Roman Polanski’s Chinatown (1974)

Forget It Jake: The Key Ways in Which Chinatown Reflects the Classic Film Noir Period

According to Todd Erickson's "Kill Me Again: Movement Becomes Genre," Roman Polanski's 1974 film Chinatown "is the only 'period noir' which manages to maintain an air of timelessness in its presentation." (Erickson 312). Chinatown is exceptional filmmaking with such essential noir elements as the non-heroic private eye, the complicated labyrinth-like plot structure, and a despairing, fatalistic worldview.

Above all, Chinatown is properly "voiced" in the classic noir style, although there is no actual voiceover used. The film stays with a single, subjective point-of-view, that of the main character, private investigator J.J. "Jake" Gittes. Polanski's camera tails Gittes as he is duped by the duplicitous woman (Evelyn Mulwray), who strings him along with lies and evasive half-truths even before Jake encounters an immoral businessman (Noah Cross) who happens to be Evelyn's father.

A detective in the vein of Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon and Philip Marlowe in Murder, My Sweet, Gittes is a much coarser fellow with fancier pretenses. For example, he attempts to cover up his rough language in front of the ladies while making certain his pocket-handkerchief is arranged correctly in the breast pocket of his tailored suit.

This duality of character further enhances the theme of the film. Gittes searches for the truth about the Mulwrays and the Department of Water and Power never even pretending to limit his search to within the boundaries of the law. At one point, he impersonates a W&P company official in order to gain access to a restricted area; in another, he willfully destroys documents in the Hall of Records for his own immediate gain.

Much like Spade, Gittes has hard-boiled sensibilities, but Jake's code has a wider scope and latitude. The bottom line for Gittes is image, how others perceive him. Indeed, his primary reason for remaining on the Mulwray case initially is that he has been duped and exposed as such in the press. Gittes has to discover the truth in order to save face, subtly enhancing the central metaphor of Chinatown: a major code of the "inscrutable" East is the tradition of allowing combatants to "save face."

In addition, Chinatown has the requisite complicated plot. Despite the twists and turns, it is plausible, and it enhances the suspension of disbelief (323). …

Finally, Chinatown's worldview is one of despair, alienation and fatalism, all celebrated traits of classic noir. … In the world of Chinatown, there are no givens, no best bets, no sure things. The entire worldview is symbolized by the place, "Chinatown." This is a place where nothing is known, a mysterious place closed to outsiders, where nothing is as it seems. In a structure similar to films of the "classic" noir period, the viewer follows Gittes, sees what he sees, knows only what he knows, gets duped right along with him, and realizes finally that one can never really know anything for certain. Most assuredly, Chinatown delivers a "vicarious experience of the nightmarish world of noir" (323).

Tracy Taylor
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