Mystery, Water Politics, Nose Violence...And a Taboo Broken
SPOILERS:
One thing to remember is: Chinatown was a SUMMER movie. The Summer of 1974.
One year later, Jaws would be the big summer movie of 1975 and -- as history has told us -- it would START the tradition of the "summer blockbuster" -- something BIG, lots of action, eventually lots of special effects(Star Wars.) Often -- something for the entire family with a teen-centered base (Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark -- hell, EVERYTHING from Spielberg and Lucas til 1985), Star Trek, etc.)
But in 1974, Chinatown was the big summer attraction. R-rated, perverse, complex...not for families, certainly not for kids. Teenagers could learn a thing or two.
I recall Chinatown getting a LOT of ink in magazines and newspapers over the summer of 1974. In Los Angeles, especially (where the 1930s story is set) it was the subject of cover stories and think pieces.
On the other hand, it wasn't THAT much of a hit. Given the subject matter, it couldn't be. But it did well enough.
Chinatown turned out -- like Psycho and The Sting before it -- to be "a movie with a twist ending." But it was the KIND of twist that made a certain dark sort of movie history.
But before reaching the twist near the end, there were the distinctive and intelligent things that were set forth from the beginning:
ONE: A return to a Los Angeles private eye story in the tradition of Raymond Chandler's Phillip Marlowe. While Marlowe was a forties detective(at the movies, I think), Chinatown gave us a 30s detective. Close enough, and more approprite to the period setting and Los Angeles political history. Came 1974, audiences who'd spent the 60s largely with James Bond and the superspies(less Paul Newman in a modern-day private eye movie called "Harper"), were ready for a return to the gumshoe tradtion.
TWO: Political intrigue. In the dense and detailed step-by-step screenplay of Chinatown(penned by Robert Towne for the film's only Oscar win), Nicholson's Jake "JJ" Gittes(shades of LB "Jeff" Jeffries in Rear Window) , is hired to tail a cheating husband by the man's wife and find out who "the other woman" is. Fair enough(Jake specializes in sordid divorce work, it is his "metier" he tells his workers. But the cheating husband case turns into a murder case turns into a frame case and slowly leads into a MAJOR political scandal case, with nothing less at stake that the survival and growth of Los Angeles itself at stake. Water politics.
As the story moves along, the requisite femme fatale shows up -- Faye Dunaway, looking vaguely Asian even though she isn't(though the movie IS called Chinatown) --as does the requisite "likely villain of the piece" -- John Huston's superrich Los Angeles power broker Noah Cross(the father, we learn, of Dunway's Evelyn Mulwray and the father-in-law of her husband, murder victim Hollis Mulwray.)
The movie moves satisfyingly along with Jake Gittes (who Cross keeps calling "Mr. GITTS") following the clues and the trail to solve the mystery. But there are a few surprises along the way that made Chinatown a SEVENTIES movie.
One twist relates to Nicholson himself. "Chinatown" producer Robert Evans(ALSO a studio chief at the time; Paramount) said that "Chinatown is Jack's first romantic lead" and he certainly is one, in many ways. Handsome(that smile). Relatively trim(not for long in Nicholson's career.) Seductive of voice. Dapper. BUT...about 1/3 of the way through, Jack's "handsome romantic lead face" is disfigured for the final 2/3 -- a henchman(Roman Polanski, creepy in a cameo role) slices Jack's nostril with a sharp knife, cutting the entire nose open -- THAT never happened to Bogart or Alan Ladd.
"Romantic lead" Nicholson goes through the rest of Chinatown with (1) a huge bandage across his entire mid-face and then(when the bandage is removed) with (2) visible stitches where the knife blade slashed up(such a simple act of great physical violence -- whoever thought THAT up was genius -- Robert Towne gets the credit.)
In a great romantic moment in the film, we are reminded how important our noses are to the fine art of kissing. We gotta plant OUR nose next the nose of our lover, the noses have to fit. Jack tries this with Faye and her nose bumps open the stitches on his nose and we get a nicely BLOODY first kiss.
As for further twists, en route to the finale, Dunaway gets three -- and one is big indeed.
The first twist: This femme fatale isn't fatale at all. She's a good person, not a bad one. She is plotting nothing. She sincerely WANTS the killer of her husband caught...until she doesn't.
The second twist: this is the BIG one, the "something special" that put Chinatown into the history books and specifically as a SEVENTIES, R-rated movie. Its a twist that could not have been filmed in the late thirties(when the Hays Code came in), the forties, or the fifties. It MIGHT have been slipped in, in the 60's. But it arrived correct and on time in 1974:
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