Chinatown

Chinatown is an American neo-noir film that was released in 1974. It starred Jack Nicholson as Jake Gittes, Faye Dunaway as Evelyn Mulwray and John Huston as Noah Cross. This unique film, directed by Roman Polanski, has several key aspects of the older film noir movies while adding a few different features of it's own. The film take place in and around Los Angeles, California in 1937. Jake Gittes is a private detective (typical of film noir) who is hired by a woman who claims to be Hollis Mulwray's wife to follow her husband to find out if he is cheating on her. When Gittes finds out that Mulwray is in fact cheating, the media gets wind of the story and publishes it on the front page of the newspaper. Soon after, Evelyn Mulray shows up at Gittes office telling him that she is Hollis' real wife and that she is filing a lawsuit against him. Gittes then tries to figure out why this original woman set him up to take down Mulwray, so he tries to find Mulwray to talk with him. In doing so, he eventually finds Mulwray dead in a resevoir being fished out by the police, with whom he does not get along (another element of film noir). Gittes then visits Mulwray's wife to figure out why this all was happening. She quickly drops the lawsuit and instead hires Gittes to investigate her husbands death. Throughout the film, Gittes is beaten and psychological stressed. Around every corner he finds that someone else is lying or covering something up. In the end, some disturbing truths are revealed that are not typical of film noir and make this a film of it's own.

This movie follows many of the elements that are similar in film noir pictures but at the same time it strays away from these norms and creates a different aspect of psychological turmoil. The aspects that followed the film noir suit were the detective who is the central character, Jake Gittes, the femme fatale, Evelyn Mulwray, the murder of someone close to the femme fatale, Hollis Mulwray, and the characters that are constantly lying and the story that is ever-changing. One reoccurring aspect of film noir that I also noticed was that somebody always gets slapped, repeatedly.

In the end, nothing seemed to be resolved. This is not typical of film noir and kind of threw me off. The movie seemed to be a bit drawn out and did not use the extra time to help bring any kind of closure to the film. The viewer sees the whole picture pretty much, but they are still left with many questions once the credits begin to roll. The tragic ending for the femme fatale is similar to film noir but in this case there were other aspects that were simply left unresolved. Overall, I enjoyed this movie. It was different from other film noir and even other neo-noir. Even though it left me with some unanswered questions, I still appreciated the way in which the story was told and the way it broke free from some of the typical film noir elements.