Great Directors: Polanksi (re)defines a genre

***This is the fifth of five in-depth essays on great directors.***

Chinatown is an examination of genre. Many films have sampled from the film noir lexicon, movies like Body Heat, with its devious femme fatale. A movie like Dark City used some of film noir’s rules and dramatic lighting but used them in a science fiction universe of special effects and horrific imagery. Some, like Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye or the first Naked Gun film, have tried outright parody of film noir to a certain degree of success. L.A. Confidential did a blatant neo-noir exaggeration that effectively appealed to every film noir convention, from the hard-boiled detective to the labyrinthine corruption of power. But if there is any film that truly supports the original spirit of the golden age of film noir, it is Chinatown, Roman Polanski’s stubborn vindication of his talent and personal life inside a Hollywood that would turn against him.

More than any film outside the true film noir era — which ran roughly from 1940 to the mid 1950s — Chinatown adheres to what made the genre great, with only a few notable exceptions: it was shot in color using a subtle lighting scheme; the dialogue, while suggestive, is not nearly as titillating as any of the great film noirs; and it was shot after the abandonment of the Hays Code, which, as detrimental to films as it was, gave film noir its hidden edge. Everything else about Chinatown, though, is true-blue film noir in the greatest respect. Consider first the opening credits that reveal the entire cast and crew in an almost sepia-tinted simplicity. By 1974 movies had long ago stopped running complete credits this way at the beginning of the film, but Polanski adopts the technique to begin developing his film noir essay, by slowly transporting us back to another age. Consider next the character of J.J. Gittes, the hard-boiled detective who’s sent into a seething curiosity with each new lie — “You shortchanged me on the story,” he tells Evelyn Mulwray. Gittes could be a Sam Spade or a Philip Marlowe, a Bogart or a Mitchum, and not just because he’s a private detective, but because his quest for the truth is almost his undoing. “[Is this] business or obsession,” Evelyn asks. With Gittes it’s a little of both — business at the beginning, obsession at the end. Evelyn isn’t quite the femme fatale from most film noirs, but she assumes the role as best she can. She lies a great deal, manipulates the truth, endangers Gittes, but overall she’s not doing these things for selfish reasons like a Brigid O’Shaughnessy (The Maltese Falcon) or a Phyllis Dietrichson (Double Indemnity). In fact, her intentions could be almost understood as noble ignoring the implications of her previous relationship with her father. In the end, all she desires is to protect her daughter from a man who bears some right to her as a daughter and grand-daughter. Does she deserve a bullet to the eye? No, but it’s Chinatown and the rules are unforgiving.

Polanski dives deeper into film noir with his setting (Los Angeles), his plot (a murder mystery), his time period (1930s) and Gittes’ obsessive spiral into the water corruption case. We, like Gittes, learn the facts, or maybe the half truths, as they are presented to us. In a sense, the viewer is investigating the case as much as Gittes, who flies by the seat of his pants from one deadly encounter to the next. Even the title of the film is a nod to film noir. Consider The Long Goodbye and The Big Sleep, euphemisms for death; or Sunset Boulevard, a place where men go to die; Double Indemnity, a death clause written into an insurance policy; or Touch of Evil, which references the doomed path men take to the grave. These are classic titles that hint at the film’s narrow descent into darkness. It’s as if film noir’s main compositional work was the exploration of death and its many subterranean avenues. Chinatown is no different; the title refers to a place where law and order (i.e. death) are circumvented by the tragedy and corruption of life. Roman Polanski wasn’t creating just a mystery; he was bowing to the greatness in which mystery thrived — film noir.

But what is Chinatown? And is it coincidence that Gittes is sharing a joke about a “Chinaman” when he meets Mrs. Mulwray and then later is with her as she’s killed while fleeing from Chinatown? I don’t think it’s just coincidence, and Polanski — with Oscar-winning writer Robert Towne — was knowingly exemplifying Gittes’ fear of Chinatown long before we ever step foot there. And by exploring Gittes’ apprehension to returning to his old police beat — watch the slow zoom on his face when he’s told an address in Chinatown — we are aware of its power and aware that by going there we risk the death the title so convincingly tempts us with.