Chinatown

A rare 1974 film that villains win at the end... It doesn't make it any worse that watching this movie for second time, as a lover of Jack Nicholson's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. I don't want to suggest rest of the writing for anyone else who didn't watch the movie. It may contain much spoilers, or less. I don't know. But don't read it though.



Hearing "Chinatown" dialogues non-stop in the movie and seeing Chinatown at the end scene, shouldn't be considered as a bad element; conversely, it is a quite message that the movie will be concluded at that scene -for me, it became more complicated. Like other Hitchcock detective stories, the audience locks on the main character in the movie. The camera never closed up, for instance, to the Hollis Mulwray character chased by the detective, its reason is to make the audience lock on the main character. The audience locks on the detective character in this very scene that when the detective takes photos of Hollis and the girl, in fact, you may even be more nervous than the detective’s himself when he falls off the tiles. It’s a more logical detail, that the detective puts a watch under the Hollis’ car and when he takes after, he finds out how many minutes he stayed there, than saying: “This movie is really bad.”













Another detail is the scene that Evelyn Mulwray leans her head to the steering wheel while J.J. Gittes talks to her, she accidentally honks and she’s suddenly startled. While considering this scene as sort of a joke, we see her head on the hoot at the final scene after hearing shouts of the girl from a distance and hoots of the slackening car, then, the camera zooms-in and we see her exploded head on the car horn.



To conclude, it’s a great movie with its storyline, with Jack Nicholson’s acting, with the scene, which shocks to audience, that Evelyn Mulwray says: “She is my sister and my daughter.” with its Chinese gardener, who says: “Bad for glass.” and having one of the best scenes in cinema (when Gittes takes photos of the girl and Hollis from the roof, the camera shows Gittes and we see the reflection of the girl and Hollis in the camera’s lens of Gittes). Besides, it’s stupid that that frame wasn’t used as the DVD cover or something.
















The storyline, a dark final sequence, seeing the main place at the end of the movie, shouldn’t be considered as a bad element. Conversely, it gives the audience a reaction, like, “What the...?”



Nevertheless, Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil appears as a better movie in this genre, in my opinion.