Summary
Set in Los Angeles in 1937, Chinatown opens with a scene in the office of private investigator J.J. “Jake” Gittes. Jake’s client, Curly, looks through photographs of his wife cheating on him with another man. Curly sobs and exclaims in despair until Jake offers him a drink. Jake says goodbye insisting that Curly, a tuna fisherman, doesn’t have to go broke to pay him the rest of the fee owed. Then, Jake and two assistant “operatives” meet with Mrs. Mulwray, who says her husband is seeing another woman. Her husband is Hollis Mulwray, chief engineer of Los Angeles Water and Power. The men have heard of him.
Jake attends a city meeting about a proposed $8.5 million dam. Hollis testifies against the project, citing historical examples of dams breaking and causing floods. He says the dam won’t hold, and so he simply won’t build it. The crowd boos and jeers. A shepherd sends a herd of sheep into the room while shouting about Hollis stealing water from the valley and stealing it from his livestock. The scene cuts to Jake watching Hollis through binoculars as Hollis consults papers on-site at an arid, rural location. The only person Hollis briefly encounters is a boy on a horse passing through. Jake follows Hollis to the seaside, where Hollis wanders on shore. At nightfall, water rushes from an outflow pipe built into the side of the cliff. Jake returns to his car and retrieves a pocket watch from his glovebox. He sets the time and puts it under Hollis’s tire.
The scene cuts to Jake in his office, consulting the broken pocket watch and concluding Hollis was there all night. His operative says Hollis has been going to other places like reservoirs, and “the guy’s got water on the brain.” Walsh, the other operative, shows Jake pictures of Hollis getting into an argument with a man, but says he only heard the words “apple core.” Jake gets a call that Hollis is in Echo Park in a rowboat. He goes with an operative, taking photos of Hollis with a young blonde woman while Jake is posing as a tourist. Jake follows Hollis to an apartment and from the roof takes photos of Hollis kissing the blonde Spanish-speaking woman.
Jake’s photo makes it onto the front page of the local paper, which Jake is looking at while getting a shave. He gets into an argument with the customer in the chair next to him after the man comments on his unethical job. Jake returns to his office, where he is confronted by a woman who claims to be the real Mrs. Evelyn Mulwray, accompanied by her lawyer. She coldly confirms that she has never hired him to spy on her husband. The lawyer hands him legal documents. Jake goes to Hollis’s office. Upon learning Hollis isn’t there, Jake lies about having a meeting arranged and walks straight past the secretary and searches Hollis’s desk and files.
Another man from the department enters the room and asks Jake to wait in his office, saying they are careful because of everything in the papers. On his way out, Jake runs into Mr. Mulvihill, who treats him with antagonism. Jake comments on how Mr. Mulvihill, now working for the Water Department to look into threats to blow up the reservoir, used to be a corrupt sheriff who let rum-runners smuggle alcohol into the area. Jake next goes to the Mulwrays’ home, where a butler answers the door. There are cleaning staff quietly working through the mansion.
Analysis
In the opening scene of Chinatown, Roman Polanski introduces the major theme of investigation by showing how Jake Gittes’s work as a private investigator involves mundane investigations into cheating spouses. Having proven Curly’s wife’s infidelity, Jake moves directly into a meeting with a woman who hires him to prove her husband is seeing a mistress. While Jake and his employee operatives are intrigued to learn their new subject holds a high-profile job heading the LA Department of Water and Power, they have no idea how controversial this new case will turn out to be.
As Jake and his men shadow Hollis Mulwray, Polanski builds on the theme of investigation while introducing the theme of water rights. At a public hearing, Hollis refuses to build a proposed dam project he believes is unnecessary and potentially dangerous. The meeting is interrupted by a farmer-led protest in which sheep rush into the room. A farmer accuses a flustered-looking Hollis of stealing water needed for livestock, citing a conspiracy to take the resource from honest farmers in order to support a greedy, thirsty city built on the edge of a desert.
With this brief, chaotic scene, the film references the real-life conflicts that inspired Chinatown. Known as the California Water Wars, this series of political and legal conflicts in the early 1900s centered on the issue of Los Angeles’s civic leaders and engineers buying farmland outside the city limits in order to divert river water to LA to support its booming population’s growing needs. Farmers like the one shown protesting in the film were left without water for livestock and crops, and soon the agricultural economy disappeared, along with the drained water table.
Hoping to spot Hollis with a mistress, Jake and his operatives observe Hollis traveling to areas around Los Angeles. There, he checks water levels of dry rivers, or waits for water to gush out of runoff pipes. Unsure what these various components of Hollis’s life amount to, Jake and his men conclude simply that Hollis is obsessed with water. Their breakthrough comes when Jake snaps photos of Hollis meeting with a young woman at an apartment that isn’t his primary residence.
Polanski introduces the theme of deceit—the action of misrepresenting the truth—with the revelation that the woman who hired Jake to investigate Hollis wasn’t Evelyn Mulwray but an impostor. In an instance of dramatic irony, Jake makes a fool of himself as he repeats a rude joke in front of the elegant Mrs. Mulwray, who stands waiting to serve him with legal papers for leaking photos of her husband to a newspaper. Both frustrated and intrigued to learn he was set up, Jake sets out on a new investigation to discover why someone wanted to expose Hollis Mulwray’s infidelity.
