Chinatown - A Reconstruction

When I first saw Chinatown in 1974, I had an almost visceral reaction to it. I knew it was about that damned automobile horn, but it was hard to make sense of the feelings it produced in me. Psychoanalysis has since provided me with a framework for seeing the intricate structure of film, and in particular, the complex experience of cinematic spectatorship. I now understand that Chinatown had hurled me into the uncanny.

The screenplay is itself extraordinary. Written by Robert Towne, with input from director Roman Polanski, it tells two intersecting stories - one personal, one social - linked together through a malevolent megalomaniac who creates an evil world - a world which resonates painfully with Polanski's horrific and dark past. (My earlier article on the film, in the A PM Bulletin, Vol. 41, Fall 2007, is a detailed psychoanalytic study of each of these stories, from a perspective of object relations theory as it resonates with the spectator/response approach to film criticism.) Ultimately, however, it is not the narrative but the narration that makes Chinatown extraordinary, and that narration is Polanski's alone. The manner in which the film is constructed reflects, parallels and illustrates the way the mind operates - this is its power. This review focuses on how I think Polanski accomplishes it.

We begin with an intriguing but straightforward story - we follow Jake in what for him is real time as he becomes entwined in the mystery; with him, we follow the clues to the next piece of the story. Along the way, certain events direct our attention to the past - Echo Park, the place where Hollis Mulwray is seen in a boat on the lake with Catherine; the “backstory” about the woman Jake had tried to help; the motley crew of dirty cops on the take, Jake's former cronies on the beat when he was an LA cop himself - but this all remains in the framework of chronological time and logic. Jake uses reasoning to figure out what is happening; he formulates some hypotheses whi