Chapter One

Chinatown (1974)

Tell me the story again, please.

Very well, there was this detective in
Los Angeles, Jake Gittes, as honest as
he could be after years with the LAPD. But
he had had trouble in Chinatown and so
retired into independent operation. Then he
was set up, and you have to realize that he
was sought out in just the way that Scottie was
in Vertigo. Someone picked him to receive
the story that Hollis Mulwray was having an
affair. Trace it back and you'll see it was all a
cruel design. Jake Gittes did his best, but he
was as much damage as he was good, because
he fell in love on the job with a woman who
was such trouble it smelled like gangrene.
And so, finally, the bad man, Noah Cross, was
left in charge, and they led Jake away to some
hiding hole and they whispered in his ear that
it was all “Chinatown.” I really don't see why
you love the story so much.

It was a story that Robert Towne, an Angeleno,
dreamed up for his pal Jack Nicholson
to play. And another friend, Robert Evans,
would produce it at Paramount. But Evans
thought that Roman Polanski should direct,
and Polanski battled with Towne over the
script-it had to be clearer and tougher.
Towne had had a gentler ending, with less
death. But Polanski knew it was a story that
had to end terribly-so no one forgot. The
director won, and the picture worked with its
very bleak ending.

What's more, the picture worked in every
way you could think of. Faye Dunaway was
the woman, and she was lovely but flawed and
incapable of being trusted. John Huston was
Noah Cross, and the more you see the film,