Chinatown
Short description
Chinatown is a crime drama set in Los Angeles in 1937. Jake Gittes, a private investigator who mostly handles divorce cases, is hired by a woman calling herself Evelyn Mulwray to look into her husband's suspected affair. He photographs the husband, Hollis Mulwray, the head of the city's water department, with a young woman, but the case turns when the real Mrs. Mulwray confronts him and Hollis is later found dead. Gittes keeps digging and finds himself caught between corrupt dealings over the city's water supply and Noah Cross, a powerful man connected to the Mulwray family. The film was directed by Roman Polanski, the seventh of the twenty-three features he has directed in chronological order, following What? and preceding The Tenant. He wrote the screenplay with Robert Towne, and Robert Evans and C.O. Erickson produced. Jack Nicholson plays Gittes, with Faye Dunaway as Evelyn Mulwray, John Huston as Noah Cross, and Perry Lopez, Burt Young and John Hillerman in supporting roles. Made for about six million dollars, it took in roughly twenty-nine million worldwide. On IMDb it holds 8.1 out of 10 from around 376,000 votes, and on TMDB 7.9 out of 10 from more than four thousand votes, while a critics' rating stands at 9.7 out of 10 from 143 reviews, well above the audience scores.
What's left behind the scenes
- Jack Nicholson's character, Jake Gittes, was named after the actor's friend and producer, Harry Gittes.
- While preparing for filming, Robert Towne and the film's director, Roman Polanski, titled each scene of the screenplay with individual sentences, wrote these sentences on scraps of paper, and taped them to the door of the office in Polanski's house where they worked. The game was to move these slips of paper around until they fell into the correct order.
- According to Robert Towne, it took him at least 10 months to write the screenplay. The most difficult part for him was finding a starting point for the action.
- A heated discussion flared up between Polanski and Towne regarding the ending: ultimately, Polanski won, not wanting a happy ending. In 1999, Towne rewatched the film and admitted that he had been wrong. Roman Polanski said that the sad ending of the film was closer to him because of the murder of his wife, Sharon Tate. Faye Dunaway recounted that Evelyn was supposed to lose her sight, in analogy with Oedipus, who blinded himself after his marriage turned out to be incestuous. The actress really wanted this ending to remain in the film, but problems arose with the makeup artists, resulting in the decision to simply shoot Evelyn.
- In 1973, Paramount Pictures offered Robert Towne $175,000 to write a screenplay adaptation of “The Great Gatsby.” However, Towne instead chose to work on his original screenplay, “Chinatown,” for just $25,000.
- After receiving the footage shot on the first day from the lab, Polanski was furious, as producer Robert Evans, based on the success of “The Godfather” (1972), had ordered the film to be developed with a reddish tint. Roman Polanski demanded that the film be developed normally.
- In one interview, Robert Towne admitted that he did not intend to make Chinatown the location for the final scene. However, two weeks before the end of filming, someone said, "My God, the film is called 'Chinatown,' and there isn't a single scene in that district."
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