski and the city, there's also an ode to Noir history in the man who plays the main antagonist. Playing the role of wealthy citrus farmer Noah Cross is John Huston. Huston was a great director with a pretty impressive filmography. Of those great pictures were some of the very best in film noir including The Asphalt Jungle and of course The Maltese Falcon. Huston plays the character of Cross brilliantly, showcasing that generational wealth type power and arrogance. To me he reads almost like William Zantzinger in Bob Dylan's The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carrol. Here Huston and his goons cause frustration, anger, and disgust to take hold as we root for Gittes to take him down.
Now I can't talk about this movie without talking about the elephant in the room, whish is its director. I am the first to admit that Polanski has great skill, vision, and an eye for detail and those attributes among others have helped him produce some great movies. I like to think of myself being able to separate person from work of art unless that is impossible to distinguish. However, I can't and won't distinguish person from role, in other words person and director. I say that because while Polanski has contributed some great works of cinematic art he himself is on my no-go list.
The reason being is simple enough, I dislike him and the choices he's made. Roman Polanski is likely the most controversial director in cinematic history because of his personal life. Polanski has a history of abusing minors and sexual abuse. In fact he was all but convicted of those crimes three years after the release of our subject today, to which he fled the country for Europe where he still resides today, having not paid for his crimes. He apparently has had new charges brought against him for a separate, but similar incident that occurred in 1975. It's for these reasons why Chinatown was a maybe on my initial list, however this film was prior to those actions and as a film and a film alone it is an extremely well done and very good.
Chinatown boasts some pretty great scenes and moments, but one of my favorites is when Jake and Noah first meet. They're eating lunch together outside and the two deal in a verbal jousting session, which is something to behold. A great insight into Cross is his response to Jake's statement about what he knows about Noah, which is that he's rich and too respectable to have his name in the newspapers. To that Noah responds, "Of course I'm respectable, I'm old...Politicians, ugly buildings, and whores all get respectable if they last long enough." This line hints that he is not a respectable man, but thanks to his age he comes across that way. Two great actors, Huston and Nicholson delivering fantastic performances and showing their greatness.
The ending of this movie is a thing of legend and closes with a line that is simultaneously ambiguous while making all the sense in the world, hinting at those whispers of Jake's past. Originally it was written a different way, but Polanski insisted that it end his way and so it did. Chinatown has a reputation its earned through its greatness and timelessness. If you're in the mood for a mysterious film-noir, look no further than this classic of the 70s. I don't think you'll be disappointed.
If you'd like to watch Chinatown for yourself I'm pleased to say that you can find it on a plethora of streaming services. At the time of this recording you can find it on Netflix. Netflix offers a variety of original and non-original movies, tv shows, and documentaries for your viewing pleasure. Netflix offers pricing plans of $6.99 per month with ads, $15.49 per month for Standard, and $22.99 per month for Premium plans.
Apart from Netflix, you can also find it on Paramount Plus. Paramount Plus offers a catalog of TV Shows and Movies, including films released under the film studio of Paramount, like our subject today. Pricing plans include $5.99 per month or $59.99 per year.
You can also find Chinatown on Kanopy. Kanopy is a really great service with a vast array of offerings and through the support of the public library system you can enjoy the service free of charge by adding your library card info.
Chinatown can also be found on Pluto TV. Pluto TV offers a lot of content ranging from TV shows, movies, sports, news and game shows and the best part is it's free of charge.
Lastly, you can also find it on Prime Video, YouTube, Vudu, Apple TV, and Google Play for $3.99 to rent.
If you like this podcast, tell your friends and follow us on Instagram and Facebook. Each week there will be new content including hints about episodes before they air. If you'd like to learn more about the podcast, visit our website at glazedcinema.com. There you'll find more info about the show and a place to submit ideas for future episodes. Your submission might become a part of our programming like today's subject. For film fans who are hearing impaired, the blog page on our website also festures each episode in written form as well. As always, thanks for listening and I hope to see you next time with another beverage and another fine film on Glazed Cinema.