Where Are We Going?

That might be the best question to ask for Roman Polanski's Chinatown (1974). As the credits start the film, a harmonic chime hums in the background and a lone trumpet croons to its audience. Where are we going? What world have we decided to join? Will be able to get out? I'm not sure about the last question, because of the film's mixture of sexiness and macabre nastiness. To the core, this world seethes and the monsters leech in and out of it. Forget the black and white shadows of film noir. Chinatown is a dirty, muddy brown, where grit and dust attach themselves to sunlight like parasites.

What a fully realized film this is. For the first time, style does not carry the noir genre; rather, storyline, set development, and acting really elevate this film to a masterpiece of the time period of noir. When you develop the world, there really is a feeling (as an audience member) of inescapability, of surrender. As J.J. Gittes watches Mrs. Mulwray's corpse drip out of her car, we hear the blood dripping on the sidewalk, we see the sweat cool on Gittes's forehead. The slutty lights of Chinatown surround us in a hypnotic pulse and this world infects us with its filth.

However, that main theme by Jerry Goldsmith plays on. Something about it remains in my head. It might be the masterstroke of the film. It's not dirty or filthy. It's not broken down by this noir universe. Something about it remains. It manages to breathe despite the fog of crime and corruption. It's a somber tune, yes, but it's romantically somber. It carries the voice of the long-lost knights who pioneered into the California basin and founded this slut of a city. It remains in the valley like a distant echo, beating off the cold-dark wind.

And Gittes. What a man. Go home, Gittes. Go to sleep.