Directed by Roman Polanski, written by Robert Towne, and starring Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway, Chinatown (1974) is widely regarded as one of the greatest films ever made. It serves as the definitive “neo-noir,” a film that honors the tropes of 1940s detective cinema while infusing them with 1970s cynicism, moral ambiguity, and a tragic realism that the original Hays Code would never have permitted. Set in 1937 Los Angeles, it is a story of water, power, and the terrifying rot hidden beneath the veneer of civic progress.

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Plot Synopsis: The Controlled Burn of J.J. Gittes

The film begins in the office of J.J. “Jake” Gittes, a former cop turned private investigator specializing in “matrimonial work” (infidelity cases). He is approached by a woman claiming to be Evelyn Mulwray, the wife of Hollis Mulwray, the chief engineer of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. She suspects her husband is having an affair. Gittes, a man of expensive tastes and a cynical yet professional demeanor, takes the case. He follows Mulwray, a man obsessed with the city’s water crisis, who is publicly opposing the construction of a new dam on safety grounds, citing the failure of a previous dam that led to a catastrophic loss of life.

Gittes eventually photographs Mulwray with a young blonde woman and the story hits the tabloids. However, the real Evelyn Mulwray (Faye Dunaway) appears at Gittes’ office with her lawyer, threatening to sue him. Jake realizes he was set up by an impostor to discredit Hollis Mulwray. Shortly after, Hollis is found dead in a freshwater reservoir—drowned, despite the city suffering through a severe drought.

Driven by a sense of being used, Gittes begins investigating why someone would want Hollis Mulwray dead. He discovers that while the city is officially suffering from a water shortage, massive amounts of water are being dumped from the reservoirs into the ocean at night. He encounters the menacing Claude Mulvihill and a “midget” thug (played by Roman Polanski) who slits Jake’s nostril as a warning to stop “poking his nose” into other people’s business.

Jake eventually meets Evelyn’s father, Noah Cross (John Huston), a wealthy and powerful man who used to own the city’s water utility with Hollis. Cross is a figure of terrifying, grandfatherly charisma. He hires Jake to find the young girl Hollis was seen with—his mistress, or so Cross claims. As Gittes digs deeper, he uncovers a massive land-grab scheme. Land in the Northwest Valley is being bought up cheaply because it has no water; however, the city is planning to incorporate the land and divert water to it, making it worth millions. The “drought” is being manufactured to trick the public into voting for the new dam project.

Jake discovers that the land is being bought in the names of residents of a local nursing home—people who are either dead or unaware of the transactions. When he confronts Evelyn about her husband’s “mistress,” the truth takes a sickening turn. The girl, Katherine, is not Hollis’s mistress. After a series of confrontations, Evelyn reveals the horrifying secret at the heart of the film: Katherine is her daughter and her sister—the product of incestuous rape by her father, Noah Cross. Hollis Mulwray had discovered Cross’s plan to steal the city’s water and was trying to protect Katherine from her father. Cross murdered him to secure his empire and his “bloodline.”

The climax takes place in the eponymous Chinatown, a place Jake used to work as a cop and where he was told to do “as little as possible” because the corruption was too deep to fight. Jake attempts to help Evelyn and Katherine escape to Mexico. However, the police—led by Jake’s former partner, Lou Escobar—intercept them. Cross arrives to claim Katherine. In a moment of desperation, Evelyn shoots Cross in the arm and tries to drive away. The police fire at the car, killing Evelyn instantly. The film ends with the haunting image of Cross clutching a screaming Katherine and leading her away, unpunished and triumphant. Jake’s associates pull him away, uttering the iconic final line: “Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.”

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10 In-Depth Facts About Chinatown

1. The Legendary Feud Over the Ending

The bleak, haunting conclusion of Chinatown is arguably its most famous element, but it was the subject of a massive creative war between director Roman Polanski and screenwriter Robert Towne. Towne’s original script ended much more traditionally: Evelyn killed her father, Noah Cross, and escaped with her daughter. Polanski, influenced by the recent real-life tragedy of the murder of his wife, Sharon Tate, insisted that the film must end in tragedy. He argued that if the film was to be a true “noir,” the “bad guys” had to win because, in the real world, they often do. Polanski won the argument just days before the scene was filmed, rewriting the ending to ensure Cross remained unpunished, cementing the film’s status as a masterpiece of nihilism.

2. The Real-Life Inspiration: The California Water Wars

While the characters are fictional, the backdrop of Chinatown is rooted in the very real and sordid history of Los Angeles. Robert Towne was inspired by the “California Water Wars” of the early 20th century, specifically the efforts of William Mulholland (the inspiration for Hollis Mulwray) to secure water rights for the burgeoning city. The Owens Valley land grab, where Los Angeles interests bought up water rights and essentially “stole” the Owens River, leaving the valley a dust bowl, serves as the historical skeleton of the plot. Towne transformed this complex civic history into a personal, Oedipal tragedy, moving the timeline to the 1930s to take advantage of the noir aesthetic.

3. Jack Nicholson’s Bandaged Nose

For a significant portion of the film, Jack Nicholson’s character wears a prominent, unsightly bandage on his nose after it is slashed by a thug. This was a bold choice for a Hollywood leading man. Polanski insisted on the bandage because he wanted the audience to be constantly reminded of the physical stakes and the vulnerability of the protagonist. Nicholson, who was at the height of his “cool” factor, embraced the choice. Interestingly, the bandage serves a narrative purpose: it marks the passage of time and creates a visual “ticking clock” as the character’s physical wound heals while the moral wound of the mystery deepens.

4. The Last-Minute Musical Masterpiece

The score for Chinatown is one of the most celebrated in cinema history, but it was composed in just nine days. Originally, the film was scored by Phillip Lambro, but producer Robert Evans found the music too avant-garde and dissonant. With the release date looming, Evans brought in Jerry Goldsmith. Goldsmith was told to write a score that felt like the 1930s but sounded contemporary. He produced a haunting, trumpet-led soundtrack that perfectly captured the heat, the dust, and the melancholy of the story. The score went on to receive an Academy Award nomination and is now considered a textbook example of how music can define a film’s atmosphere.

5. Casting the Villain: John Huston as Noah Cross

The choice of John Huston to play Noah Cross was a stroke of meta-cinematic genius. Huston was a legendary director himself, known for directing The Maltese Falcon, the film that essentially birthed the film noir genre. By casting the “father” of noir as the ultimate villain, Polanski added a layer of authority and dread to the character. Huston’s performance is terrifying because of its normalcy; he doesn’t play Cross as a mustache-twirling villain, but as a man who genuinely believes he is above the law because he “incorporates” the future. His chemistry with Nicholson—who was dating Huston’s daughter, Anjelica Huston, at the time—added an uncomfortable, real-world subtext to their scenes.

6. The “Hidden” Camera Perspective

Roman Polanski’s direction in Chinatown is a masterclass in subjective filmmaking. Almost every shot in the film is designed to be seen from Jake Gittes’ perspective. The camera follows him, often looking over his shoulder, ensuring the audience only knows what Jake knows. There are no “cutaways” to the villains plotting or scenes involving other characters that Jake isn’t present for. This technique tethers the viewer to Gittes’ investigation, making the final revelation about Evelyn’s daughter just as shocking for the audience as it is for the protagonist. This claustrophobic perspective is what makes the mystery so immersive.

7. Faye Dunaway’s “Difficult” Performance

Faye Dunaway’s portrayal of Evelyn Mulwray is iconic, but her time on set was famously contentious. She and Polanski clashed constantly over her character’s motivation and appearance. In one famous anecdote, a stray hair of Dunaway’s was catching the light during a close-up; rather than asking a stylist to fix it, Polanski reportedly reached over and plucked it out of her head, leading to a screaming match. Despite (or perhaps because of) this tension, Dunaway delivered a performance of incredible fragility and hidden strength, perfectly capturing a woman living under the weight of an unspeakable trauma.

8. The Color Palette of Drought

Unlike the black-and-white noirs of the 1940s, Chinatown uses color to convey its themes. Cinematographer John A. Alonzo used a palette of “parched” colors—dusty browns, ochres, and faded yellows—to emphasize the heat and the drought. The film looks “thirsty.” Even the lush greenery of the Northwest Valley is presented with an underlying sense of artificiality. This use of color was revolutionary for the genre, proving that the “mood” of noir could be achieved through searing sunlight and dust just as effectively as through shadows and rain.

9. The Significance of the Title

Ironically, only the final scene of the film actually takes place in Chinatown. Throughout the movie, Chinatown is used as a metaphor for a place where you can’t tell what’s going on, where the rules of the outside world don’t apply, and where intervention only makes things worse. It represents the “blind spot” of the law. Robert Towne based this on stories told to him by a real-life undercover cop who worked in the district. By ending the film there, the title moves from a metaphorical warning to a literal, tragic reality: the “Chinatown” state of mind—where corruption is absolute—has swallowed the entire city.

10. The Screenplay as a Perfect Structure

Robert Towne’s script for Chinatown is frequently cited in film schools as the “perfect” screenplay. It is a marvel of narrative economy and plant-and-payoff. Every detail, from the salt water in the reservoir to the bifocals found in the garden, serves as a crucial clue that converges in the finale. Towne won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, and the script remains a benchmark for the “whodunnit” structure. It successfully balances a massive political conspiracy (the water rights) with a deeply personal, psychological horror (the incest), weaving them together so tightly that they become inseparable.

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Conclusion: The Legacy of a Masterpiece

Chinatown remains a chilling reminder of the cyclical nature of corruption and the fragility of individual morality against the machinations of the powerful. It bridged the gap between the Golden Age of Hollywood and the “New Hollywood” of the 1970s, proving that a film could be both a commercial success and a profound piece of social and psychological art. It asks the uncomfortable question: what do you do when the “system” is not just broken, but designed to work against you? For Jake Gittes, the answer is silence. For the audience, the answer is a masterpiece that continues to haunt the cinematic landscape fifty years later.