In The Heat
Of The L.A. Noir Night -Roman
Polanski’s “Chinatown” (1974)-A Film Review
DVD Review
By Sam
Lowell
Chinatown,
starring Jack Nicholson, Far Dunaway, John Huston, directed by Roman
Polanski, 1974
No question the 1930s and1940s gave us some
great black and white tough guy film noir detectives. Guys like Phillip Marlowe
and Sam Spade who were more than willing to take a punch or two, take a few
slugs (bullets and liquor both), keep the femmes happy in or out of the
un-shown bed and wave a little flag for some rough-hewn justice in this wicked
old world. Or a detective like Steve in Out
Of The Past who let a gun simple femme get the better of his judgment and
wound up dead, very dead for his efforts. No wonder since that time there have
been periodic homage to that genre in the days of Technicolor. The film under review
Roman Polanski’s homage to the genre in color Chinatown fits right in with that trend.
Here our
protagonist J.J. Gettis, played to a tee by Jack Nicholson, is working the mean
slumming streets of L.A. back in the 1930s, a time if you can believe this when
the place was a small almost desert community stopped by the Pacific Ocean. A
time when a tough guy detective could navigate the town without trouble. As
usual in detective thrillers what Gettis was originally hired for, getting the
goods on an errant husband off on a toot with a mistress turns out to be a
greed, hunger, and treachery all wrapped up in one bow-water rights.
See that
errant husband happened to be the water commissioner for L.A back in the day
and since he was serious about his work he noticed some very strange things
happening to the water supply just as a city bond to build a damn was coming up
for a vote. That something funny cost the good commissioner his life, and
Gettis a nasty slice on the nose. Of course that only whetted his appetite for
the truth. So he winds up going mano y mano with one Noah Cross, played by
gruff John Huston who is the big wheel behind the building of the dam of his
own purposes. Those purposes did not include providing water for
drought-stricken L.A. but to irrigate the farmlands in the valley. The land
that he was buying up through dummy proxies. So the battle was joined.
Along the
way the water commissioner’s wife, his real wife and not the scam wife that was
sent to Gettis to set him up for the fall, Noah’s daughter, played by Faye
Dunaway, hires Gettis hired Gettis to get to the bottom of the situation about
her husband’s death but also to keep tabs on him since she was hiding a deep
dark secret that she did not want exposed. That secret in the end was that the
young women who her husband was supposed to be having an affair with was
actually her sister-and daughter. Yes incest was in the air among the rich and
powerful. That secret also led to her death by that overbearing father’s
action. And poor Jake was left holding the bag.
There might
not have been much rough-hewn justice in the end in this film but Jake
certainly took a few cuts, a few slugs (bullets and liquor both), keep the
daughter happy in the shown bed, and tried to bring some early version of truth
to power so he earned his top shelf status among the great film detectives
right along with Phillip and Sam. A modern noir-ish classic.
