Trailer
Plot summary
In 1937 Los Angeles, Jake Gittes runs a small private detective agency and knows how to get his name in the papers. A woman who calls herself Evelyn Mulwray hires him to follow her husband Hollis, the chief engineer of the Department of Water and Power. Gittes photographs Hollis with a young woman, and the pictures are printed. The real Evelyn Mulwray then arrives at his office with a lawyer and a lawsuit, and Gittes understands that the woman who hired him meant to discredit Hollis. Hollis is found dead in a reservoir. The city is in a drought, yet Gittes learns that large amounts of water are released from the reservoir every night, and Claude Mulvihill, the water department's security chief, warns him to stay away.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Chinatown (1974)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Screenwriter Robert Towne turned down a $175,000 offer from producer Robert Evans to adapt The Great Gatsby, feeling he could not improve on Fitzgerald's novel, and instead asked for just $25,000 to write his own original story, which became Chinatown.
SPOILER
In an eerie real-life echo of the film's incest twist involving Evelyn and Katherine, Jack Nicholson learned from Time magazine researchers in 1974, right after making Chinatown, that the woman he had believed was his sister was actually his mother.SPOILER
Screenwriter Robert Towne wanted villain Noah Cross to die and Evelyn Mulwray to survive, but director Roman Polanski insisted on a bleaker ending in which Evelyn dies instead; the two argued so fiercely over it that they parted ways, and Polanski wrote the final scene himself just days before it was shot.- Director Roman Polanski personally played the small-time hood who slashes Jake Gittes's nose on screen, a stunt performed with a real specialty knife that could have actually cut Jack Nicholson had Polanski not held it exactly right.
- The film's water engineer Hollis Mulwray was loosely based on the real Irish immigrant William Mulholland, superintendent and chief engineer of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, who oversaw construction of the aqueduct that carries water from the Owens Valley to Los Angeles.
- Mulholland inspected the dam at around 10:30 in the morning and declared that all was well with the structure; just before midnight it failed, flooding the Santa Clara River Valley and the town of Santa Paula and killing at least 431 people, which ended his career.
- Composer Jerry Goldsmith wrote and recorded the entire score in just ten days, after producer Robert Evans rejected composer Phillip Lambro's original score at the last minute.
- Jane Fonda was strongly considered for the role of Evelyn Mulwray, but director Roman Polanski insisted on casting Faye Dunaway instead.
