Lost Angelenos

By JAY COCKS

CHINATOWN

Directed by ROMAN POLANSKI Screenplay by ROBERT TOWNE

Raymond Chandler's detective Philip Marlowe once complained that Los Angeles had become "a big hard-boiled city with no more personality than a paper cup." During Marlowe's investigations--adventures that were moral tournaments, really--he had watched the city change. "Los Angeles was just a big dry sunny place with ugly homes and no style, but goodhearted and peaceful," Marlowe thought aloud. "I used to like this town. A long time ago."

It is during that time long ago that Chinatown, an exotic and cunning entertainment, takes place. It is very much molded, too, in the Chandler style, intricately written by Robert Towne and directed by Roman Polanski with a sort of edgy placidity that breaks into moments of sudden violence. Jack Nicholson, sporting a sort of drowsy panache, appears as a private investigator named J.J. Gittis, hired to tail the Los Angeles water commissioner, who is suspected by his wife of being unfaithful. But the commissioner is soon victim of a highly unlikely accident, dead of a fall into a reservoir drain, his lungs full of salt water. This plunges Gittis, too, way over his head, into a network of personal and political degradation.

Towne's script makes a nod to another Los Angeles mystery writer, Ross MacDonald, most markedly in its use of familial trauma in the plot solution. But it is to Chandler that the movie is very deeply indebted. No film has ever succeeded quite so well as Chinatown in conveying the ambience of Los Angeles before the war--sun-kissed, seedy and easy. The city was a central metaphor for Chandler, and it is brought alive here by Polanski and his collaborators, Production Designer Richard Sylbert and Costume Designer Anthea Sylbert. The film was photographed by John Alonzo in subdued, warm hues that give the effect of time and distance without pickling everything in soft-focus nostalgia. Chinatown suggests a metaphorical history of Los Angeles. "Six suburbs in search of a city," was the joking description of L.A. during the '30s, and Gittis' raveling of the mystery suggests how the town was brought all together, founded on a common basis of massive land grabs and corruption.

Dead-End Beat. Where the movie works less well is in characterization. Nicholson's Gittis is a clever piece of acting, funny and winning, but Polanski and Towne do not give him the chance to get into any depth. Gittis is a nickel-and-dimer trying to boost himself into the big time. He wears sharp, fussy suits and throws out a line of bright chatter. But there are still times when he sounds like the dumb cop on the deadend Chinatown beat. All this is fine, but it is all there is. Chandler made Philip Marlowe into a paladin. For Polanski and Towne, Gittis is simply a protagonist who has nothing at stake, a kind of genial guide through all the thickets of plot.

Gittis becomes involved with an amiable patrician (John Huston), a gentleman rancher whose face is creased with forced jollity, a stranger to scruple. His daughter (Faye Dunaway), the water commissioner's widow, is troubled and dangerous, and Gittis falls for her. But whether he is really drawn to her or only uses her to advance his investigation is never made clear. The widow's part is a plum, and Dunaway does well with it whenever she relaxes and stops pushing, stops acting. A lot of her scenes are meant to be played big, however, and for these Dunaway unpacks her standard characterization of a carry-out Blanche Dubois. The widow should have the insulated look that money brings, a regal air that is also frightened. Dunaway is closer to another character Chandler once described in The High Window: "From thirty feet away she looked like a lot of class. From ten feet away she looked like something made up to be seen from thirty feet away."

Chinatown as a whole shares something of Dunaway's problem. Get too close to it and the careful illusion breaks down. Polanski and Towne turned out a smart and elegant recreation. But the script also raises moral questions and political implications that are never plumbed at greater than paper-cup depth.

Jay Cocks

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