"Forget it, Jake.
It's Chinatown."
"Roman Polanski’s “Chinatown” is not only a great entertainment, but something more, something I would have thought almost impossible: It’s a 1940s private-eye movie that doesn't depend on nostalgia or camp for its effect, but works because of the enduring strength of the genre itself. In some respects, this movie actually could have been made in the 1940s. It accepts its conventions and categories at face value and doesn't make them the object of satire or filter them through a modern sensibility, as Robert Altman did with “The Long Goodbye.” Here’s a private-eye movie in which all the traditions, romantic as they may seem, are left intact."
Chinatown is an excellent , private detective mystery film neonoir (as labeled when it was released) based on original, oscar-winning screenplay by Robert Towne .
The film is a skillful blend of mystery, romance, suspense, and hard boiled detective/film noir genre elements - especially embodied in The Maltese Falcon (1941) (by director John Huston who acts in this film) and The Big Sleep (1946).
Chinatown marked Roman Polanski's return to Hollywood five years after the 1969 Manson murders that took the life of his actress wife Sharon Tate. Polanski opted to use a bleak ending rather than the more hopeful finale in the original screenplay. This was Polanski's last film made on location in the US.
The film opens in the upscale office of a Los Angeles private detective with the name of J. J. Gittes (Jack Nicholson). He's a former cop who now specializes in investigations of divorce cases and extra-marital affairs.
One of his distraught clients is in his office, groaning while looking at the incriminating evidence - black and white photographs of his wife having adulterous sex with another half-clothed man in the woods.
He is so upset that he throws the pictures into the air and grabs the venetian blinds. The self-assured, unperturbed Jake cautions him to stop chewing 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."
When J. J. Gittes is hired by Evelyn Mulwray to investigate her husband's activities, he believes it's a routine infidelity case. Jake's investigation soon becomes anything but routine when he meets the real Mrs. Mulwray (Faye Dunaway) and realizes he was hired by an imposter. Mr. Mulwray's sudden death sets Gittes on a tangled trail of corruption, deceit and sinister family secrets as Evelyn's father (John Huston) becomes a suspect in the case.
And always at the center, there’s the Nicholson performance, given an eerie edge by the bandage he wears on his nose after it’s slit by a particularly slimy character played by Polanski himself.
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.
When discussing the architects of the New Hollywood era, Robert Towne stands as arguably its definitive screenwriting voice. He possessed a rare gift for structural precision, atmospheric noir, and deeply cynical, localized institutional critique—most famously immortalized in his script for Chinatown.
Beyond his credited masterpieces, Towne was legendary as Hollywood's premier "script doctor," quietly reshaping some of the era's biggest films behind the scenes.
The Signature Masterpieces
Towne’s peak creative run in the 1970s yielded a trio of scripts that captured a distinct American disillusionment, blending precise historical realism with a world-weary moral ambiguity.
Chinatown (1974): Widely considered one of the greatest screenplays ever written. Towne used the foundational "Water Wars" of early 20th-century Los Angeles to construct a devastating, neo-noir allegory about power, structural corruption, and systemic rot. His original ending was famously more optimistic, but director Roman Polanski insisted on the bleak, tragic conclusion that gave the film its haunting, permanent resonance.
The Last Detail (1973): An abrasive, profane, and deeply empathetic character study of two Navy Shore Patrol officers escorting a young sailor to military prison. Towne fought fiercely to retain the script's raw, colloquial language, capturing a distinct undercurrent of post-Vietnam institutional fatigue.
Shampoo (1975): Co-written with Warren Beatty, this biting satire uses the superficial world of a high-end Beverly Hills hairdresser to dissect the moral vacancy of the late-1960s counterculture, cleverly set against the backdrop of Richard Nixon’s 1968 election night.
The Legendary Ghostwriter
Towne's influence on 1970s cinema extends far beyond his official credits. As an uncredited script doctor, he was frequently brought in to fix structural flaws or write pivotal, emotional high points in major productions.
The Godfather (1972): When Francis Ford Coppola needed a crucial scene to cement the shifting emotional dynamic between Vito and Michael Corleone before the Don's death, he called Towne. Towne wrote the quiet, poignant garden conversation between Marlon Brando and Al Pacino overnight. Coppola publicly thanked him during his Oscar acceptance speech.
Bonnie and Clyde (1967): Towne spent months on set acting as a creative consultant, tightening the narrative structure and sharpening the ideological tension between the criminal duo and the changing societal landscape.
Directorial Ventures & Later Work
While primarily celebrated as a writer, Towne stepped into the director’s chair for several notable projects that explored physical obsession, personal ethics, and noir themes:
Personal Best (1982): A critically acclaimed, intimate look at the complex relationship between two female track-and-field athletes training for the Olympics.
Tequila Sunrise (1988): A stylish, slick neo-noir thriller starring Mel Gibson and Kurt Russell that examined the blurred moral lines between a drug smuggler and a cop bound by an old friendship.
The Mission: Impossible Franchise: In the 1990s and 2000s, Towne collaborated closely with Tom Cruise, co-writing the first two installments of the action franchise and adapting to the structural demands of modern blockbuster cinema.
Towne's work ultimately redefined the boundaries of the Hollywood screenplay, transforming commercial genre pieces into complex, literary examinations of compromised morality and institutional decay.
To understand why Robert Towne’s screenplay for Chinatown is taught in almost every screenwriting program in the world, you have to look at how it masterfully subverts the classic detective formula. Towne takes a traditional Raymond Chandler-style noir framework and twists it into a modern, cynical tragedy where the detective's classic virtues—curiosity, persistence, and street-smarts—are the exact things that lead to disaster.Here is a breakdown of how Towne structures this immaculate clockwork engine of a script.
1. Structural Milestones: The Flawless Three Acts
Towne utilizes a rigorous, tight three-act structure, but instead of the detective staying ahead of the plot, the plot slowly and suffocatingly closes in on him.
[Act I: The Trap] -----------------> [Act II: The Deepening Rot] -----------> [Act III: The Trap Snaps]
Fake affair leads to water Uncovering the valley plot; The escape fails;
scandal & Mulwray's murder. the horrific Evelyn/Noah truth. Chinatown claims its victims.
Act I: The Setup and Mid-Act Catalyst (Pages 1–30): We start with Jake Gittes, a man who deals in "cheap divorce work." He thinks he's playing a standard game when a fake Ida Sessions hires him to spy on Hollis Mulwray. The inciting incident is the public scandal that breaks. The true Plot Point One snaps shut when the real Evelyn Mulwray shows up with a lawsuit, followed closely by Hollis Mulwray turning up dead in a freshwater reservoir. Gittes realizes he has been weaponized by an unseen hand.
Act II: The Escalation and The Midpoint (Pages 31–90): Gittes’s investigation shifts from a simple murder to a massive institutional conspiracy involving manufactured drought, forged land deeds, and the San Fernando Valley.
The Midpoint: Gittes gets his nose sliced open by Roman Polanski's "Man with Knife" character. This is a brilliant structural pivot—it raises the stakes from professional curiosity to intense, bloody personal vendetta.
Plot Point Two: The discovery of the saltwater in the freshwater pools, combined with the devastating revelation of the film’s central domestic horror: "She's my daughter... She's my sister." The political corruption and the personal corruption fuse into a single nightmare.
Act III: The Descent (Pages 91–Close): Gittes tries to orchestrate an escape for Evelyn and Katherine, playing the hero. But Towne structures the finale to show that Gittes is entirely outmatched. By luring everyone to Chinatown—the place where Gittes's past trauma occurred—he accidentally delivers the victims directly into the jaws of Noah Cross.'
2. Pacing: The Illusion of Progress
Towne’s pacing relies on ubiquitous POV (Point of View). The camera and the reader never know more than Gittes does. We are trapped inside his skull, which makes the pacing feel incredibly active even when the plot is dense with civic bureaucracy (municipal water boards, orange groves, and public records).
The Slow Leak: The first half moves with a steady, observational rhythm. Towne forces us to look at dirt, dried-up riverbeds, and official documents. It mimics the blistering, stagnant heat of a Los Angeles summer.
The Avalanche: Once the domestic horror of the Cross/Mulwray family is exposed, the pacing accelerates violently. The scenes become shorter, the transitions more abrupt, and the dialogue sharper. Gittes is forced into a frantic, reactionary state where he no longer has time to process the clues—he is just trying to survive the momentum.
3. Central Motifs and Visual MetaphorsTowne layers the script with recurring motifs that act as a psychological subtext, turning a period piece into a profound philosophical statement.Water and DroughtWater in Chinatown is the ultimate symbol of life, power, and absolute corruption. Noah Cross controls the water, meaning he controls the future, the city, and life itself. The irony is constant: Hollis Mulwray is drowned in the middle of a massive drought; water is being systematically dumped into the ocean at night while the public is told there is a shortage. It represents a world where abundance is hidden to manufacture desperation.Blindness, Vision, and Flawed SightThe script is obsessed with things that obscure or distort vision:Gittes uses binoculars to spy, but consistently misinterprets what he sees.He leaves pocket watches under car tires to track movement, relying on time when he cannot see.Evelyn Mulwray has a flaw in her iris (a literal speck in her eye). She is shot directly through that eye in the finale.The glasses found in the reservoir belong to Noah Cross—the blind patriarch who refuses to see the horror of his own actions, yet sees the grand design of the city perfectly."Chinatown" as a State of MindIn Towne’s script, Chinatown isn't just a geographical location; it’s a metaphysical twilight zone where the rules don't apply, and trying to do the right thing causes catastrophic harm. Gittes’s past trauma as a cop in Chinatown—where he was told to do "as little as possible"—hangs over the entire narrative. When the characters return there at the end, it represents the inescapable gravity of structural evil.The tragic, immortal closing line—"Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown."—is the ultimate acknowledgment that against systems of absolute wealth and compromised morality, individual justice is an illusion.
Roman Polanski’s ‘Chinatown’ is one of the most impressive works of the period.
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Screenplay Structure and the "Gittes POV"
Robert Towne's screenplay is widely taught in film schools as the gold standard of three-act structure. Its brilliance lies in its strict adherence to subjective point of view.
Information Parity: The audience knows only what Jake Gittes knows. Every clue he uncovers, we discover simultaneously. There are no cutaways to the villains plotting, and no scenes featuring other characters without Jake present.
The Nose Bandage: After a thuggish security guard (played in a cameo by Roman Polanski himself) slashes Jake's nose, Jake spends a significant portion of the film wearing a large, ridiculous white bandage. This visual choice serves two purposes: it strips him of his vanity, and it acts as a constant physical reminder of the dangers of sticking one's nose into the affairs of the powerful.
Polanski’s Direction and Alonzo’s Cinematography
Roman Polanski brought an outsider’s cynical European eye to this deeply American story, clashing famously with screenwriter Robert Towne over the film's ending. (Towne originally wanted a happier, or at least more redemptive, ending where Evelyn escapes, but Polanski insisted on the tragic climax to reflect the harsh, unjust realities of the world).
The Golden Hour Aesthetic: Director of Photography John A. Alonzo shot the film using a warm, golden, pastel palette. Instead of the high-contrast shadows (chiaroscuro) of traditional 1940s black-and-white noir, Chinatown utilizes a hazy, blinding daylight that makes the corruption feel exposed yet untouchable.
The Unobtrusive Camera: Polanski’s camera often sits over Jack Nicholson’s shoulder, pulling us into his investigative gaze. The framing is tight, claustrophobic, and deliberate, building a sense of paranoia even in wide-open spaces like the orange groves or the saltwater reservoirs.
Legacy and Impact
Chinatown was nominated for 11 Academy Awards in 1975, winning Best Original Screenplay for Robert Towne. It lost many of its other major sweeps to The Godfather Part II, but its reputation has only grown over the decades.
It revitalized the noir genre, ushering in the era of "Neo-Noir" (which paved the way for films like Blade Runner, L.A. Confidential, and Brick). Its exploration of municipal corruption and environmental politics remains startlingly relevant today, especially as debates over water rights, climate change, and corporate greed continue to dominate the American West.
104 Chinatown 1974 Movie Photos and Premium High Res Pictures - Getty Images >>>
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