Tools of Characterization
Characterization in Chinatown
Actions
If you're a nice person, you do things like take out the garbage without being asked…or help an incest survivor escape her evil tycoon father. If you're not a nice person, you do things like park in two spaces at once…or have sex with your daughter, get her pregnant, and then try to steal all the water from L.A.
Jake Gittes does the nice guy stuff in this movie, and Noah Cross orchestrates all the bad guy stuff. It's not explicitly stated whether Jake takes out garbage without being prompted or that Noah parks heedlessly—but we can assume.
Jake tries to help people out because…the dude just cares. He can't get away from caring. He tries to be a P.I. who just catches people committing adultery, but the caring ends up dragging him back in, trying to help Evelyn.
On the other hand, Noah Cross doesn't give two hoots about anyone except Noah Cross. Caring is beside the point—he'll murder his partner just so he can build the dam he wants in order to steal all the water he wants.
He explains his ruthless and perverted actions, stating:
CROSS: You see, Mr. Gittes, most people never have to face the fact that at the right time and right place, they're capable of anything.
Maybe he's got a point? We know, for example, we're more than capable of eating an entire bag of popcorn during previews. Maybe the next step is guzzling all of SoCal's water supply.
Family Life
When you impregnate your own daughter, try to kidnap the resulting daughter/granddaughter, and end up getting your daughter killed in the process—well, you're not exactly getting nominated for "Father of the Year."
But Noah Cross is super rich, so he could probably buy that award if he wanted (along with about a million, "World's #1 Dad" mugs). He's got no respect for the truth.
What we're trying to say is that the Cross family qualifies as "dysfunctional." No shocker there: any family in which the words "She's my sister and my daughter!" are truthful is more than a wee bit messed up.
Also, Evelyn claims that she and Hollis had an open relationship. She says she's had lots of affairs. Of course, today that kind of thing is pretty common. But in the 1930s—and even in the 1970s—a frank understanding of polyamory was totally unconventional.
Location
L.A. is often dubbed "La-La-Land" or, if you're feeling especially bitter, "Hell-A."
And the City of Angels is also the undisputed (sorry, San Francisco) capital of noir. There are jaded detectives and seedy dames lurking around every sun-drenched corner. We have to give big props to author Raymond Chandler for penning so many noir novels—he inspired Chinatown screenwriter Robert Towne big time.
Because Chinatown is capital-N noir—you've got the somewhat rough-edged private eye who secretly really cares about doing the right thing—that's Jake Gittes. You have amoral thugs like Claude Mulvihill and his knife-happy pal. And you have Evelyn—the mysterious, sexy lady with a secret.
These are all characters that are as synonymous with L.A. noir as venetian blinds, cigarette smoke, and unhappy endings.
Names
Hollis Mulwray's name intentionally sounds similar to that of William Mulholland, the mastermind who helped bring L.A. water through less than legal means—he also engineered a dam that burst and killed a bunch of people. So there's some historic resonance here.
In Robert Towne's script Noah's name was originally Julian Cross. So perhaps it was changed to give it a biblical feel—instead of surviving a flood and saving a ton of animals, this Noah is causing a drought and trying to own all the water and lord it over everyone. Tsk-tsk.
Occupation
As a private eye, Jake gets to do all the things that peeping toms want to do—except it's all right, because it's his job.
You might get the impression he got into this line of work because he wants that voyeuristic thrill, and is sort of a sleaze-ball—but that's not really the case. He does get to snap pictures of adulterous pairs have sexual intercourse, but that just comes with the territory—he feels compelled to defend himself, telling a critical barbershop customer, "I make an honest living!"
Jake became a P.I. after he got sick of working as a cop in Chinatown, where he felt unable to do any good in a culture he didn't understand. So, in a way, he's embraced this arguably less noble line of work in order to evade those humane impulses. But he ultimately can't escape them.
Noah Cross's occupation is "tycoon"—he's involved in all sorts of business concerns. The movie carries the strong implication that being a rich dude can also make you pretty bad—you get consumed by power. And the more power you have the more temptations towards corruption there are. That's a classic, ancient story.
Physical Appearances
Noah Cross looks like a kindly old grandpa in a white suit. You wouldn't expect him to be evil incarnate…but he basically is. He's stealing water, he's impregnating his daughter, and he's murdering his daughter's husband. Classic bad guy moves.
Evelyn has a mysterious look—dig that black veil. There's something cryptic about her, like she might be covering up a murder…or be Hollis's murderer herself. Yet the truth about Evelyn isn't nearly as deadly as all that—in fact, she's been victimized by her father.
The message? Appearances can be deceiving.
Props
When the nameless knife-wielding bad guy slices Jake's nostril open, we know that these guys mean business. They're not farting around when they're out guarding this reservoir—they'll maim and kill if they feel like it.
The guy interrogates Jake, saying:
MAN WITH KNIFE: You're a very nosy fellow, kitty cat. Huh? You know what happens to nosy fellows? Huh? No? Wanna guess? Huh? No? Okay. They lose their noses. Next time you lose the whole thing. Cut it off and feed it to my goldfish. Understand? Understand!?
So, the knife tells us something about this guy, and about the people he works for: they're ruthless.
Sex and Love
There's good sex and bad sex in this movie. When Jake Gittes and Evelyn Mulwray get down it falls in the "good sex" category—after all, these are two consenting adults who happen to be played by the extremely good-looking duo of Faye Dunaway and Jack Nicholson.
Noah Cross impregnating his daughter and having a child born of father-daughter incest would definitely be filed under "bad sex." Fortunately, we don't see this rape happen.
The first encounter indicates that Jake's capable of caring about a woman pretty deeply pretty quickly—this isn't just a one night stand; he wants to help her. As for Noah's incest with Evelyn? Well, that indicates that he's a monster.
Social Status
If you've got a lot of social status—and, therefore, probably a lot of money—you can get away with most anything in this movie (like stealing a city's water supply and incest). Noah Cross explains why he's become respectable, despite being evil:
CROSS: 'Course I'm respectable, I'm old. Politicians, ugly buildings, and whores all get respectable if they last long enough.
That's some messed up logic, right there—but it's also an incredibly pithy, quotable line. (They call Chinatown one of the greatest screenplays ever written for a reason.)
Jake Gittes has a lot less social status. People view him as doing something sleazy by catching people who are committing adultery, and he has to defend himself:
GITTES: Look, pal—I make an honest living. People don't come to me unless they're miserable and I help 'em out of a bad situation. I don't kick them out of their homes like you jerks who work in the bank.
Jake basically is a nice guy—but the police trust him less than they trust Noah, purely because of Noah's superior social standing. When Jake says, "He's rich! Do you understand? He thinks he can get away with anything," it falls on deaf ears.
Speech and Dialogue
Even though he does care about the city, Jake doesn't talk in an overtly caring kind of way. He's an L.A. detective, after all—the dude needs to act at least a little hardboiled.
So when he's telling Evelyn about the water-stealing scam, he has to make it clear that he's just trying to protect himself:
GITTES: It seems like half the city is trying to cover it all up, which is fine by me. But Mrs. Mulwray, I goddamned near lost my nose. And I like it. I like breathing through it. And I still think that you're hiding something.
In the end, however, Jake tries to help Evelyn escape—caring for her and defending the people who're are being scammed really are his goals. It's just that he has to act like a tough guy in the process.
Evelyn reveals a lot about herself through a single glitch in something she says. Jake asks her, "Is there something upsetting about my asking about your father?" Evelyn says,
EVELYN: No!... Yes, a little. You see Hollis and my fa—my father had a falling out...
The way she responds by first saying "No!" (with an explanation point), and then stopping and restarting the words "my father" shows that something's up.
Thoughts and Opinions
When Jake discovers that he was hired to set Hollis up for adultery (so his murder would look like a suicide), he's naturally miffed.
He didn't want to be used, and he's annoyed at the impact this could have on his private eye practice. He tells Evelyn:
GITTES: I'm not in business to be loved, but I am in business. And believe me, Mrs. Mulwray, whoever set your husband up set me up. LA's a small town, people talk. I'm just trying to make a living. I don't want to become a local joke.
We can learn a lot from this revelation. Jake doesn't want people to perceive him as being sleazy or corrupt—he thinks of himself as an honest man. While he doesn't particularly care about being loved, he does want to stay in business and keep surviving.
After Jake cracks the case, he confronts Noah about the crimes. Noah responds:
CROSS: You see, Mr. Gittes, most people never have to face the fact that at the right time and right place, they're capable of anything.
From this, we get a great sense of how Noah views himself and humanity: in his not-so-humble opinion, there's no moral core. We're just pawns of circumstance. This is a fairly convenient excuse for someone who wants to commit incest, murder, and water-theft.