Chinatown Roman Polanski\'s Chinatown Roman

Chinatown

Roman Polanski's Chinatown

Roman Polanski's Chinatown is a movie about greed and corruption in local government. It tells the story of a private detective, played by Jack Nicholson, who specializes in matrimonial cases. He is hired by a woman to spy on her husband. Little does he know, however, that this is merely the beginning of a seemingly endless trail of conspiracies involving some of the more prominent politicians in California.

When a successful private detective is hired by a woman to spy on her husband, he does not realize that this will lead him on a trail of conspiracies revolving corruption, water management, and murder.

The primary character in Chinatown is J.J. "Jake" Gittes, who is played by Jack Nicholson. He is the character through which all of the movie's main action centers. Without him, there would be no Chinatown.

Gittes's primary goal is to delineate between acts of good and acts of evil he encounters in his job as a detective.

Gittes's primary goal never really changes in the course of Chinatown. Rather, he is constantly forced to revive his previous conclusions when he encounters further instances of evil and corruption throughout the course of the film.

The primary plot is resolved at the end of the film, when Gittes effectively fails to combat the forces of evil that he has been fighting against the entire time - they are simply too vast for one man to deal with alone.

The one other contender for a protagonist in Chinatown is Faye Dunaway's character. But she does not stand on equal footing with Gittes in the plot of the movie. She rather serves as an impetus for the plot, but as a protagonist, Gittes clearly stands alone - and is left alone at the end of the film.

Part Three

The antagonist in Chinatown is Noah Cross, played by John Huston.

Cross's main goal is to make as much money as possible. He has little to no moral qualms about achieving this goal, which leads him to do dubious things in his greed for power and financial success. This puts him in to conflict with Gittes, who is attempting to unravel much of the evil and corruption that Cross seems to be caught up in.

Some of the other characters in the film include Hollis Mulwray, Lawrence Walsh, Claude Mulvihill, and Katherine.

Hollis Mulwray is a major subplot character. Gittes is hired to spy on him at the beginning of the film, and his death spurns much of the plot, from the beginning onwards. Claude Mulvihill could also be a major subplot character. His confrontation with Gittes leads to Gittes getting his nose slashed.

Ida Sessions, the woman who was hired to play Evelyn in the beginning of the film, would be considered a supporting character in Chinatown. She does not play a major role in the narrative, but she is there at key moments (it is her clues, for example, that allow Gittes to pursue the water scandal.) Walsh and Duffy, Gittes's partners, are also "helping characters" in this respect.

Part Four

With a film as complex in its plot as Chinatown, it certainly helps to reconstruct events chronologically when evaluating the plot of the movie.

As Chinatown is essentially a detective movie, there are numerous clues dropped throughout the movie that the viewer is expected to pick up on and draw inferences out of. One example is the fact that Gittes, who is obviously doing well for himself, was not always in such a situation. In the past, he was struggling to make a living. This can be inferred from the following bit of dialogue with his former partner, Escobar:

Escobar: You look like you've done well by yourself.

Gittes: I get by.

Escobar: Well, sometimes it takes a while for a man to find himself. Maybe you have.

Loach: Yeah, goin' through other people's dirty linen.