Saturday, May 07, 2005
Chinatown (1974)
Director: Roman Polanski
* Warning the following analysis contains a discussion of the entire film, including the ending.
I need to begin with the ending, one of the darkest, most overpowering, perfect endings in film history. It is particularly enlightening to look at it in the context of classic film noir. Chinatown is a neo-noir, meaning it is a film noir that was made in 1974 rather than in the mid 1940s - early 1950s when film noirs were first labeled as such. Without the studio system's self-imposed censorship code Roman Polanski was able to create an ending with the depth of darkness a film noir such as Chinatown demands. Many 40s and 50s classic noirs were required to supply endings where justice prevailed: that is the bad guys loose, crime and corruption are punished, the guilty are exposed, etc. For example, Billy Wilder needed the co-conspirators to be exposed (and die) in the climax of Double Indemnity (a change from the ending of the source novel by James M. Cain.) This is not to say that Double Indemnity's ending doesn't work - it does - in fact it is on my list of the best movies ever made. Though it serves as an example of the Hayes Code's requirements obligating a director to punish immorality.
No such requirements existed in 1974 for Roman Polanski. Polanski was able to provide a nasty, brutal, dark ending to a nasty, brutal, dark film. As the film ends we in the audience feel as powerless and defeated as Jake. It is if we are being drag from the final scene in shock, mirroring what is happening on screen - Jake being dragged away by his partners - not believing the film is going end without retribution for Noah Cross. "Forget it Jake, it's Chinatown", and with that pregnant line the heinous film snaps shut with unmatched revulsion, with innocence (the daughter) literally in the grip of evil (Noah). And damn if the ending doesn't work.
So what is this ending? It plays out it two sequences. The first is the breathe-taking, head-spinning scene where Jack Nicholson's Jake is trying to get the truth out of Faye Dunaway's Evelyn. Jake arrives as Evelyn is ready to flee Los Angeles. Jake thinks Evelyn murdered her husband having just found his glasses in her garden pond. (We in the audience are too convinced by this evidence, and her packed bags reinforce our belief.) We are dreadfully wrong. Jake is outraged believing Evelyn has been lying and withholding information from him. In his rage Jake slaps her again and again while she continues to (seemingly) lie about the identity of the young woman she has been hiding. "She's my sister" (slap) "she's my daughter" (slap) "sister" (slap) "daughter" (slap) "She's my sister and my daughter" - and finally Jake gets it, and we get it. (And Polanski has delivered as chilling a twist as you will find in cinema history.) The full power and brutality of John Houston's character, Noah Cross (Evelyn's father), slaps now at us. Noah raped Evelyn when she was 15. A daughter resulted from this incest, a daughter he has kept hidden in Mexico. Evelyn has decided she needs to be with her daughter and knows she must flee to escape her father's violent wrath.
Jake has finally uncovered the truth and he is determined to help Evelyn escape.
And the final chilling sequence: As Evelyn runs to her car to escape with her daughter Noah, their father, is there to stop them. Evelyn shoots Noah and (as if super-human) he barely flinches. Still Evelyn manages to get her daughter in her car and speed off but the police are on hand and shoot. We know Evelyn has been shot dead as the horn blares, the car rolls to a stop and her daughter screeches with horror. In the final moment the wailing, distraught daughter is deliver back into the hands of Noah. He has the most magnificently grim posture and evil countenance , twisted hands reach for her, an expression of wicked triumphant across his contorted lips. It is as if you expect him to throw a black cloak over her and magically fade into the shadows of Chinatown.
Jake's partners speak the last words as they pull him away from the scene: "Forget it Jake, it's Chinatown." That is, it does not matter that you know Noah is guilty of corruption, rape, incest, murder - he is more powerful than the police, more powerful than Los Angeles, more powerful than justice itself. Evil has won, and the heinous decorum is maintained in Polanski's perfect noir.
Note: Houston is devastating as Noah Cross - simply one of the most effective villains in cinema history. His few short scenes (Houston may have 5 minutes on screen) overpower the entire film - he is like a monstrous giant looming, menacing, over Nicholson, Dunaway, over the city of LA, over the film as whole - an amazingly powerful, effective and efficient performance. (Think of Robert Mitchum in Cape Fear for an equally powerful villainous performance. Now imagine Mitchum's character succeeding in his attempt to rape and murder Gregory Peck's family and you have an equivalent of Noah's awful victory in Chinatown.)
Note 2: Nicholson's character is modeled on classic tragic figures (Oedipus for example) who relentlessly and obsessively pursue their search for truth even as it will inevitably lead to their self-destruction. Jake is driven almost against his will to keep searching for the truth undeterred after being cut, shot at, and threatened with both jail and murder, and in the end you can image him gouging out his eyes a la Oedipus sickened by the truth he finally witnessed.
Story Synopsis:
Jake is a private investigator who seems to make most of his money taking pictures of his clients' spouses having affairs. The wife of the city Water Commissioner has hired him to uncover her husband's affair. He quickly gets the photos he needs; however, the incriminating photos end up on the front pages, the husband ends up dead, and Jake, we soon discover, was set-up. Evelyn, the Water Commissioner's real wife, never hired Jake. Jake, angry about being taken, embarks unknowingly on what will be a complex and dark investigation into who set him up and who killed Evelyn's husband.
An incredibly complex conspiracy slowly emerges involving water rights, incorporating the San Fernando Valley into LA, and the building of a new reservoir. Evelyn is also a mystery as Jake knows she is concealing information and hiding the young woman who her husband supposedly had an affair with. Dunaway plays Evelyn with a wonderful paradoxical combination of suspiciousness and earnestness. When Jake finds Evelyn's husband's glasses in the pond he knows she is guilty, (and we agree). We are horribly wrong.
Should you see it: At least a few times to truly appreciate the complex and bewildering story Polanski has so skillfully created.
* Warning the following analysis contains a discussion of the entire film, including the ending.
I need to begin with the ending, one of the darkest, most overpowering, perfect endings in film history. It is particularly enlightening to look at it in the context of classic film noir. Chinatown is a neo-noir, meaning it is a film noir that was made in 1974 rather than in the mid 1940s - early 1950s when film noirs were first labeled as such. Without the studio system's self-imposed censorship code Roman Polanski was able to create an ending with the depth of darkness a film noir such as Chinatown demands. Many 40s and 50s classic noirs were required to supply endings where justice prevailed: that is the bad guys loose, crime and corruption are punished, the guilty are exposed, etc. For example, Billy Wilder needed the co-conspirators to be exposed (and die) in the climax of Double Indemnity (a change from the ending of the source novel by James M. Cain.) This is not to say that Double Indemnity's ending doesn't work - it does - in fact it is on my list of the best movies ever made. Though it serves as an example of the Hayes Code's requirements obligating a director to punish immorality.
No such requirements existed in 1974 for Roman Polanski. Polanski was able to provide a nasty, brutal, dark ending to a nasty, brutal, dark film. As the film ends we in the audience feel as powerless and defeated as Jake. It is if we are being drag from the final scene in shock, mirroring what is happening on screen - Jake being dragged away by his partners - not believing the film is going end without retribution for Noah Cross. "Forget it Jake, it's Chinatown", and with that pregnant line the heinous film snaps shut with unmatched revulsion, with innocence (the daughter) literally in the grip of evil (Noah). And damn if the ending doesn't work.
So what is this ending? It plays out it two sequences. The first is the breathe-taking, head-spinning scene where Jack Nicholson's Jake is trying to get the truth out of Faye Dunaway's Evelyn. Jake arrives as Evelyn is ready to flee Los Angeles. Jake thinks Evelyn murdered her husband having just found his glasses in her garden pond. (We in the audience are too convinced by this evidence, and her packed bags reinforce our belief.) We are dreadfully wrong. Jake is outraged believing Evelyn has been lying and withholding information from him. In his rage Jake slaps her again and again while she continues to (seemingly) lie about the identity of the young woman she has been hiding. "She's my sister" (slap) "she's my daughter" (slap) "sister" (slap) "daughter" (slap) "She's my sister and my daughter" - and finally Jake gets it, and we get it. (And Polanski has delivered as chilling a twist as you will find in cinema history.) The full power and brutality of John Houston's character, Noah Cross (Evelyn's father), slaps now at us. Noah raped Evelyn when she was 15. A daughter resulted from this incest, a daughter he has kept hidden in Mexico. Evelyn has decided she needs to be with her daughter and knows she must flee to escape her father's violent wrath.
Jake has finally uncovered the truth and he is determined to help Evelyn escape.
And the final chilling sequence: As Evelyn runs to her car to escape with her daughter Noah, their father, is there to stop them. Evelyn shoots Noah and (as if super-human) he barely flinches. Still Evelyn manages to get her daughter in her car and speed off but the police are on hand and shoot. We know Evelyn has been shot dead as the horn blares, the car rolls to a stop and her daughter screeches with horror. In the final moment the wailing, distraught daughter is deliver back into the hands of Noah. He has the most magnificently grim posture and evil countenance , twisted hands reach for her, an expression of wicked triumphant across his contorted lips. It is as if you expect him to throw a black cloak over her and magically fade into the shadows of Chinatown.
Jake's partners speak the last words as they pull him away from the scene: "Forget it Jake, it's Chinatown." That is, it does not matter that you know Noah is guilty of corruption, rape, incest, murder - he is more powerful than the police, more powerful than Los Angeles, more powerful than justice itself. Evil has won, and the heinous decorum is maintained in Polanski's perfect noir.
Note: Houston is devastating as Noah Cross - simply one of the most effective villains in cinema history. His few short scenes (Houston may have 5 minutes on screen) overpower the entire film - he is like a monstrous giant looming, menacing, over Nicholson, Dunaway, over the city of LA, over the film as whole - an amazingly powerful, effective and efficient performance. (Think of Robert Mitchum in Cape Fear for an equally powerful villainous performance. Now imagine Mitchum's character succeeding in his attempt to rape and murder Gregory Peck's family and you have an equivalent of Noah's awful victory in Chinatown.)
Note 2: Nicholson's character is modeled on classic tragic figures (Oedipus for example) who relentlessly and obsessively pursue their search for truth even as it will inevitably lead to their self-destruction. Jake is driven almost against his will to keep searching for the truth undeterred after being cut, shot at, and threatened with both jail and murder, and in the end you can image him gouging out his eyes a la Oedipus sickened by the truth he finally witnessed.
Story Synopsis:
Jake is a private investigator who seems to make most of his money taking pictures of his clients' spouses having affairs. The wife of the city Water Commissioner has hired him to uncover her husband's affair. He quickly gets the photos he needs; however, the incriminating photos end up on the front pages, the husband ends up dead, and Jake, we soon discover, was set-up. Evelyn, the Water Commissioner's real wife, never hired Jake. Jake, angry about being taken, embarks unknowingly on what will be a complex and dark investigation into who set him up and who killed Evelyn's husband.
An incredibly complex conspiracy slowly emerges involving water rights, incorporating the San Fernando Valley into LA, and the building of a new reservoir. Evelyn is also a mystery as Jake knows she is concealing information and hiding the young woman who her husband supposedly had an affair with. Dunaway plays Evelyn with a wonderful paradoxical combination of suspiciousness and earnestness. When Jake finds Evelyn's husband's glasses in the pond he knows she is guilty, (and we agree). We are horribly wrong.
Should you see it: At least a few times to truly appreciate the complex and bewildering story Polanski has so skillfully created.
