FILM · 1974 · USA
Chinatown
- Directed by
- Roman Polanski
- Runtime
- 130 min
- Studio
- Paramount Pictures, Long Road Productions, Robert Evans Productions
200 archived facts 8 topics 1 source Last reviewed Nov 2026
Private eye Jake Gittes lives off of the murky moral climate of sunbaked, pre-World War II Southern California. Hired by a beautiful socialite to investigate her husband's extra-marital affair, Gittes is swept into a maelstrom of double dealings and deadly deceits, uncovering a web of personal and political scandals that come crashing together.
200 Interesting Facts About Chinatown
Interesting Facts (12)
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According to Roman Polanski's autobiography, he was furious when he received the first day's batch of prints from the lab. Because of the success of The Godfather (1972), producer Robert Evans had instructed the lab to give this film a reddish look. Polanski demanded that the film be corrected.
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Production Story (71)
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Roman Polanski had been planning to make a film with Jack Nicholson, but hadn't found the right property yet. He actively pursued the script when he learned about it. As luck would have it, Polanski was also producer Robert Evans' first choice for director, as he wanted a European vision of the United States, which he felt would be darker, and a little more cynical.
Chinatown (1974): A man in a suit and a woman in a white dress in the comicImage: Wikimedia Commons · RonCooper1, CC BY-SA 4.0 - #015
There are repeated references in the film to a broken dam that caused a disaster in Los Angeles, and several characters were personally involved in its construction. This subplot is loosely based on the failure of St. Francis Dam on March 12, 1928. The dam was designed and built between 1924 and 1926 by the Bureau of Water Works and Supply, created as a large regulating and storage reservoir for the Los Angeles Aqueduct. Due to the dam's defective soil foundation and a number of design flaws, contraction cracks and a minor amount of seepage appeared shortly following its completion. Despite a series of repairs over the following years, the dam broke into several large pieces in March 1928. The resulting flood caused a blackout in Los Angeles, the San Fernando Valley, and the Santa Clara River Valley (due to the destruction of electrical infrastructure by the water), heavily damaged the towns of Fillmore, Bardsdale, and Santa Paula, and killed 431 people. Chief engineer William Mulholland was blamed for the disaster, because he had noticed several flaws in the dam, but reported them to be unimportant. He had also postponed needed repairs hours before the failure of the dam. Mulholland was forced to retire and spend the rest of his life as a recluse.
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Cinematographer Stanley Cortez was fired soon after production began. His classical style did not match the naturalistic style Polanski wanted for the film, and he proved to be too time-consuming. Polanski had to find a replacement in only a few days and chose John A. Alonzo. As David Fincher and Robert Towne state in their DVD commentary, two scenes shot by Cortez are in the film: the orange grove fight with the farmers (but not the following porch scene with Evelyn) and the drive back to Los Angeles at sunset.
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The film's plot took inspiration from the so-called "California water wars" (1902-c. 1941), a series of of political conflicts between the city of Los Angeles and farmers and ranchers in the Owens Valley of Eastern California over water rights. To provide a water supply for Los Angeles, water from the Owens River started being diverted to Los Angeles. This gradually ruined the economy of the Owens Valley, and displaced its farmers.
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The film's initial cinematographer was Stanley Cortez (1908 - 1997), who had a great reputation for working on psychological dramas over several decades. Polanski soon grew frustrated with Cortez's slow process, old-fashioned compositional sensibility, and unfamiliarity with the Panavision equipment. He had Cortez fired, and replaced with the relatively inexperienced John A. Alonzo (1934-2001). Alonzo was known for his uncomplicated and minimalistic style, and had started his career with filming documentaries for for National Geographic.
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Phillip Lambro was originally hired to write the film's music score, but it was rejected at the last minute by producer Robert Evans leaving Jerry Goldsmith only 10 days to write and record a new score. However, when it was time to put together a trailer for the film, the studio's marketing department decided that Goldsmith's new score wasn't suitable. Lambro was asked if cues from his original score could be used instead. In exchange for allowing his music to be used for the trailer, Lambro asked to retain the publishing rights to his own score. Paramount Pictures agreed on the condition that, if the music was ever released commercially, Lambro could not use the title "Chinatown." An album with Lambro's original rejected score was finally released in 2012 under the title "Los Angeles, 1937".
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The dialogue includes the lines "What did you do in Chinatown?" / "As little as possible". These were based on a real-life conversation between screenwriter Robert Towne and a vice cop who used to work in Chinatown. The cop explained that due to the complicated use of dialects and the multiple gangs acting in Los Angeles's Chinatown, the police were uncertain whether their own actions were actually assisting crime victims or were assisting gangs in exploiting victims.
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When Journalist Tom Burke interviewed the film's director, Roman Polanski, for a profile on him for Rolling Stone magazine, Polanski arranged for the not-yet-released film to be secretly screened for Burke without the studio's permission, even though no music score had yet been recorded for the soundtrack and other glitches had yet to be corrected. Shortly after the beginning of this screening, at which Polanski was not present, Burke realized he had to urinate, yet so engrossed was he in the film that he refused to pause the screening, but saw the film through to the end before relieving himself. When he spoke to Polanski later about the experience, the director seemed to delight in this fact more than any other, convinced that, since Burke had found himself unable to stop watching the film even to answer the call of nature, he had made what he called an "audience movie."
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In his 2020 nonfiction book "The Big Goodbye: 'Chinatown' and the Last Years of Hollywood," author Sam Wasson discloses that for more than 40 years, revered screenwriter Robert Towne secretly employed Edward Taylor, an old college friend, as his uncredited writing partner, because Towne realized he himself was an excruciatingly slow writer and Taylor "would help," especially as he labored under intense pressure to complete Chinatown (1974).
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While researching the history of Los Angeles in order to write his script, screenwriter Robert Towne drew inspiration from the non-fiction book "Southern California Country: An Island on the Land" (1946) by Carey McWilliams and from a magazine article called "Raymond Chandler's L.A". Towne wrote a letter to McWilliams to thank him for the inspiration.
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Despite lobbying Robert Evans and Jack Nicholson for the chance to direct the film, when he finally landed the gig Roman Polanski started having second thoughts. The thought of returning to Los Angeles, where his wife Sharon Tate had been brutally murdered four years earlier, was too overwhelming for him.
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Roman Polanski wanted William A. Fraker as his cinematographer, having successfully collaborated with him on "Rosemary's Baby (1968)." This notion was blocked by producer Robert Evans, who felt that the pairing of the two would create too powerful a bond, making his life as a producer more difficult.
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The Los Angeles Herald Examiner reported that members of Asian Americans for Fair Media marched in front of Mann's Chinese Theatre, where the film opened in Los Angeles, to protest the film. Representatives of the group singled out racist comments, and in particular a joke about "a Chinaman" that Jakes laughingly relates just before meeting the real Evelyn.
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There is a rumor that this was the first part of a planned trilogy written by Robert Towne about J.J. "Jake" Gittes and Los Angeles. The second part, The Two Jakes (1990), was directed by Jack Nicholson. The supposed third part never existed, as later confirmed by the writer; however, certain elements and details of the story (a corrupt company called Cloverleaf tries to buy up all public transportation in order to replace it with freeways) would later end up in Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), which was a film-noir spoof/homage of Chinatown. The interesting thing about the trilogy concept is that they focused on the three things that were instrumental in making Los Angeles grow the way that it did, which is via the control of water, real estate, and transportation.
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Contains a major spoiler — show
Shortly after Hollis Mulwray's body is recovered, the original script included an omitted scene in which Lieutenant Escobar reveals to Gittes that he has limited sympathy for the victim, because a cousin of his was killed in the Van Der Lip dam disaster. From Faber and Faber script published UK 1998.
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Contains a major spoiler — show
Robert Towne originally intended to have a happy ending. However, during pre-production, Roman Polanski and Towne argued over it, with Polanski insisting on a tragic ending. Polanski won the argument and, when the picture was re-released in 1999, Towne admitted that he had been wrong.
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Contains a major spoiler — show
Originally, the opening scene had an exchange where Curly tells Gittes he's going to kill his unfaithful wife, and Gittes tells him he's not rich enough to get away with murder. (That's why they're talking about Curly paying his bill as they come out of the office, and why Gittes says, "I only brought it up", Curly's financial situation, "to illustrate a point.") Robert Towne later regretted removing this part of the scene. "That exchange I miss probably as much as any in the movie", he said in 1999. "Because it really foreshadows (the) 'You've got to be rich to kill somebody and get away with it' (theme). He's really foreshadowing the whole movie."
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Jack Nicholson had just begun a relationship with Anjelica Huston while the film was being shot. On the only day Anjelica came to the set, the scene being filmed was the one in which her father, John Huston, questions Nicholson's character: "Mr. Gittes... are you sleeping with my daughter?" This made the scenes quite uncomfortable.
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Cinematographer Stanley Cortez was fired shortly after filming began; his classical style did not match the natural style Polanski wanted. John A. Alonzo was brought in to replace him. Two scenes shot by Cortez remained in the film: the fight in the orange grove and the return to Los Angeles at sunset.
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The film's music was initially written by Phillip Lambro, but producer Robert Evans rejected it at the last minute, leaving Jerry Goldsmith just 10 days to write and record new music. When the studio did not find Goldsmith's music suitable for the trailer, Lambro was asked whether parts of his original score could be used. Lambro agreed to his music being used in the trailer, keeping the publishing rights in return. Paramount accepted on the condition that the title "Chinatown" could not be used in the commercial release. Lambro's rejected score was finally released in 2012 under the title "Los Angeles, 1937".
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While journalist Tom Burke was doing a profile interview with Roman Polanski for Rolling Stone, Polanski secretly screened his not-yet-released film for Burke without the studio's permission; the music had not been recorded and other flaws had not been fixed. At the screening, which Polanski did not attend, Burke realized he needed to urinate but was so absorbed in the film that he did not stop it and watched it to the end. When he told Polanski, the director was delighted that Burke had watched the film enough to postpone even a natural need, and was convinced he had made an "audience film."
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Robert Towne wanted to portray Los Angeles as a city controlled by shadowy oligarchs; that is why the villain, Noah Cross, operates above the law and has influence over the police. The film deliberately violates some of the rules of the Hays Code (1934-1968), which prohibited villainous portrayals of politicians, police and authority figures.
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When J.J. Gittes (Jack Nicholson) asks Mr. Palmer (John Rogers), the director of the Mar Vista Retirement Home, "Do you accept people of Jewish descent?" and receives a negative answer, in the next room there is a mirror in the shape of an inverted pentagram over Evelyn Mulwray's (Faye Dunaway) left shoulder, which some consider a symbol of evil. Director Roman Polanski was raised Jewish and his mother died at Auschwitz.
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Immediately after Hollis Mulwray's body is found, the original script had a scene in which Lieutenant Escobar explained to Gittes that he felt limited sympathy for the victim because a cousin of his had died in the Van Der Lip dam disaster, but it was cut. (Faber and Faber script edition, UK 1998)
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Many rumors circulated about Faye Dunaway's prima donna behavior during the making of the film. One of them was that she refused to flush her own toilet and expected her assistants to do it. In another incident, while shooting a scene in a car, Roman Polanski would not let her urinate so he could finish the scene. She then urinated into a glass and threw it in Polanski's face.
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After Ali MacGraw was eliminated, Robert Evans wanted Jane Fonda for the role of Evelyn Mulwray, while Roman Polanski insisted on Faye Dunaway. Faye Dunaway was Polanski's vision for the character of Evelyn Mulwray in the 1930s because her mother had pencil-thin eyebrows and a habit of wearing red lipstick shaped like Cupid's bow, as seen in Dunaway's makeup.
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Most of the obituaries in the film are taken verbatim from page 9 of the March 12, 1938 edition of the Los Angeles Times; the prop department simply forgot to change the names. For example, 'Charles C. Brondell' is nearly identical to Chester L. Avery's notice. 'Jasper Lamar Crabb', on the other hand, is entirely invented.
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The Art Deco desk lamp in Jake's office was produced by the American Markel company in the 1930s and designed by Bert Dickerson. Now valued at between $1,000 and $2,000 on the antique market, this lamp shows that the office is filled with objects by famous designers of the 1920s and 1930s.
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Behind the Scenes (27)
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The art deco "Machine Age" desk lamp on Sophie's file cabinet and on Duffy's desk (at about 3:15 and 4:30, and probably the same lamp) is of 1930's vintage by American Markel (model L-111), designed by Bert Dickerson. It is a much-sought antique these days, pricing in the $1000 to $2000 range. Indeed, Jake's office seems a treasure trove of table-top art deco by well-known designers of the Twenties and Thirties.
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Faye Dunaway and Roman Polanski were notorious for their on-set arguments. During filming, Polanski pulled out some strands of Dunaway's hair. On another occasion, when she asked him what her character's motivation was, he exploded, "Just say the f**king words, your salary is your motivation!"
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There were many rumors circulating about Faye Dunaway's diva-like behavior during the making of the film. One such was that she refused to flush her own toilet and expected her assistants to do it for her. On another occasion, while filming a scene in a car, Roman Polanski refused to let her urinate so he could finish the scene. She then urinated in a cup and threw it in his face.
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Contains a major spoiler — show
The scene where Roman Polanski slits Jack Nicholson's nose was extremely complex to film, and the two men involved got so tired of explaining how it was done (by using a specially-constructed knife with a short hinge that would be safe as long as it was handled VERY carefully) that they began to claim Nicholson's nose was actually cut.
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Cinematographer Stanley Cortez was fired shortly after production began. His classical style did not match the naturalistic style Polanski wanted for the film and proved too time-consuming. Polanski had to find a replacement within just a few days and chose John A. Alonzo. As David Fincher and Robert Towne noted in their DVD commentaries, two scenes shot by Cortez appear in the film: the orange grove fight with the farmers (but not the following veranda scene with Evelyn) and the drive back to Los Angeles at sunset.
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Phillip Lambro was initially hired to write the film's music, but was rejected at the last minute by producer Robert Evans, leaving Jerry Goldsmith only 10 days to write and record a new score. While the trailer was being prepared, the studio's marketing department decided Goldsmith's music was unsuitable. Lambro was asked whether parts of his original music could be used. Lambro wanted to retain the publishing rights in exchange for allowing his music to be used in the trailer. Paramount agreed on the condition that Lambro could not use the title "Chinatown" if the music were commercially released. Lambro's rejected original score was finally released in 2012 under the title "Los Angeles, 1937."
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The obituaries in the Post-Record (around the 45th minute) carry fictional names, but most are taken verbatim from real notices on page 9 of the March 12, 1938 edition of the Los Angeles Times. For example, the first one, "Charles C. Brondell", is almost word for word the same as Chester L. Avery's; the props department made a small mistake by forgetting to change the name Avery later in the text. The "Jasper Lamar Crabb" notice, however, is entirely fabricated.
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The art deco "Machine Age" desk lamp in Sophie's filing cabinet and on Duffy's desk (at around 3:15 and 4:30, probably the same lamp) is an American Markel (model L-111) from the 1930s, designed by Bert Dickerson. Worth between $1,000 and $2,000 today, this lamp shows that Jake's office is a treasure chest filled with desktop art deco pieces by famous designers of the twenties and thirties.
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Characters & Cast (35)
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Jack Nicholson had just begun a new relationship with Anjelica Huston during the filming of the movie. This made her scenes with her father, John Huston, uncomfortable; especially on the only day she was on set, when the scene being shot was Noah Cross asking Gittes, "Are you sleeping with my daughter?"
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Anjelica Huston, who was dating Jack Nicholson and is John Huston's daughter, brought her sister Allegra Huston to the set and introduced her to Jack. According to the book Allegra wrote, Anjelica kept her away from their father because he was playing the villain and Allegra was only 10 years old.
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During the making of the film, many rumors circulated about Faye Dunaway's diva behavior. One of them was that she refused to flush her own toilet and expected her assistants to do it. In another incident, while a car scene was being shot, Roman Polanski would not let Dunaway go to the bathroom so he could finish the scene. Dunaway then urinated in a glass and threw it in Polanski's face.
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After Ali MacGraw was eliminated, Robert Evans wanted Jane Fonda for the role of Evelyn Mulwray, while Roman Polanski insisted on Faye Dunaway. Faye Dunaway was Polanski's vision for the 1930s Evelyn Mulwray character, because his mother had pencil-thin eyebrows and Cupid's bow-shaped red lipstick, just as in Dunaway's makeup.
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In the opening scene, Curly tells Gittes he is going to kill his unfaithful wife; Gittes replies that he is not rich enough to get away with murder. (That is why, as he leaves the office, they mention Curly paying his bill, and Gittes says, 'I just mentioned it to make a point.') Robert Towne later regretted cutting this dialogue; in 1999 he said, 'I miss that dialogue as much as anything else in the film, because it was really a harbinger of the theme that you have to be rich to get away with murder.'
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The lines 'What did you do in Chinatown?' / 'As little as possible' are based on a real conversation between screenwriter Robert Towne and a vice officer who had worked in Chinatown. The officer explained that, because of complex dialects and gangs, the police could not be sure whether their actions helped the victims or the gangs.
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Sam Wasson's 2020 book 'The Big Goodbye: Chinatown and the Last Years of Hollywood' recounts that Robert Towne used his old college friend Edward Taylor as an uncredited writing partner for more than 40 years. Towne had realized he was a slow writer and thought Taylor would 'help', especially under intense pressure while completing 'Chinatown'.
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In Robert Towne's original script, the villain Noah Cross dies and the hero Evelyn Mulwray survives. Roman Polanski rejected this ending; he felt there was nothing special about thrillers in which the good guys win. When Towne refused to rewrite his final scene, Polanski wrote his own finale, depicting Evelyn's tragic death.
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While journalist Tom Burke was interviewing Roman Polanski for Rolling Stone, Polanski secretly screened his not-yet-released film for Burke without the studio's permission. The music score had not been recorded. After the screening began, Burke realized he needed to go to the bathroom but watched to the end so as not to stop the film. Polanski was delighted when he heard this; the fact that Burke even postponed a natural need proved the film was an 'audience film'.
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Easter Eggs & References (24)
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The plot point within the film that bringing water to the San Fernando Valley would lead to its annexation by the city of Los Angeles is anachronistic. By 1937, when the story of Chinatown takes place, most of the San Fernando Valley had already been incorporated into the city through several annexations in the 1910s and 1920s.
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The name of Water and Power engineer Hollis Mulwray is likely a play on the real-life head of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, William Mulholland (1855-1935). A man obsessed with an engineering challenge of epic proportions, Mulholland brought the Owens River to Los Angeles, which turned the previously lush Owens Valley into a virtual desert, through a combination of determination and deceit.
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When J.J. Gittes (Jack Nicholson) asks Mr. Palmer (John Rogers), director of the Mar Vista Rest Home, whether they "accept people of the Jewish persuasion" and is assured that they do not, there is a mirror in the next room, over the left shoulder of Evelyn Mulwray (Faye Dunaway), in the shape of an inverted pentagram, considered by some to be a symbol of evil. The director, Roman Polanski, was raised Jewish and his mother died at Auschwitz.
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When Jack Nicholson's character is served with the complaint early in the film, the pleadings are stapled with blue construction paper on the top. In the days before electronic filing, this was standard practice in Los Angeles County for ALL Court filings to be submitted in this manner, as it was apparently then.
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The obituaries in the Post-Record (at ~ 45 min.) are fictitious names, but most are otherwise lifted directly from real death notices in the 12th March 1938 edition of The Los Angeles Times (page 9, with a good bit of page 9 also reproduced). The first, for example, "Charles C. Brondell", is almost word-for-word the same as that of a Chester L. Avery - and the film's prop department missed changing the Avery name later in its text, a minor goof. The obit for "Jasper Lamar Crabb" however is entirely contrived.
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The black and white (good and evil) scene of Evelyn wearing a black dress is evocative of Mike Nichols's scene in The Graduate (1967), with Mrs. Robinson wearing a black dress, while leaning against a stark white wall, as her daughter Elaine finds out about her mother's affair with Benjamin. Both films share the same Production Designer, Richard Sylbert
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The Van der Lip Dam disaster is a reference to the collapse of the St. Francis Dam in 1928, forty miles northwest of Los Angeles, which had been designed by self-educated engineer William Mulholland. The consequent flooding killed at least four hundred fifty people, a loss of life that remains second only to that from the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire in California's history.
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According to Faye Dunaway, Evelyn's eye wound was meant to parallel the story of Oedipus, who blinded himself after realizing his marriage was incestuous. Miss Dunaway had to fight to keep this in the film; when there was a problem getting the make-up and prosthetics, the filmmakers wanted to change where Evelyn would be shot.
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Deeper Meaning (25)
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Robert Towne's intention was to depict Los Angeles as being controlled by a cadre of shadowy oligarchs, which is why villain Noah Cross operates above the law and has influence over the police. The film intentionally defies some of the rules of the then-recently abandoned "Hays Code" (1934-1968), which prohibited villainous depictions of politicians, police officers, and other authority figures.
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The film's enigmatic title is a metaphor for moral corruption by unseen forces. Throughout the film, Jake Gittes refers to his time as a police officer in Chinatown, where "you can't always tell what's going on." In Hollywood, the movie's line, "Forget it, Jake, it's Chinatown", has become a mantra for those who have been burned or snubbed by the entertainment industry, the implication being that it's better to "let it go" than make an issue of it, because that's just how the industry works.
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In Robert Towne's original script, the villainous Noah Cross dies and his heroic daughter Evelyn Mulwray survives. Roman Polanski (the film's director) rejected this ending. He felt there was nothing special in thrillers where the good guys triumph, and that the film needed a tragic ending to stand out. After Towne refused to rewrite his ending scene, Polanski wrote his own version of the film's final scene depicting Evelyn's tragic death.
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Contains a major spoiler — show
As stated in the film, there was a serious drought in Southern California in the mid-1930s, which lasted until late 1937. In March 1938, the area experienced what was termed a "fifty year flood" that effectively broke the drought. Bolstering its prominent theme of Los Angeles' need for water, within the films there are numerous references to different types of water. For example, when Jake first goes to the Mulwray house, the camera lingers on the backyard pond and waterfall as a Japanese gardener tends to it. Later, when Jake discovers a pair of broken glasses in the pond, it leads to his eventually solving Mulwray's murder.
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Katherine Mulwray is raised believing she is Evelyn's sister; in truth Evelyn is her mother, and perhaps even both her mother and her sister. Shortly after the film's release, Jack Nicholson faced a similar truth: the woman he believed to be his sister was actually his mother, and the couple he knew as his parents were his grandparents.
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Throughout the film we repeatedly see pairs of identical objects in which one is flawed: two pocket watches side by side, one broken; a pair of glasses with one cracked lens; Gittes's nostrils, one of them cut; the broken taillight on Evelyn's car; the shoe lost in the reservoir; Evelyn's flawed iris; Katherine, who appears to be Evelyn's copy, is the product of incest. According to Robert Towne, this was unintentional; he never discussed these images with Polanski.
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Career & Awards (4)
Life & Family (2)
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At the time of filming, Jack Nicholson had just embarked on his longstanding relationship with Anjelica Huston. This made his scenes with her father, John Huston, rather uncomfortable, especially as the only time Anjelica was on set was the day they were filming the scene where Noah Cross interrogates Nicholson's character with "Mr. Gittes...do you sleep with my daughter?"
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Katherine Mulwray is raised believing that Evelyn Mulwray is her sister, but it is later revealed that Evelyn is her mother (or rather, both mother and sister). Shortly after the film was released, Jack Nicholson discovered that the woman he was raised to believe was his sister was, in fact, his mother. He also learned the people he was raised to believe were his parents were actually his grandparents.
Sources & editorial notes
Reference databases
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