MovieChat Forums > Chinatown (1974) Discussion > What Made Chinatown Great?

What Made Chinatown Great?

posted 5 years ago by ecarle (14979)
9 replies | jump to latest

MAJOR SPOILERS

Eh...what makes any great movie great?

And I say that about Chinatown with maybe a couple of reservations about it. For instance, I've always felt that, given how great and intricate the mystery is, and how powerful the revelations are...the ending is a bit too pat in its "downer-ness" and a bit too coincidental in what happens(that sidekick cops shot got her THERE?)

Befitting the mid-seventies, the film is also perhaps a bit too realistic and straightforward to play on the more dream-like scale of , say, Vertigo.

But that's about it -- oh, maybe one more: as dramatic as Dunaway's big revelation is to Nicholson, I've always felt, with his cigarette dangling from his mouth, Nicholson's trying too hard to be Bogart in this scene, slapping the woman around and knocking her into a table with a sound effect that sounds like he's breaking a chair over her head.

But that's it...the rest is greatness. But what kind?

And for what reasons?

PERIOD PIECE: The early seventies at the movies sure had a lot of period pieces. Nostalgia reigned:

Summer of '42
The Godfather
The Way We Were
The Sting
The Great Gatsby

Chinatown fit snugly into those films, period-wise. It was closest in time, I believe, to the era of The Sting. And the attention to period detail here mattered. We felt that we were right there, LIVING in 1930's LA as it existed, and as the people existed, right then...from City Hall to the distant farmlands and their "Okie" denizens. (Interestingly, Hollywood and its denizens don't factor into this LA story at all.)

QUALITY OF PRODUCTION: 1975's "Farewell My Lovely" was an LA period piece detective story , too, with the same cinematographer (John Alonzo.) But "Farewell" looks kinda cheap and fuzzy and "mushy." "Chinatown" is filled with burnished wide screen images of LA as sun-dappled and sinister. There are some scenes at sunset to create great mood, too. And that's just the cinematography. In an era when too many movies were made in gritty documentary style (high end was The French Connection; but low end was most Charles Bronson movies), Chinatown looked polished, gleaming, "well off."

MUSICAL SCORE: The music makes the movie, a lot of the time. Psycho. Vertigo. The Magnificent Seven. Breakfast at Tiffany's. Jaws. Star Wars. Here we have a master, Jerry Goldsmith, MAINLY giving us an opening credit theme that conveys EXACTLY how to take the movie we are about to see: as sad and painful and nostalgic...with a touch of mystery. The rest of the score has its tough, macho, atonal moments...but nostalgia and sadness win out in the end. Its beautiful.

THE SCREENPLAY: Robert Towne doctored a lot of scripts, and wrote or co-wrote a few other scripts, but this was his solo "baby": "Screenplay by Robert Towne." This won him an Oscar and made him a legend. And even if it is evidently director Roman Polanski who changed the ending to tragic, against Towne's wishes, his name's on it and it sure is great right up until that ending, and the ending is considered great enough by many.

The screenplay was revolutionary in several quiet ways. The "time bomb" waiting the entire movie to explode was a frank discussion of incest..and physical proof (The sister, the daughter) of its taking place. Incest had been SUGGESTED in movies from the 30's through the 60's. But it took 1974 to get right into it, and to confront both the ugly side(papa) and the sensitive side(a daughter is born, to be loved and protected by the mother.) And this: when Nicholson asks Dunaway if her father raped her...she says no. "Understand?" That's an ever tougher place to go...backed up later when Noah Cross says "At the right place and the right time, people are capable of ANYTHING."

But as landmark as the incest was in Chinatown, something ELSE landmark preceded that: the idea of fixing a private eye mystery on an investigation of California water policy and corporate greed(and power-seeking -- as Noah Cross says , all he craves to buy now is "the future, Mr. Gittes!)

The water politics in Chinatown made it a "film for adults." By comparson, the Raymond Chandler mystery at the heart of Farewell My Lovely with Robert Mitchum the next year was the usual small scale love-and-gangsters stuff...great on its own famous terms...but not "important." Water policy in Los Angeles circa 1937 was important and that it is heading towards an intersect with incest...this was quite a script.

[–] [deleted] 5 years ago

PERFECT ecarle.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Thanks.

And I had a little more...

[–] [deleted] 5 years ago

I too remember the abundance of period pieces of the 70's. Let's not forget
Whats The Matter With Helen (1971)
Murder On The Orient Express (1974)
Cabaret (1972)
and the popularity of tv's The Waltons'.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Ah, yes.

I guess we have some today too..but so many of these period pieces were really big hits.

Perhaps given the "societal shake ups" of the late 60's and 70's, audiences craved "a time machine to a simpler past."

Even only about ten years past -- American Graffiti about 1962 was a huge hit in 1973.

But Chinatown offers some irony: its the 30's, but everybody is cussing and having sex like its the 70's.

So that's where all those babies came from who were adults in the 70s!

[–] [deleted] 5 years ago

Here's a few more:
The Great Waldo Pepper (1975)
Julia (1977)
The Front Page (1974)
Funny Lady (1975)

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

JACK NICHOLSON; As Chinatown producer Robert Evans pointed out, Nicholson was a star by the time he made Chinatown...but not a "romantic leading man." Nicholson had been making quintessential down-n-dirty early seventies movies (Easy Rider, Five Easy Pieces, The Last Detail) that had nothing of the lushness and polish of Chinatown. Suddenly, here he was, in a Bogart role in a big budget production with no expense spared. Other old time stars peeked out from under, too: James Cagney(Jack's pugnacious qualities.) Cary Grant(how striking Jack looked in a nice suit with his handsome face.)

But Jack signed on for a screenwriter's conceit in Chinatown that messed heavily with his "romantic leading man debut." He's looking great for about a third of the movie and them WHAM! a thug(Roman Polanski cameo) slices his nostril open with a knife, and Nicholson's young, thin, handsome face is obscured by a big bandage for 1/3 of the film and ugly black stitches for the final stretch. It was diabolical: a handsome romantic leading man with a disfigured face. Only in the 70's.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

FAYE DUNAWAY: Dunaway to the 70's was rather like Shirley MacLaine to the sixties: she worked all the time because the more plentiful male stars needed "a girl" to work against. Streisand produced her own material. Fonda was only semi-employable(and turned down Chinatown!) Candice Bergen worked a lot, but lacked true talent. This left Dunaway as the "go to gal" for George C. Scott(Oklahoma Crude), Jack Nicholson(Chinatown) Paul Newman and Steve McQueen(The Towering Inferno); Michael York and Oliver Reed(The Three Musketeers), Robert Redford(Three Days of the Condor),William Holden (Network), and Jon Voigh(The Champ). Dunaway was so busy during this time, that she quit The Wind and the Lion(with Sean Connery) over exhaustion(second-best Candice Bergen took the role.)

Network would win her the Oscar, but between Bonnie and Clyde and Chinatown, Dunaway didn't have a classic or a hit. Chinatown was a mini-comeback and Dunaway LOOKED right for the role...somewhat Asian, and very inscrutable. In Westwood Village near UCLA , the movie theater that would soon play Chinatown put up on a giant outside side wall of a theater only that portion of the poster with Dunaway's eyes for about a week before adding the other elements. Everybody knew who those eyes belonged to.

But its Dunaway's ROLE that's great, too. She starts the movie imperious("I don't get angry, Mr. Gittes...my lawyers do") shifts to standard "mysterious femme fatale"(what IS she hiding?) and proves to be all victim, no villain. A real twist.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

JOHN HUSTON: Every great thriller needs a great villain, and Chinatown got it in Huston. He had some nice connections. He wrote and directed "The Maltese Falcon" and worked many times with Bogart. His daughter Anjelica was dating Jack Nicholson, so he was almost a surrogate father-in-law to Jack. But also, he LACKED one big connection: Huston wasn't a working actor or movie star. He had done short roles or cameos in his own films(The Bible, The Kremlin Letter) and worked for Preminger on The Cardinal, but he was not "overused." I see Noah Cross as a Richard Boone role(and I'm a big Boone fan)...but John Huston was more unique at the time on screen, more special. He had an ugly face, a bulldog's voice(if a bulldog had a voice) and a rather slimy demeanor if that's what he wanted to project. Noah Cross is a big old horned toad of a villain, and Huston is perfect in the role.

And its only THREE scenes. One good early "detective luncheon chat" with Nicholson; then a big confronation at sundown over his villainy("What more do you need than you already have?" "What more do you need to buy?" "The FUTURE, Mr. Gittes!") and then a final, queasy triumph over everything. It was 1974 at the movies. The bad guy wins.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

THE REST OF THE CAST. Not too many familiar faces, at that time. John Hillerman, a classic character guy with a classic mismatch of deep voice and mousy features, was just right as an LA water official who is hiding LESS than it seems(Gittes is simply suspecting the wrong man), Perry Lopez gave us a Mexican-American LA cop with just the right mix of straight-arrow fortitude and compassion; Diane Ladd -- ex of Nicholson pal Bruce Dern, mother of Laura to come -- was brittle and distinctive as the woman who hires Jack to do the job. Burt Young was funny and weird as a customer done in by Jack's adultery investigation(its Burt's wife who dunnit.) The nifty mix of young, rather perverse looking Bruce Glover(father of weird Crispin, and kinda weird himself) and older bespectacled Joe Mantell as the older, other one(and Mantell gets the great, classic, final line of the picture: "Forget it, Jake. Its Chinatown.") And everybody seems to remember the corpulent city coroner with the hearty manner and croaky voice who notes "Its a drought and the county water commissioner drowns-- only in LA!" This was a tre-seventies version of the kind of supporting casts that all great stars need to shine.

I think in the final analysis what "sold" Chinatown as a classic was that "Old Hollywood values"(production, cinematography, music) were put in the service of a decidedly "New Hollywood" tale: R-rated content, incest, curse words, sex(the opening photographs of a couple rutting away in their street clothes was grimy but erotic)...water politics.

We hadn't seen anything EXACTLY like Chinatown before it, and we haven't really since (LA Confidential came close, but had its own epic multi-character tale to tell.)