CHINATOWN, Los Angeles -- The
1974 movie Chinatown is a superb, private eye mystery and modern-day film
noir thriller. Its original, Award-winning screenplay by Robert Towne is a
throwback that pays homage to the best Hollywood film noirs from the pens
of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond 
Chandler
in the 30s and 40s. The film is a skillful blend of mystery, romance, suspense,
and hard boiled detective/film noir genre elements, based on a true Los
Angeles scandal in the early part of the 20th century (the nefarious 1908 Owens
River Valley scandal). The film marked director Roman Polanski's return to Hollywood
five years after the gruesome 1969 Manson murders that took the life of his actress
wife Sharon Tate.
The investigation of a routine
story by a detective uncovers secrets under many layers, facades, and networks
of deception. As he unravels the complicated facts, he flippantly and self-confidently
offers explanations for the deeply-flowing corruption he unearths, and then finds
he must continually revise his inaccurate pronouncements after uncovering further
evidence. His efforts to separate good from evil - to save the good and punish
the evil - ultimately fail in the metaphoric (and then real) world of Chinatown
by the film's climax. Similar to a case that he never fully understood years earlier
when he was a cop in LA's Chinatown, he is doomed to repeat history ("You may
think you know what you're dealing with, but believe me, you don't") - as a hard-boiled
detective, he again brings tragedy to a woman he wants to help.
The film's
claustrophobic, cyclical, bleak mood surrounding the heroic quest of the detective
struck a responsive chord during the Watergate era of the early 1970s. The film's
two puzzling mysteries and tragedies - family-related and water-related - are
beautifully interwoven together. The water-rights scandal at the heart of the
film expresses how ecological rape of the land has occurred in a land-development
scheme, reminding viewers that the days of abundant natural resources (and life-giving
water that turns a forbidden wilderness into a garden) are past.
The film's credits play under
a sepia-colored art deco background in the old 1:33 screen format, suggesting
the bygone era from the past - one of yellowed photographs, amber preserved fossils,
or images drained of their color. Set in 1937, the first scene opens in the office
of Los Angeles private detective-hero J. J. (Jake) Gittes (Jack Nicholson), a
former cop who now specializes in investigations involving messy divorce cases
and extra-marital affairs.
One of his distraught clients
named Curly (Burt Young) is in his office, groaning while looking at the incriminating
evidence - black and white photographs of his wife awkwardly having adulterous
sex with another half-clothed man in the woods. Curly is so upset that he throws
the pictures into the air and grabs the venetian blinds. Jake understands his
pain and commiserates with him, but coolly and detachedly cautions him to stop
gnawing on the newly-installed fixtures:
All right Curly, enough's enough.
You can't eat the venetian blinds. I just had 'em installed on Wednesday.
Jake, wearing a cream-colored
suit, offers him a stiff drink instead: "Down the hatch." Jake supports Curly's
belief that his wife is no good: "What can I tell you kid? You're right. When
you're right, you're right, and you're right." Curly is ushered into the
cream-colored outer room, mumbling about begging off paying the fees after his
next fishing boat haul to catch albacore tuna. Jake's door is labeled with bold
letters: "J. J. Gittes & Associates, Discreet Investigations."
In another room are Jake's partners,
"operatives" Walsh (Joe Mantell) and Duffy (Bruce Glover), associates who assist
Gittes in gathering evidence, taking photographs, and snooping on the extramarital
indiscretions of rich, wayward spouses. They introduce Jake to their next client,
supposedly a "Mrs. Mulwray" [actually an impostor named Ida Sessions, played by
Diane Ladd, hired to discredit Mr. Mulwray]. She asks Gittes to investigate her
husband's alleged affair with another woman.
Although Jake attempts to dissuade
the lady-like "Mrs. Mulwray" from pursuing the case: "Let sleeping dogs lie, you're,
you're better off not knowing," she insists on his investigation of the extramarital
affair: "I have to know!" She identifies her husband as Hollis Mulwray (Darrell
Zwerling), the well-known chief engineer of the city's "Water and Power" Company.
"Mrs. Mulwray" insists that his expensive services are no problem: "Money doesn't
matter to me, Mr. Gittes."
Jake begins his investigation
of the Mulwray case by listening to public hearings discussing the latest project
- a proposed Alto Vallejo Dam and Reservoir. Proponents and opponents of the dam
present their cases at the city council meeting. Bored listening to a speech about
how "Los Angeles is a desert community" needing irrigation projects, Gittes reads
the Racing Record with headlines: "Seabiscuit Idol of Racing Fans."
When Mulwray is called to speak,
the lanky, bespectacled man lambastes the project that would give the desert area
north of LA (the San Fernando Valley) irrigation water, arguing with an engineer's
grasp of facts against its construction - using previous experience from a past
dam disaster: "a dirt-banked terminus dam, with slopes of two and one-half to
one, 112 feet high and a 12,000 acre water surface. Well, it won't hold. I won't
build it, it's that simple."
Mulwray's opinion is unpopular - it is greeted with boos and protests. As
Gittes grins at the sight, a farmer from the dry valley herds his sheep down the
aisle of the public hearing, demanding to know why Mulwray is denying water to
his livestock and crops:
You steal water from the valley.
Ruin their grazing. Starve the livestock. Who's paying you to do that, Mr. Mulwray?
That's what I want to know.
Mulwray looks down and doesn't answer.
Gittes trails Hollis Mulwray,
who spends most of his time checking out the city's water supplies, first walking
in a dry riverbed and speaking to a Mexican boy on horseback. Next, he gazes all
night long at the ocean from a coastal beach, where water mysteriously runs out
of a run-off channel. Gittes finds a notice from the Citizens' Committee to Save
Los Angeles on his car's windshield about the drought-stricken city's water supply:
"SAVE OUR CITY! LOS ANGELES IS DYING OF THIRST! Vote Yes!" Gittes' assistant Walsh
thinks Mulwray is obsessed with water: "The guy's got water on the brain."
Walsh shows other investigative
evidence to Gittes - candid photographs of Mulwray in a heated argument with another
man [Noah Cross], hearing only the mention of the words "apple core" [actually
Albacore, the name of a local country club]. And Duffy has located Mulwray with
the young woman in a rowboat in Echo Park. Gittes takes clandestine, incriminating
photos of Mulwray hugging and kissing the unknown blonde girl [Katherine] in the
El Macondo Apartments patio. Off-screen, Gittes turns over the pictures to "Mrs.
Mulwray," but they are published for some reason a few days later. The pictures
of Mulwray with his alleged girlfriend precipitate a scandal, hitting the Los
Angeles Post-Record tabloids. A heart-shaped picture and a headline take the
front page: "DEPARTMENT OF WATER AND POWER BLOWS FUSE." Smaller columns are headed:
"J. J. Gittes Hired by Suspicious Spouse," and "Chief's Use of Funds for El Macondo
Love Nest Being Investigated."
The newspaper is being read by
Gittes seated in a barber's chair during a haircut. The barber Barney (George
Justin) makes an off-hand reference to Jake's near-star status in the center of
the film industry:
When you get so much publicity,
you gotta get blasé about it. Let's face it, Jake! You're practically a
movie star.
Jake must defend his sleazy profession
to another shop customer who is employed by the First National Bank Mortgage Department:
Listen pal. I make an honest
living. People only come to me when they're in a desperate situation. I help 'em
out. I don't kick families out of their houses like you bums down at the bank
do.
Jake's barber tells him a dirty
joke about a Chinaman to forestall a fistfight with the other customer, and Jake
is anxious to tell the same joke to his confreres when he returns to the office.
Chortling to himself as he builds to the long, drawn-out punchline, he doesn't
realize that he has another female client behind him listening to the entire tasteless
joke:
So there's this guy Walsh, do
you understand? He's tired of screwin' his wife...So his friend says to him, 'Hey,
why don't you do it like the Chinese do?' So he says, 'How do the Chinese do it?'
And the guy says, 'Well, the Chinese, first they screw a little bit, then they
stop, then they go and read a little Confucius, come back, screw a little bit
more, then they stop again, go back and they screw a little bit...then they go
back and they screw a little bit more and then they go out and they contemplate
the moon or something like that. Makes it more exciting.' So now, the guy goes
home and he starts screwin' his own wife, see. So he screws her for a little bit
and then he stops, and he goes out of the room and reads LIFE Magazine. Then he
goes back in, he starts screwin' again. He says, 'Excuse me for a minute, honey.'
He goes out and he smokes a cigarette. Now his wife is gettin' sore as hell. He
comes back in the room, he starts screwin' again. He gets up to start to leave
again to go look at the moon. She looks at him and says, 'Hey, whatsa matter with
ya. You're screwin' just like a Chinaman.'
Jake turns and meets the client
- the real Mrs. Evelyn Mulwray (Faye Dunaway), a beautiful, cool socialite who
is not amused by his joke or by his smearing of her husband's reputation. (She
is not the same woman who had hired him a few days earlier to spy on Mr. Mulwray.)
Jake suddenly realizes he was duped and set up, used for some other purposes in
a deceitful web of double dealings. She cooly threatens to sue him for defaming
her husband's character as she stalks out with her lawyer:
Mrs. Mulwray: I see you like
publicity, Mr. Gittes. Well, you're going to get it.
Gittes: Now wait a minute, Mrs. Mulwray. I think there's been some misunderstanding
here. There's no point in getting tough with me.
Mrs. Mulwray: I don't get tough with anyone, Mr. Gittes. My lawyer does.
Befuddled, Jake goes to visit
Mr. Mulwray at lunchtime in his "Water and Power" office, but Mulwray is not in.
Pretending he has an appointment, he snoops around the office and opens up Mulwray's
desk drawer, finding nothing of interest - bank checks, neatly organized records,
and a leather case holding personal grooming tools. Gittes then opens up a large
ledger book on the table, reading a scrawled, enigmatic note on one of the pages:
"Tues night - Oak Pass Res. 7 channels used."
The entry of the engineer's chief
deputy, Russ Yelburton (John Hillerman), who has been summoned by Mulwray's secretary,
is first seen in a flash of light through the glass of the door. Yelburton, with
an icy but pleasant request, greets Gittes and ushers him out of Mulwray's office:
"I wonder if you'd care to wait in my office?" In his own office with walls adorned
by large game fish, photographs, and a painted symbol of a fish [the flag of the
Albacore Club], Yelburton is convinced that the scandalous stories about colleague
Mulwray are totally groundless: "Either he's the kind who chases after women or
he isn't...He (Mulwray) never even kids about it."
In the hallway by the elevator,
Gittes has an opportunity to speak some choice words to Claude Mulvihill (Roy
Jenson), the city's sheriff, whose own personal water supply has been shut off:
How'd you find out about it?
You don't drink it. You don't take a bath in it. They wrote you a letter. But
then you'd have to be able to read.
Mulvihill is employed by the
Water and Power Company to protect against numerous threats to blow up the city
reservoirs. Yelburton explains why there is protest:
Well, it's this darn drought. We've had to ration water in the valley
and the farmers are desperate. Well, what can we do? The rest of the city needs
drinking water.
Gittes drives up the long, expansive
driveway to the Mulwray mansion, tended by at least four servants, a chauffeur,
a butler (James Hong), a housemaid, and a gardener (Jerry Fujikawa). In the rear
of the palatial house is a fish pond and fountain - a strange anomaly in the midst
of a drought. The Asian gardener mumbles: "Bad for the glass." [Because he pronounces
his r's like l's, he has really mumbled: "Bad for the grass," referring to the
destructive effects of the salt water in the pool on garden plant growth.] Something
shiny in the bottom of the pool attracts Gittes' eye, but he is not able to fish
out the object when Mrs. Mulwray approaches. [Although this is a key piece of
evidence, the film evolves through a deceptive maze as clues are slowly revealed
- nothing is ever given away. The viewer shares Gittes' own blind perceptions
and circuitous search for the truth.]
While sitting down to tea, Gittes
confronts Mrs. Mulwray, determined to convince her that he had nothing to do with
the publication of the incriminating photos or stories. She appears dangerous
and threatening to him - but almost instantly and to his astonishment, she offers
to drop the lawsuit:
Jake: I'm not in business to be loved, but I am in business. And believe
me, Mrs. Mulwray, whoever set your husband up set me up. LA's a small town, people
talk. I'm just trying to make a living. I don't want to become a local joke.
Mrs. Mulwray: Mr. Gittes. You talked me into it. I'll drop the lawsuit.
Jake: What?
Mrs. Mulwray: I said I'll drop the lawsuit. So let's just drop the whole thing.
Gittes senses something mysterious underlying the quick offer to drop the
suit and is interested in delving deeper into the case to uncover the larger plot
issue:
Gittes: I don't want to drop
it. I'd better talk to your husband about this.
Mrs. Mulwray: Why?...Hollis seems to think you're an innocent man.
Gittes: Well, I've been accused of a lot of things before, Mrs. Mulwray, but never
that. Look. Somebody's gone to a lot of trouble here and lawsuit or no lawsuit,
I intend to find out. I'm not supposed to be the one who's caught with his pants
down. So unless it's a problem, I'd like to talk to your husband.
Mrs. Mulwray: Why should it be a problem?
Gittes: May I speak frankly Mrs. Mulwray?
Mrs. Mulwray: Only if you can, Mr. Gittes.
Gittes: Well, that little girlfriend. She was pretty in a cheap sort of a way
of course. She's disappeared. Maybe they disappeared together.
Mrs. Mulwray: Suppose they did. How does that affect you?
Gittes: It's nothing personal, Mrs. Mulwray.
Mrs. Mulwray: It's very personal. It couldn't be more personal. Is this
a business or an obsession with you?
Mrs. Mulwray suggests that Gittes
look for Hollis at Oak Pass or Stone Canyon Reservoirs, where he frequently wanders
during his lunchtimes. If he returns to the house to see her, she asks: "Please
call first."
Using as an entry pass one of
the business cards he lifted from Yelburton's office, Gittes is allowed admission
by police guards through the gates into the Oak Pass Reservoir. There, he meets
one-time, former partners Loach (Richard Bakalyan) and police detective Lieutenant
Lou Escobar (Perry Lopez), who used to work as Chinatown cops together. All have
come a long way since then, especially Gittes with his flashy, expensive suits
and his gold cigarette case, as Escobar notices:<
Escobar: You look like you've done well by yourself.
Gittes: I get by.
Escobar: Well, sometimes it takes a while for a man to find himself. Maybe you
have.
Loach: Going through other people's dirty linen.
Gittes: Tell me. You still puttin' Chinamen in jail for spittin' in the laundry?
Loach: You're a little behind the times Jake.
Escobar: They use steam irons now. And I'm out of Chinatown.
Gittes: Since when?
Escobar: Since I made Lieutenant.
Gittes: Congratulations.
Before Gittes can speak to Hollis
Mulwray, the commissioner has mysteriously drowned in the middle of LA's summer
drought. His body is dragged up from the remote, empty reservoir outside Los Angeles.
The victim of an apparent accidental drowning, the fall knocked him unconscious
and his body was washed down the entire length of the run-off channel. (Or was
he the victim of water-hungry opportunists?)
After identifying her husband's
body, Mrs. Mulwray is elusive, troubled, and frightened during questioning by
Escobar about her husband's alleged affair with the young girl that was reported
in the newspaper. She is forced to pretend that she had indeed hired a detective
to "put an end to a ridiculous rumor," and Jake corroborates her story, backing
up her answer. At her car when leaving, Mrs. Mulwray thanks Jake and promises
to pay him: "I just didn't want to explain anything. I send you a check?...To
make it official that I've hired you."
During his lunch hour, Jake visits
the mortician Morty (Charles Knapp), who lightheartedly jokes about Mulwray's
death: "In the middle of a drought and the water commissioner drowns! Only in
LA." A second drowning, that of a local drunk who was living in one of the downtown
storm drains, is more intriguing to Jake:
Morty: Yeah, he drowned too.
Gittes: Come again?
Morty: Yeah, he got drunk. Passed out in the bottom of the riverbed.
Gittes: The LA River?
Morty: Yeah, right under Hollenbeck Bridge. What's wrong with that?
Gittes: It's dry as a bone Morty.
Morty: It's not so completely dry.
Gittes: Well, he ain't gonna exactly drown in a damp riverbed no matter how soused
he is.
Morty: We got water out of him. He drowned.
At the Hollenbeck Bridge, Jake
prowls around for a closer look, noticing a trickle of water in the bottom of
the "damp riverbed." The Mexican boy on horseback tells him that he would regularly
report to the man with glasses (Mulwray) about the water - "when it comes."
It goes in different parts of the river. Every night a different part.
Jake has found another clue similar
to the one Hollis Mulwray was in the process of learning just before his death
- during the drought, portions of the city's water supply are dumped or diverted
to certain areas.
From there that night, Jake drives
to the Oak Pass Reservoir where Mulwray's corpse was found. After scaling the
locked, chain-link fence with a 'No Trespassing' sign, Gittes hears two shots
of gunfire - a signal to open the water sluice. Ignorantly believing he is a shooting
target, he jumps into a run-off channel for cover. The storm drain immediately
fills with a torrent of rushing water, slamming him into a barrier and almost
claiming him as the next drowning victim.
Then, after climbing back over
one fence in his soggy clothes (minus a Florsheim shoe), he is threatened for
trespassing by Claude Mulvihill - who is known to be working for Yelburton, Mulwray's
deputy commissioner. Gittes flippantly asks Claude: "Where'd you get the midget?"
referring to another hired thug dressed in a beige suit, white shirt, spotted
red and white bow-tie and Panama hat. The maniacal, intimidating, knife-wielding
hoodlum [Director Roman Polanski in a minor cameo role] wants to scare him off
the case. Jake gets a warning to stop snooping (nosing) around just before his
nostril is viciously cut with a knife:
You're a very nosy fellow, kitty-cat, huh? You know what happens to
nosy fellows? Huh, no? Want to guess? Huh, no? OK. They lose their noses. (Jake's
nose gushes blood after a sharp flick of the knife.) Next time you lose the whole
thing. Cut if off and feed it to my goldfish. Understand?
He sports a bloody-bandaged
and stitched nose in the next scene (a symbolic beacon of his trespassing into
other people's business) and an unraveling bandage for the rest of the film. In
his office the next day, Jake's colleagues suggest an approach, but Jake is aiming
for higher stakes:
Walsh: So some contractor wants to build a dam and he makes a few
payoffs. So what? Think you can nail Mulvihill? They'll claim you were trespassing.
Gittes: Don't want Mulvihill. I want the big boys that are making the payoffs.
A woman named Miss Ida Sessions
(Diane Ladd) telephones, identifying herself as the "Mrs. Mulwray" imposter:
Well, I'm a working girl. I didn't come in to see you on my own...I
was the one who pretended to be Mrs. Mulwray...I never expected anything to happen
like what, what happened to Mr. Mulwray. The point is, if, if it ever comes out,
I want somebody to know that I didn't know what would happen.
Although she won't divulge her
address or who hired her to be an imposter, she suggests that Gittes look at the
day's obituary column in the Los Angeles Post-Record - there he can find
"one of those people."
In a cocktail lounge, Gittes tears out the obituary column and glances at
the headlines of the paper: "WATER BOND ISSUE PASSES COUNCIL." Mrs. Mulwray joins
him and is startled to see his bandaged, vulnerable nose, staring at it incessantly,
but not asking about it. Although Jake has been generously paid as promised by
mail, he feels "shortchanged on the story." In their conversation, she implies
that she wasn't upset about her husband's cheating, because she was cheating herself:
Gittes: Something else besides the death of your husband was bothering
you. You were upset, but not that upset.
Mrs. Mulwray: Mr. Gittes. Don't tell me how I feel.
Gittes: Sorry. Look. You sue me. Your husband dies. You drop the lawsuit like
a hot potato all of it quicker than the wind from a duck's ass. Excuse me, uh.
Then you ask me to lie to the police.
Mrs. Mulwray: It wasn't much of a lie.
Gittes: If your husband was killed, it was. This could look like you paid me off
to withhold evidence.
Mrs. Mulwray: But he wasn't killed.
Gittes: Mrs. Mulwray. I think you're hiding something.
Mrs. Mulwray: Well, I suppose I am. Actually, I knew about the affair.
Gittes: How did you find out?
Mrs. Mulwray: My husband.
Gittes: He told you? (She nods yes.) And you weren't the least bit upset?
Mrs. Mulwray: I was grateful.
Gittes: Mrs. Mulwray, you'll have to explain that.
Mrs. Mulwray: Why?
Gittes: Look. I do matrimonial work. It's my métier [he pronounces it "meeteeyay"].
When a wife tells me that she's happy that her husband is cheating on her, it
runs contrary to my experience.
Mrs. Mulwray: Unless what?
Gittes: She was cheating on him. Were you?
Mrs. Mulwray: I dislike the word cheat.
Gittes: Did you have affairs?
Mrs. Mulwray: Mr. Gittes.
Gittes: Did he know about it?
Mrs. Mulwray: Well I wouldn't run home and tell him every time I went to bed with
someone, if that's what you mean? Is there anything else you want to know about
me?
Gittes: Where were you when your husband died?
Mrs. Mulwray: I can't tell you.
Gittes: You mean you don't know where you were?
Mrs. Mulwray: I mean I can't tell you.
Gittes: You were seeing someone too. For very long?
Mrs. Mulwray: I don't see anyone for very long Mr. Gittes. It's difficult for
me. Now, I think you know all you need know about me. I didn't want publicity.
I didn't want to go into any of this then or now. Is that all?
Gittes: (After nodding yes, he remembers to ask one final question, holding up
the envelope with initials "E C" for a return address) Oh, by the way, uh, what
does this C stand for?
Mrs. Mulwray (stuttering nervously): Cr...Cross.
Gittes: That's your maiden name?
Mrs. Mulwray: Yes. Why?
Gittes: No reason.
Mrs. Mulwray: You must have had a reason to ask me that.
Gittes: No. I'm just a snoop.
Before he roars away in his car
after being rejected by her, he tells her his conclusions about her husband's
death, standing almost on top of her and insinuating that he still doesn't trust
her:
OK, go home, but in case you're interested, your husband was murdered.
Somebody's been dumping thousands of tons of water from the city's reservoirs
and we're supposed to be in the middle of a drought. He found out about it and
he was killed. There's a waterlogged drunk in the morgue, involuntary manslaughter
if anybody wants to take the trouble - which they don't. It seems like half the
city is trying to cover it all up, which is fine by me. But Mrs. Mulwray, I goddamned
near lost my nose. And I like it. I like breathing through it. And I still think
that you're hiding something.
Jake revisits the office of Hollis
Mulwray - now being taken over by Yelburton (workmen are preparing the door for
a new sign). While waiting in the outer room, he notices that the walls are covered
with photographs, one of which is captioned "Noah Cross, 1929," and others dated
in the 1920s picturing Hollis Mulwray and Noah Cross together. (Looking at the
envelope again, Gittes confirms the connection between the initials E C and Cross.)
Casually, he asks the secretary (Fritzi Burr):
Gittes: Noah Cross worked for the water department.
Secretary: Yes. No.
Gittes: Well, did he or didn't he?
Secretary: He owned it.
Gittes is astonished to realize
that Cross "owned the entire water supply for the city." Mr. Mulwray, a co-owner/partner
"felt the public should own the water" and persuaded Cross to turn it over to
the public. In Yelburton's office, Gittes cuts the ice with a joke about his nose:
Yelburton: My goodness, what happened to your nose?
Gittes: Cut myself shavin'.
Yelburton: Oh, you ought to be more careful. That must really smart.
Gittes: Only when I breathe.
Then, with disguised inferences
regarding Yelburton's guilt, Gittes wonders if Yelburton hired a "chippie" (Ida
Sessions) to hire him and possibly eliminated Mulwray because he opposed construction
of a new dam and water diversion:
Gittes: Well, let's look at it this way. Mulwray didn't want to build
a dam. Had a reputation that was hard to get around. You decided to ruin it. Then
he found out you were dumping water at night. Then he was, uh, drowned.
Yelburton: Mr. Gittes, that's an outrageous accusation. I don't know what you're
talking about.
However, Yelburton admits that
some secret diversions of irrigation water are indeed being made:
We're not anxious for this to get around. We have been diverting a
little water to irrigate orange groves in the Northwest Valley. As you know, the
farmers out there have no legal right to our water. We've been trying to help
some of them out. Keep them from going under. Naturally when you divert water,
there's a little run-off.
Mrs. Mulwray is waiting for Jake
in his office when he arrives, asking: "Whoever's behind my husband's death -
why have they gone to all this trouble?" Gittes simply responds: "Money. How they
plan to make it out of emptying reservoirs, that I don't know." She offers him
his regular salary plus $5,000 to "find out what happened to Hollis and who was
involved." Gittes is now hired by Mrs. Mulwray to find her husband's murderer.
Then Jake reveals he knows that
her father is Noah Cross, causing her to nervously light two cigarettes simultaneously:
Tell me something uh. Did you get married before or after Mulwray
and your father sold the water department? Noah Cross is your father, isn't he?...Then
you married your father's business partner...Does, uh my talking about my father
upset you?
Eventually according to Mrs. Mulwray, Hollis and Cross had a "falling out"
over the ownership of the water, never speaking again. Hollis had opposed the
construction of an earlier dam, but was forced into building it by Cross. The
dam collapsed - a disastrous architectural failure, and "Hollis never forgave
him for it." Gittes, remembering the recent photographs shown to him by his operatives
of the two men fighting, asks if she is sure of her recollection as she signs
the newly-drawn contract.
At the Albacore Club (flying
the fish symbol) for a lunch meeting, Jake meets Mulwray's former partner, a sinister,
corrupt millionaire, villainous but jovial tycoon named Noah Cross (John Huston,
famed director ofThe Maltese Falcon (1941), tying this film to one of the
earliest detective film noirs ever made). From their very first encounter,
Cross misnames Gittes, and then cautions him about the realities of life, in a
milieu filled with moral corruption. Cross wants to know what the detective knows,
and then asks Gittes to do a job for him - one that will eventually lead to a
tragic conclusion:
Cross: Mr. Gits.
Gittes: Gittes.
Cross: Oh. How do you do? You've got a nasty reputation, Mr. Gits. I like that.
Gittes: Thanks.
Cross: If you were a bank president, that would be one thing. But in your business
it's admirable and it's good advertising.
Gittes: It doesn't hurt. (He looks down at a whole fish on his plate.)
Cross: It's, um, why you attracted a client like my daughter.
Gittes: Probably.
Cross: But I'm surprised you're still working for her - unless she's suddenly
come up with another husband.
Gittes: No. She happens to think the last one was murdered.
Cross: Umm, how'd she get that idea?
Gittes: I think I gave it to her. (They both look at the fish)
Cross: I hope you don't mind. I believe they should be served with the head.
Gittes: Fine. As long as you don't serve the chicken that way.
Cross: Tell me, um, what do the police say?
Gittes: They're calling it an accident.
Cross: Who's the investigating officer?
Gittes: Lou Escobar. He's a lieutenant.
Cross: You know him?
Gittes: Oh yeah.
Cross: Where from?
Gittes: We used to work together in Chinatown.
Cross: Would you call him a capable man?
Gittes: Very.
Cross: Honest?
Gittes: As far as it goes. 'Course, he has to swim in the same water we all do.
Cross: 'Course, but you've no reason to think he's bungled the case?
Gittes: None.
Cross: That's too bad.
Gittes: Too bad?
Cross: Hmm. It disturbs me, makin' me think you take my daughter for a ride. Financially
speaking of course. What are you chargin' her?
Gittes: My usual fee plus a bonus if I get results.
Cross: Are you, uh, sleeping with her? (No answer from Gittes) Come, come, Mr.
Gits. You don't have to think about that to remember, do ya?
Gittes: (He gets up to leave) If you want an answer to that question, Mr. Cross,
I'll put one of my men on the job. Good afternoon.
Cross: Mr. Gits.
Gittes: Git-tes.
Cross: Gittes. You're dealing with a disturbed woman who's just lost her husband.
I don't want her taken advantage of. Sit down.
Gittes: What for?
Cross: You may think you know what you're dealing with, but believe me, you don't.
(Gittes smiles) Why is that funny?
Gittes: It's what the district attorney used to tell me in Chinatown.
Cross: Yeah? Was he right? Exactly what do you know about me? Sit down.
Gittes: Mainly that you're rich, and too respectable to want your name in the
newspapers.
Cross: 'Course I'm respectable. I'm old. Politicians, ugly buildings, and whores
all get respectable if they last long enough. I'll double whatever your fee is
and pay ya $10,000 if you find Hollis' girlfriend.
Gittes: Girlfriend?
Cross: Disappeared, hasn't she?
Gittes: Yeah.
Cross: Couldn't it be useful to talk to her?
Gittes: Maybe.
Cross: If Mulwray was murdered, she'd be one of the last to have seen him alive.
Gittes: When's the last time you saw Mulwray?
Cross: (He watches men going by on horseback) Sheriff's gold posse. Bunch of damn
fools who pay $5,000 apiece towards the sheriff's re-election. I let 'em practice
up out here.
Gittes: Yeah. Do you remember the last time you saw Mulwray?
Cross: At my age, you, uh, tend to forget.
Gittes: It was five days ago outside the Pig 'n' Whistle and you had one hell
of an argument. I got the pictures in my office if that'll help you remember.
What was the argument about?
Cross: My daughter.
Gittes: What about her?
Cross: Just find the girl, Mr. Gits. I happen to know Hollis was fond of her and
I'd like to help her if I can.
Gittes: I had no idea you and Hollis were that fond of one another.
Cross: Hollis Mulwray made this city, and he made me a fortune. We were a lot
closer than Evelyn realized.
Gittes: If you want to hire me, I still have to know what the argument was about.
Cross: My daughter is a very jealous woman. I didn't want her to find out about
the girl.
Gittes: How did you find out?
Cross: I still got a few teeth left in my head, a few friends in town.
Gittes: OK. I'll, uh, I'll have my secretary draw up the papers. Tell me, uh,
are you frightened for the girl or what Evelyn might do to her?
Cross: Just find the girl!
Gittes: I'll look into it as soon as I've checked out some orange groves.
Cross: Orange groves?
Gittes: We'll be in touch, Mr. Cross.
So within only hours, Gittes
has been hired again - this time to find Hollis' mysterious girlfriend.
At the Hall of Records, Jake
asks to see the plat books for the Northwest Valley, where diversions of water
are being made. (Part of the Northwest Valley lies outside of LA county in Ventura
County.) Numerous land sales are in escrow with new owners buying up the land,
shown with their names pasted in the plat books - most of the valley has been
sold in the last few months! A trip to the valley confirms the plat book records
- farm land is rapidly being sold.
Pieces of the puzzle begin to
unravel more clearly - Gittes discovers widespread political corruption - greedy,
crooked land speculators through dirty deals, led by Cross who opposed Mulwray,
have engineered a plot to monopolize drought-stricken LA's water supply by water
diversion to certain favored areas - orange groves.
Men on horseback fire on Gittes'
car in the middle of one orange grove, pursuing him through the narrow rows of
trees. He is dragged from his crashed automobile, beaten (his nose bloodied),
and his pockets are emptied. The leader of the farmers wonders which of two hated
groups Gittes represents, misdirecting his anger at him: "Who are you with? The
water department or the real estate office?" Gittes identifies himself as a private
investigator, hired by a client "to see if the water department was irrigatin'
your land." The shotgun-armed farmer is flabbergasted - the exact reverse is happening:
Irrigatin' my land? The water department's been sending you people
out here to blow up water tanks. They put poison down three of my wells. I call
that a funny way to irrigate. Who'd hire you for a thing like that?
Gittes now understands why the
farmers are defending themselves - corrupt water officials have diverted irrigation
water to cause a drought in some parts of the valley to force farmers out of the
dry areas, buying up their parched land at cut-rate prices. When he hands over
Mrs. Mulwray's contract, one of the farmers is antagonistic: "Mulwray! That's
the son-of-a-bitch who's done it to us." Gittes is knocked out cold when he calls
the man a "dumb Okie." He regains consciousness with Mrs. Mulwray, his "employer"
staring down at him, surrounded by the farmers on a Northwest Valley porch.
As they drive back to town, Gittes
describes the scandal to Mrs. Mulwray, explaining how valley acreage is being
purchased cheaply for speculation pending the reservoir's construction. Hollis
was killed because he opposed the reservoir:
That dam's a con-job...The one your husband opposed. They're conning
LA into building it, but the water's not gonna go to LA. It's coming right here
(to the valley)...everything you can see, everything around us. I was at the Hall
of Records today. In the last three months, Robert Knox has bought seven thousand
acres, Emma Dill twelve thousand, Clarence Spear five thousand, and Jasper Lamar
Crabb twenty-five thousand acres...They're blowin' these farmers out of their
land and then pickin' it up for peanuts. You have any idea what this land would
be worth with a steady water supply? About thirty million more than they paid
for it. (Hollis knew about this.) That's why he was killed.
Something clicks in Gittes' memory about Jasper Lamar Crabb - his newspaper
obituary column is in his pocket (at Ida Sessions' suggestion). A memorial service
was recently held at the Mar Vista Inn for Crabb who died two weeks earlier. A
fraudulent land swindle is also in progress - dummy investors including some who
are unaware, penniless, senile or deceased - are the new owners who are buying
up the valley land. Gittes explains to Mrs. Mulwray: "He passed away two weeks
ago, and one week ago, he bought the land. That's unusual."
They drive into the Mar Vista
Rest Home and enter pretending to be a rich couple who need to find a convalescent
home for Gittes' dad. The home director, Mr. Palmer (John Rogers) assures them
that Jews are excluded and that strict privacy is maintained for all residents.
On an activities board for the home, Gittes finds familiar names: "They're all
there - every goddamn name. You're looking at the owners of the 50 thousand acre
empire...They may not know it but they are." Some of the elderly residents (including
a landless Emma Dill) are sewing a flag with the fish symbol of the Albacore Club,
since Mar Vista is an "unofficial charity of theirs." Turning wise to their scheme,
Palmer requests that they follow him out, and Mulvihill greets them in the lobby.
After first urging Mrs. Mulwray to her car, Gittes beats up Mulvihill. As he leaves,
he is rescued just in time from the nose-cutting thug when Mrs. Mulwray wheels
into the driveway with the car. In a quick getaway, Gittes leaps onto the car,
avoiding bullets that hit the windshield. [A foreshadowing of the final scene
of the film.]
At the Mulwray mansion that evening,
all the servants have purposely been given "the night off" by Mrs. Mulwray. Thinking
that he has asked "an innocent question" about how deserted the place is, she
observes that his questions are never to be taken at face value: "No question
from you is innocent, Mr. Gittes." She mentions that his afternoon and evening
have been fraught with danger, and wonders if this is typical of his whole life:
"If this is how you go about your work, I'd say you'd be lucky to, uh, get through
a whole day." Gittes mentions his past police work in the alien, inscrutable,
mysterious world of Chinatown for the district attorney when he did "as little
as possible" - this was the last time he had experienced similar dangers.
Gittes changes the subject, asking
for some peroxide for his bruised nose. He removes his bandage in the bathroom,
causing Mrs. Mulwray to exclaim: "God! It's a nasty cut. I had no idea." While
she dabs on the peroxide, he notices that she has a black speck in the green part
of her eye. She confesses: "It's a, it's a fl-flaw in the iris...it's a sort of
birthmark." Their faces are so intimately close to each other that they kiss.
The next scene shows them naked
in bed after making love, leisurely smoking cigarettes. Wanting to know more about
his past, a loving, less urgent Mrs. Mulwray finds that he is reluctant to speak
about his past in Chinatown - where "you can't always tell what's goin' on." But
he reveals to her that he had tried to prevent something terrible from happening
there to a woman he cared for, only to hasten the tragedy. This caused him to
quit the police force - his life was changed forever. [His interference for the
sake of a woman in his past is doomed to repeat itself by the film's conclusion.
As his detective friend had cautioned, he should have done "as little as possible."]:
Mrs. Mulwray: Why does it bother you to talk about it?
Gittes: It bothers everybody that works there.
Mrs. Mulwray: Where?
Gittes: Chinatown, everybody. To me, it was just bad luck.
Mrs. Mulwray: What?
Gittes: You can't always tell what's goin' on - like with you.
Mrs. Mulwray: Why was, um, why was it bad luck?
Gittes: I was trying to keep someone from being hurt. I ended up making sure that
she was hurt.
Mrs. Mulwray: Cherchez la femme? Was there a woman involved?
Gittes: Of course.
Mrs. Mulwray: Dead?
Before he can respond, the phone rings, and she answers it with worry and
concern in her voice after being told something troubling. Anguished, she replies
cryptically: "Look, don't do anything. Don't do anything till I get there." After
hanging up the phone, she insists on leaving immediately, withholding her destination
and her reasons:
Mrs. Mulwray: Just that I have to...It has nothing to do with you
or with any or all of this...Please, trust me this much! I'll be back. (She kisses
him.) There is, uh, there is something that I should tell you about. The uh, the
fishing club that old lady mentioned, um. The pieces of the flag...
Jake: The Albacore Club.
Mrs. Mulwray: It, it, it has to do with my father.
Jake: I know.
Mrs. Mulwray: He, he owns it. You know?
Jake: I saw him. (Mrs. Mulwray shrinks down and covers her nakedness with her
arms when her father is mentioned.)
Mrs. Mulwray: You saw - - my fa-father?...When?
Jake: This morning.
Mrs. Mulwray: You didn't tell me.
Jake: Well there hasn't been much time.
Mrs. Mulwray: But, uh, what, what did he say? What did he say?
Jake: That you were jealous. That he was afraid of what you might do...Mulwray's
girlfriend for one. He wanted to know where she was.
Mrs. Mulwray (kneeling by his side): I want you to listen to me. Now, my father
is a very dangerous man. You don't know how dangerous. You don't know how crazy.
Jake: Are you trying to tell me that he might be behind all this?
Mrs. Mulwray: It's possible.
Jake: Even the death of your husband?
Mrs. Mulwray: It's possible. Now please, don't ask me any more questions now.
Just wait. Wait for me here. I need you here.
She showers and then leaves.
Although strictly told not to follow her, Gittes disobeys her and trails after
her car's tail lights (after sneaking outside and kicking out the red cover from
the right light so that it is easier to see in the dark) to an unfamiliar house
with the porch light on. While hiding outdoors, he watches through a side window
with a half-drawn curtain as she first talks to her Chinese butler. In another
room he spies her late husband's visibly upset young blonde mistress (being guarded,
held or abused against her will) lying down. Mrs. Mulwray administers drugs (sedatives,
narcotics?) after they have conversed.
Jake sits in Mrs. Mulwray's front
car seat when she returns to the car - she is startled and a bit angry to see
him. Now in his investigative mode (only a few hours after having made love to
her), he has concluded that she is involved in criminal activity. [His earlier
words to her haunt us - "you can't always tell what's goin' on."]:
Jake: Come on, Mrs. Mulwray. You've got your husband's girlfriend
tied up in there.
Mrs. Mulwray: She's not tied up.
Jake: You know what I mean. You're holdin' her against her will.
Mrs. Mulwray: I am not.
Jake: OK. Then let's go talk to her.
Mrs. Mulwray: NO! She's, she's too upset.
Jake: What about?
Mrs. Mulwray: Hollis' death. I-I-I tried to keep it from her. I didn't want her
to know until I could make plans for us to leave.
Jake: You mean she just found out about it? It's not what it looks like, Mrs.
Mulwray.
Mrs. Mulwray: What does it look like?
Jake: Like she knows more than you want her to tell.
Mrs. Mulwray: You're insane.
Jake: Just tell me the truth. I'm not the police. I don't care what you've done.
I don't want to hurt ya.
Mrs. Mulwray: You won't go to the police if I tell you?
Jake: I will if you don't.
Mrs. Mulwray: (She puts her head down, accidentally honking the car's horn.) Sh-she's
my sister.
Jake: Take it easy. So she's your sister - she's your sister. But why all the
secrecy?
Mrs. Mulwray: I can't...(anguished)
Jake: Is it because of Hollis because she was seeing your husband? Is that it?
Mrs. Mulwray: I would never have harmed Hollis. He was the most gentle, decent
man imaginable. And he, he put up with more from me than you'll ever know. I wanted
him to be happy.
Jake leaves the car and she quickly
asks: "Aren't you going - coming back with me?" He assures her: "Don't worry.
I'm not going to tell anybody about this." She has again been misinterpreted:
"That's not what I meant." He bids her goodnight: "Yeah. Well, uh, I'm tired Mrs.
Mulwray. Good night."
That night, as Jake restlessly
lies on his bed, he hesitates to pick up the incessantly-ringing phone. Two phone
calls by an anonymous caller [later identified as Loach] summon him to Ida Sessions'
house. Early the next morning, Jake drives to the location and finds broken glass
in the front door window. Inside on the kitchen floor, Ida's dead body is sprawled
amidst spilled groceries. Ex-colleagues Escobar and Loach confront him with a
flashlight beam from inside a darkened bathroom: "Find anything interesting Gittes?
What are you doin' around here?" They suspect that Gittes knows her or had something
to do with her murder, because his phone number is written on her kitchen wall
next to the phone. Loach exchanges an insult with Gittes about his professional
snooping into people's bedrooms:
Loach: What happened to your nose Gittes? Somebody slam a bedroom
window on it?
Gittes: Nope, your wife got excited. She crossed her legs a little too quick.
You understand what I mean pal?
Gittes is accused by Escobar
of having worked for Ida Sessions, and then is told one tantalizing bit of evidence
in the middle of many other false accusations, including "accessory after the
fact, conspiracy, and extortion minimum":
This broad hired you. Not Evelyn Mulwray...Somebody wanted to shake
Mulwray down. She hired you. That's how come you found out he was murdered...Mulwray
had saltwater in his lungs. You were following him day and night. You saw who
killed him. You even took pictures of it. It was Evelyn Mulwray and she's been
paying you off like a slot machine ever since.
Gittes defends Evelyn Mulwray's
innocence after telling Escobar that he is "dumber" than he thinks. He explains
how Hollis' body was deliberately moved to the reservoir to divert attention from
the ocean:
What do you think? Evelyn Mulwray knocked off her husband in the ocean,
then dragged him up to a reservoir 'cause she thought it would look more like
an accident. Mulwray was murdered and moved because somebody didn't want his body
found in the ocean...He found out they were dumping water there. That's what they
were trying to cover up.
When Gittes can't prove his point, he is given two hours to present himself
and his "client" Evelyn at Escobar's office. Gittes enters the Mulwray mansion,
finding signs that the house is being closed up in preparation for a trip - the
maid is covering furniture with white sheets. In the garden patio area, the gardener
repeats his frustration: "Salt water - very bad for glass." Gittes stops short,
suddenly realizing the water in the estate's fishpond is salt water [what was
found in Hollis' lungs] - he asks the gardener to fish out the sparkling object
he had seen earlier. The object is a pair of spectacles [Hollis' glasses?].
Racing to the house where the
young girl is hidden, Gittes finds Evelyn rushing to pack in order to catch a
5:30 pm train. Without explaining why, Gittes phones and summons Escobar to their
location, and then asks Evelyn: "You know any good criminal lawyers?" He is determined
to force information from her about everything he believes she has been concealing.
In the film's most memorable
scene, Jake concocts a murder theory: the glasses in the pond belong to Evelyn's
husband and the pond is where he was drowned:
I want to know how it happened, and I want to know why, and I want
to know before Escobar gets here because I don't want to lose my license...I want
to make it easy for ya. You were jealous. You had a fight. He fell. He hit his
head. It was an accident but his girl was a witness. So you had to shut her up.
You don't have the guts to harm her, but you got the money to keep her mouth shut.
He desperately wants her to confess
the identity of the girl that she has been sheltering. Appearing to be hiding
something throughout the entire film, she finally tells the truth to him - the
girl, Katherine (Belinda Palmer) is the product of a union between her and her
father. To discover this shameful fact, Jake has to slap her again and again -
until he realizes that she isn't making a fool out of him:
Jake: Who is she? And don't give me that crap about your sister,
because you don't have a sister.
Mrs. Mulwray: I'll tell you, I'll tell you the truth.
Jake: Good. What's her name?
Mrs. Mulwray: Katherine.
Jake: Katherine who?
Mrs. Mulwray: She's my daughter.
Jake (slapping her): I said I want the truth.
Mrs. Mulwray: She's my sister. (Slap again.) She's my daughter. (Slap.) My sister,
my daughter. (Slap. Slap.)
Jake: I said I want the truth.
Mrs. Mulwray: ...she's my sister and my daughter!...My
father and I, understand? Or is it too tough for you?
Her revelation has nothing to do with the water department, the land swindle,
the building of the new reservoir, corrupt money, or Gittes' setup. Mrs. Mulwray
had incestuous relations with her father, Noah Cross. Hollis Mulwray's "mistress"
is in fact, the offspring of their liaison. (Noah Cross' incest with his own daughter
is paralleled with his 'violation' of LA county land.)
Jake: He raped you?
Mrs. Mulwray: (She nods her head no.)
Jake: Then what happened?
Mrs. Mulwray: I ran away.
Jake: To Mexico.
Mrs. Mulwray: Hollis came and took care of me. I couldn't see her. I was fifteen.
I-I wanted to, but I couldn't. Then, now I want to be with her. I want to take
care of her.
Jake: Where are you gonna take her now?
Mrs. Mulwray: Back to Mexico.
The struggle over the girl has
led Cross to murder Hollis Mulwray. He and Evelyn were trying to protect the girl
from her incestuous father.
Gittes decides to help Evelyn
and her daughter avoid Escobar's men, suggesting that she avoid both the railway
station and the airport. Evelyn must leave immediately, going to her Chinese butler's
home in Chinatown. And as a footnote to everything, Evelyn casually observes that
the spectacles aren't Hollis' - "these didn't belong to Hollis...He didn't wear
bifocals." [The bifocals belong to Noah Cross.] Katherine is brought down the
stairs to meet Jake: "Katherine, say hello to Mr. Gittes." Jake tells Mrs. Mulwray
that he knows where they are going in Chinatown: "Sure." He lowers the front window's
bamboo shade as he watches them leave from the front of the street. He then calls
colleagues Duffy and Walsh to meet him at the Chinatown address in about two hours
if they haven't heard from him.
After Escobar arrives, Jake is
able to elude them by leading them to Curly's home and then driving away with
Curly in his truck. In exchange for his previous investigative services, he suggests
that his fisherman client Curly provide safe passage that night for Evelyn and
Katherine (and their luggage) by smuggling them from Los Angeles to Ensenada.
They will be waiting for him there in Chinatown.
Then Gittes calls Cross and arranges
a meeting at the Mulwray mansion - the scene of the crime - baiting him: "Have
you got your checkbook handy, Mr. Cross? I've got the girl." In their showdown,
Cross is eager to get his hands on the girl. Gittes first wants to pursue his
questioning about the phony valley land investors by showing him his evidence
- the obituary column. Gittes also dangles the spectacles as evidence of Cross'
murder of Mulwray. Cross, however, explains how the new dam will be constructed
to irrigate land in the valley, causing LA to become one vast metropolitan area,
benefitting those who own land in the valley:
Cross: What does it mean?
Gittes: That you killed Hollis Mulwray right here in that pond. You drowned him
and you left these [the bifocals]. Coroner's report shows Mulwray had saltwater
in his lungs.
Cross: Hollis was always fascinated by tidepools. You know what he used to say?...That's
where life begins. Sloughs, tidepools. When he first come out here, he figured
if you dumped water into the desert sand and let it percolate down to the bedrock,
it would stay there instead of evaporate the way it does in most reservoirs. You
only lose 20% instead of 70 or 80. He made this city.
Gittes: That's what you were going to do in the valley.
Cross: That's what I am doing. If the bond issues passes Tuesday, there'll be
eight million dollars to build an aqueduct and reservoir. I'm doing it.
Gittes: Gonna be a lot of irate citizens when they find out that they're paying
for water that they're not gonna get.
Cross: Oh, that's all taken care of. You see Mr. Gits. Either you bring the water
to LA or you bring LA to the water.
Gittes: How you gonna do that?
Cross: By incorporating the valley into the city. Simple as that.
Gittes: How much are you worth?
Cross: I've no idea. How much do you want?
Gittes: I just want to know what you're worth. Over ten million?
Cross: Oh my, yes.
Gittes: Why are you doing it? How much better can you eat? What can you buy that
you can't already afford?
Cross: The future, Mr. Gits - the future! Now where's the girl. I want
the only daughter I've got left. As you found out, Evelyn was lost to me a long
time ago.
Gittes: Who do you blame for that? Her?
Cross: I don't blame myself. You see, Mr. Gits. Most people never have to face
the fact that at the right time, the right place, they're capable of anything.
At the urging of Cross to take
them to the girl - with Mulvihill's gun pointed at his head - Gittes reluctantly
leads them to Chinatown.
In the startling and despairing
ending scene in the Chinatown section of town, the only scene in the film which
actually takes place there, all the characters converge, including the unsuspecting
police (on Cross' payroll). Escobar's partner Loach immediately handcuffs Gittes.
At first relieved to be arrested, he then protests that Cross, Evelyn's incestuous
father, is "the bird you're after...He's crazy Lou. He killed Mulwray because
of the water thing...Lou, you don't know what's going on here, I'm tellin' ya."
Cross, who has finally caught
up with his two daughters, identifies himself to the girl as her grandfather.
Evelyn pushes him and attempts to get him away from the girl. He pleads with her
to have the young girl:
Cross: Evelyn, pleeease pleeease be reasonable...How many years have
I got? She's mine too?
Evelyn: She's never going to know that.
With that, Evelyn pulls out a
small pistol, threatening him. Cross tries to reason with her and accuses her
of being neurotic and paranoid: "Evelyn, you're a disturbed woman, you cannot
hope to provide...You'll have to kill me first." And with that, she wounds her
father in the arm in full view of everyone, and then attempts to escape by car
with Katherine.
In the gripping final scene,
Escobar fires his pistol into the air as a warning, and then both he and Loach
take four shots at the escaping car as it recedes out of view. Suddenly the car
slows to a stop. The blaring horn of the car signals a death. There are Katherine's
screams, as the awful, horrible scene is revealed - slumped over the wheel of
her car is Evelyn, shot through the head from behind. Her face is horribly blown
apart - she has literally been destroyed by her father. Cross, lamenting "Lord,
Oh Lord," shields and cover the eyes of an hysterical Katherine, and takes her
away. Escobar has the cuffs removed from Gittes' arms.
Powerless to prevent the inevitable
tragedy, Jake is stunned, shocked, and numb, but mumbles what he told Evelyn he
used to do in Chinatown and has again succeeded in doing: "as little as possible."
The devastated Gittes is ordered by Escobar to get the hell out of there and go
home as a "favor":
What's that? What's that? You want to do your partner a big favor,
you take him home. Take him home! Just get him the hell out of here. Go home,
Jake. (Whispering) I'm doing you a favor.
Walsh also tells him to lay the
inexplicable blame on the foreign area, in a haunting closing line:
Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown!
Sirens sound and Escobar clears
spectators gathering on the street:
All right. Come on, clear the area. On the sidewalk. On the sidewalk,
get off the street.
[Editor's Note: This Chinatown is a real-life Chinese community.
It offers more than stalls full of trinkets and souvenirs. You can spend an entire
day poking around for unusual finds in the shops (along Spring Street are several
well-stocked markets, including a butcher who sells whole roasted pigs and ducks).
You can easily find it right near the train station between 900 to 1000 N. Broadway,
Los Angeles. If you eat a meal in Chinatown, make it dim sum, that delightful
Chinese brunch that lets you sample numerous dumplings, buns, rolls, seafood and
more in one sitting. Chinatown's tourist Mecca is found on the 900 block, where
ornamented buildings, including the Chinatown Gateway, comprise a shopping mall
with trinkets of all sorts. Locals prefer the immediate area around the 900-1000
block of Broadway, where a better selection and prices make a visit all the more
worthy.]
