10 Great Screenplays: #2 Chinatown (1974)

As I'm nearing the end of this countdown, I find it more and more difficult to steer away from the Writers' Guild picks for best written screenplays of all-time. While I disagreed with many of the earlier choices, the ones at the top are very difficult to find replacements for. Their quality simply happens to be a little better than the competition. Aside from that, they are great examples as to what a screenplay should possess.

Without further ado, here is the penultimate screenplay on my personal list: Robert Towne's Chinatown. The finished product, directed by the troublesome Roman Polanski and starring Jack Nicholson, is considered by many to be a classic. It could even be called the quintessential neo-noire, which is far from uplifting but full of mystery, romance, double-dealing, and fate playing it's dirty tricks on the characters involved.

What's going on out here?

One massive reason for the film's revered status is the wonderfully wrought screenplay by Mr. Robert Towne. It is everything a screenwriter wishes they could write, thematically and characteristically powerful. 

The story opens in the office of private eye Jake Gittes, a private detective. He's good at what he does, as the opening reveal of a wife's affair shows, and cares a lot about his intentionally pristine image. A woman enters, wanting to know if her husband is having an affair, and he eventually takes the job when the man involved is a high-profile city engineer (Hollis Mulwray) who heads the water department. The job appears an elementary one and he snaps pictures of Mulwray with a young woman. Then, when the story hits the newspapers, the real Mrs. Mulwray appears and serves Gittes with a subpoena. 

He's angry. Who would want to mislead him like that? He now takes it into his own hands to figure it out. Shortly thereafter, Mulwray is murdered and Mrs. Mulwray is the prime suspect. At this point, Gittes attempts to interrogate her and comes out of the situation knowing less than before and with a retainer from Mrs. Mulwray.

Gittes, Mrs. Mulwray, and the cops.

However, a late-night tracking mission leads him back to the water department. Someone is dumping water outside of the proper channels or so he thinks. Mulvihill, the water department security chief, tells him to mind his own business. Gittes refuses and during another personal tracking assignment, where he is nearly drowned, a henchman slits his nose.

Re-enter Mrs. Mulwray, blindingly beautiful, and the further complication of romance. Also, there's the introduction of Noah Cross, Mrs. Mulwray's father. He wants to see his daughter...his other daughter and the key to finding her is apparently Mrs. Mulwray. Gittes then discovers a land plot. Everything in the "Northwest Valley" is being bought up under false names. 

He now knows Mulwray's murder has something to do with the deal and the key to whoever set him up in the beginning lies with discovering who is behind it.

That looks like my cue to step back and examine the writing. 

First off, there's the motif of Chinatown. Gittes mentions it once or twice and it comes back with a bang in the finish. He didn't know what was going on in Chinatown when he was a cop and he definitely doesn't know what is going on throughout the course of the story. This hurts him and the people he cares about. In other words, this motif accentuates the character of Jake Gittes, around whom the story revolves. He wants everyone to think he's in control, that he can take care of the people who are relying on him, but in truth he can't.

Then there's the theme, the water, Mr. Cross, and the unwritten law. I could go on for hundreds of words as to how Towne drops in and out of the story, but I will spare you the pain. However, I can say that it was a masterful job and makes the story work on multiple levels--thematically, plotwise, and with the characters. In the end, it was fully deserving of the Academy Award and the reverential place it holds in the world of screenwriting.

Forget it, Jake, it's Chinatown...

I will close by sharing a neat tidbit of information. Towne's story was inspired by some research he did into a historical event called the "Rape of the Owens Valley" and a man named William Mulholland. It ruined a fertile valley but it saved Los Angeles by providing it with a necessary element--water.