Chinatown (1974) is an impressive ode to the original film noir cycle, beautifully recreating the aura and inscrutability of the original black-and-whites while adding visual, thematic, and linguistic ‘color.’ The collapse of the Motion Picture Production Code and the drastically different social climate of the latter 20th-century enabled Chinatown to go where previous noir films could not, thus marking a critical extension of the noir genre. Costuming and scene decoration are meticulously matched to the mid-century while flagrant language, on-screen violence, nudity, and self-reference welcome it to the postmodern era. Whether or not Chinatown is a distinctly postmodern film I cannot say, but it certainly indicates the new era of cynicism and direct social critique burgeoning during the time. Roman Polanski’s decision to rewrite the ending of Robert Towne’s script reflected the fatigue and nihilism of a populace battered by war, corruption, and violence and resulted in one of the most iconic ending lines of all time. Polanski’s own life experience as a survivor of the Holocaust and widower of the tragically-slain Sharon Tate is surely reflected in this ending, which upon first watch leaves one hurt and dumbfounded. Subsequent viewings do little to numb the heartbreak of such a sour ending, but the perpetuation of evil is what makes Chinatown so trenchant and necessary. It is a hard pill to swallow, decidedly more jagged than the clean (and often romantic) conclusions of original film noirs, which makes Chinatown the perfect poster child for neo-noir.
While expanding noir conventions in many ways, Chinatown also completely reverses one that I feel is particularly important to note. In Murder, My Sweet, The Big Sleep, and The Maltese Falcon, women are varyingly morally careless, brutally independent, criminally keen— anything but victims. Each must be considered in relation to the femme fatale, one of the most enduring archetypes of literary and cinematic history that is practically synonymous with film noir. In Chinatown, however, we are presented with a woman, Evelyn Mulwray, who mimics her forebears on the exterior but has none of the agency or cutthroatedness of those women. As the film develops, we come to find out why— unlike the pastless, black-and-white characters portrayed by Lauren Bacall and the like, Evelyn Mulwray has a traumatic past that casts a long shadow. A victim of a crime against nature perpetrated by her father when she was 15, Evelyn’s case offers two substantial reversals of original film noir tropes. First, she is given a past. Unlike the leading and supporting ladies of the films named above, the existence of a prior version of Evelyn is acknowledged; the audience is given permission to imagine her outside of her on-screen manifestation, as a child. The second reversal is Evelyn Mulwray’s manipulation and exploitation at the hands of men. Because women characters were not often portrayed as victims in the original film noir cycle, men were not directly portrayed as abusers. Chinatown turns this trope on its head in a violent and sick way, clearly addressing patriarchal manipulation in addition to capitalist greed and domination. Evelyn’s violation at the hands of her father, the infamous slapping scene between her and Jake Gittes, and her inability to influence the fate of her or her daughter are very sobering examples of neo-noir’s willingness to dig further into gender relations in a way the original film noir cycle did not and could not.