Chinatown

*SPOILER ALERT*

 

 Chinatown is a cleverly written and developed film-noir narrative about a private detective, J.J. Gittes who is hired by quite a few individuals to investigate events that have transpired in result of a dispute over the building of a dam in the Los Angeles area which would relieve the city and the surrounding areas from the drought that they are stuck in. Gittes meets a woman who claims to be Evelyn Mulwray, and hires him to follow her husband, Hollis Mulwray (the chief engineer for the Department of Water and Power) because she suspects him of having an affair. When Gittes begins to follow him, he discovers that Hollis has been visiting many reservoirs and dams in the middle of the night and they both discover that someone is responsible for dumping water into the ocean in the middle of the night even though the city is in the midst of a drought. After they both make this discovery and photos are printed of Hollis with a mystery woman, another woman comes to see Gittes and reveals to him that she is Mulwray's wife and that the woman who hired Gittes is an imposter. The real Mrs. Mulwray sues Gittens, but Gittens is determined to find out who really hired him to follow Hollis Mulwray. Gittes goes looking for Mulwray one afternoon at a nearby reservoir and finds the police there because Hollis has been discovered there dead. Gittes makes it his mission to find out who is responsible for dumping the water, who killed Hollis and who originally hired him in the first place. Gittes realizes that he is in the midst of a very dangerous investigation, and that everyone involved has secrets that they aren't willing to reveal and that no one is who they say they really are.

I really liked Chinatown, more than I thought I was going to after my reactions to the first two film-noirs that we watched. I thought that it was very well written and constructed, and although many of the genre conventions of film-noir were present throughout the narrative I was still kept guessing and held in suspense until the very end of the film. Yes, I could easily predict that the femme fatale, Mrs. Mulwray, was going to end up getting "involved" with the hero, Gittes. But I thought that the narrative flowed really well, and that humor, suspense, romance, and danger were all balanced in a way that made the film enjoyable to watch. I didn't want to fall asleep, and I was kept guessing until the end so for me this film was a good one.