Although
devoid of the historical context of the first wave of Film Noirs from the 1940s
and 50s, Chinatown manages to retain
key story elements and some of its signature style and adapts them for the
1970s. The film’s self-aware nature as well as its unique use of the water
imagery and McGuffin device serve as a call back to the heyday of Noir, without
actually being a part of it.
Whereas
the original cycle of Noir films were produced before “Noir” was even a part of
the film lexicon, Chinatown is very
aware of itself as a noir. The film opens with a vintage Paramount logo and
fades into opening credits with an art deco font. The very first scene has
Detective Gittes calling attention to his new venetian blinds. The biggest nod
to Noir, however, is the casting of John Huston as Noah Cross. Huston began his
career by directing The Maltese Falcon,
a definitive noir that also features a tough detective protagonist. “The film draws one
aspect of its power from the way… Huston makes Cross an attractive figure,
mobilizing our sympathetic response to the pioneer archetype before they reveal
to us Evelyn and Noah's past. Partly this is an effect of the wry humor and
tough-minded realism of the language Towne writes for the character, as when he
pleads guilty to being "respectable" by growling "Politicians,
ugly buildings, and whores all get respectable if they last long enough"(Shetley
1092). This line is ironic because noirs were once seen as “B” pictures, but
now the casting of Huston pays homage to the film’s inspiration while also
giving it legitimacy and respectability as a noir itself.
Chinatown also uses recurring motifs of
Noir in interesting ways. The first is the film’s use of water. In past Noirs,
water is an integral component of the films. It seemed to complement the
hopelessness of the world that the films took place in. Just like William
Holden floating dead in a swimming pool in Sunset
Boulevard or Orson Welles being pursued through the underground waterways
of Vienna in The Third Man, Chinatown prominently features water.
Rather than used strictly as symbolism, it is the driving motivation of the
characters and the key to solving Gittes’ investigation. Using the control of
the water system as the scheme of the antagonist is very fitting for the 1970s
when trust in government entities was extremely low. “Over and above the noir
tendencies of Polanski’s film, therefore, it is the expansion of Simi Valley,
the control of the LAPD, zoning, immigrant segregation and ghettoization that
bind together the historical and the cinematic. From Mulholland, Eaton and
Otis, on through …Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Tom Bradley, Richard Riordan
and Arnold Schwarzenegger: these are the people … that waited in the wings to
copy the modus operandi of the elite incorporated into Chinatown; those
that became its successors and future torchbearers” (Scott 23). The film is
looking into the past to explain the present state of power in the U.S., California
especially.
The
McGuffin is given a new spin in Chinatown
also. Instead of an arbitrary object like treasure or clothing setting up the
plot, it is a human, Hollis Mulwray. Gittes is hired to investigate Hollis, but
by the first half hour of the film, Hollis is killed and mostly forgotten as
the plot moves on to the waterworks conspiracy and Gittes relationship with
Evelyn. The lowering of a human into a role traditionally filled by an object
could also be read as an attack on the establishment of the 1970s and the way
young soldiers were used during the Vietnam War. Like Mulwray, Vietnam era
soldiers were viewed by some in power as insignificant in the grand scheme of
gaining power. “Chinatown was no longer movie folklore, or cultural
narrative, but historical re-enactment. In the words of Michael Eaton, Chinatown
was “not just a place in the past where no one knew what was going on […] but,
much more dynamically, a metaphorical site still mentally present,” (Scott 20).
The film seems to be looking to how Hollywood dealt with WWII as a way to work
through the horrors of Vietnam. “Chinatown’s conclusion is generally taken to
be the filmic equivalent of an existential shriek of despair” (Novak 269). With
no real life answers to contemporary culture, Polanski deals with it through
film, again finding no answers.
Although Chinatown does not adhere to the
traditional black and white, city at night settings of the original Noirs, It
uses specific aspects of the genre and style such as casting, water, the McGuffin
to reflect a new set of fears and anxieties that Americans faced in the 1970s
due to Vietnam, Watergate, and the general cynicism that had set in by 1973.
This functions in much the same way that the original Noir cycle reflected the
social concerns of the post WWII years.
Works Cited
Novak, Philip.
"The Chinatown Syndrome." Wayne State University Press 49.3
(2007): 255-69.
Web. 4 Dec. 2014.
Scott, Ian S.
"'Either You Bring the Water to L.A. or You Bring L.A. to the Water':
Politics,
Perceptions and
The Pursuit of History in Roman Polanski’s Chinatown.” European Journal of American Studies 2.2 (2007): 20-23. Web. 4 Dec.
2014
Shetley, Vernon L. "Incest and
Capital in Chinatown." MLN 114.5 (1999): 1092-109. Web. 7
Dec.
2014.
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