Plot Synopsis (continued)
In the film's most memorable scene, Jake has just
concocted a murder theory: the glasses in the pond belong to Evelyn's
late husband and the pond is where she drowned him - out of jealousy
for his affair. The "girl" was a witness to the murder,
so Evelyn had to "keep her mouth shut":
There's no time to be shocked by the truth. The coroner's
report proves that he had salt water in his lungs when he was killed.
Just take my word for it, all right? Now, I want to know how it
happened, and I want to know why, and I want to know before Escobar
gets here because I don't want to lose my license...I want to make
it easy for ya. You were jealous. You had a fight. He fell. He
hit his head. It was an accident but his girl is a witness. So
you had to shut her up. You don't have the guts to harm her, but
you got the money to keep her mouth shut.
He desperately and insistently wants her to tell the
truth and neatly wrap up the case - he is determined that she confess
the identity of the blonde girl that she has been sheltering, reiterating: "There's
no time to be shocked by the truth." He also probably suspects
that Evelyn may be plotting to murder the girl. She accuses him of
having a "crazy" and "most insane" idea.
Appearing to be hiding something throughout the entire
film, she finally tells the truth to him - the girl, Katherine (Belinda
Palmer) is NOT her dead husband's girlfriend, but is the product
of a union between her and her father, Noah Cross. To discover this
shameful fact, Jake has to slap her again and again - until he realizes
that she isn't making a fool out of him, but she really is telling
the truth. The girl is her sister - and her daughter:
Jake: Who is she? And don't give me that crap about
your sister, because you don't have a sister.
Mrs. Mulwray: I'll tell you, I'll tell you the truth.
Jake: Good. What's her name?
Mrs. Mulwray: Katherine.
Jake: Katherine who?
Mrs. Mulwray: She's my daughter.
Jake: (He slaps her.) I said, 'I want the truth.'
Mrs. Mulwray: She's my sister. (He slaps her again.) She's my daughter.
(Slap.) My sister, my daughter. (Slap. Slap.)
Jake: I said, 'I want the truth!' (He throws her against the sofa.)
Mrs. Mulwray: ...She's my sister and my daughter!...My
father and I - understand? Or is it too tough for you?
Jake: He raped you? (She shakes her head no.)
Her revelation is startling and unexpected - he is
the one who is "shocked by the truth." The terrible truth
of unimaginable evil is that Mrs. Mulwray had incestuous relations
with her father, Noah Cross. Hollis Mulwray's "mistress" was,
in fact, the offspring of their earlier liaison. This fact is indirectly related
to the water department, the land (San Fernando Valley) swindle or
water conspiracy, the building of the new reservoir, the corrupt
money, Hollis' murder, and Gittes' setup.
[Noah Cross' incest with his own daughter parallels
his abusive 'violation' and exploitation of LA county land. Mulwray's
murder was caused by both personal and political motivations -
Hollis knew about Cross' manipulation of water supplies to create
a drought, and also was attempting to protect his wife's young
blonde daughter/sister from the predatory, acquisitive Cross.]
Jake: Then what happened?
Mrs. Mulwray: I ran away.
Jake: To Mexico.
Mrs. Mulwray: Hollis came and took care of me. I couldn't see her.
I was fifteen. I-I wanted to, but I couldn't. Then, now I want to
be with her. I want to take care of her.
Jake: Where are you gonna take her now?
Mrs. Mulwray: Back to Mexico.
The struggle over the girl directly led Cross to murder
Hollis Mulwray. Hollis and Evelyn were trying to protect the innocent
girl from her incestuous father, who has now extended his grasping
reach toward her.
With a change of heart after learning the truth and
realizing that Evelyn is innocent, Gittes decides to help Evelyn
and her daughter avoid Escobar and his men. He suggests that she
avoid both the railway station and the airport and instead go to
her Chinese butler's home in Chinatown (1712 Alameda). And as a footnote
to everything, Evelyn casually observes that the spectacles aren't
Hollis' - "those didn't belong to Hollis...He didn't wear bifocals."
[The bifocals belong to her father Noah Cross, who smashed and lost
his bifocals during the lethal struggle. The glasses point to the identity
of the murderer, not the victim.]
Katherine is brought down the stairs to meet Jake: "Katherine,
say hello to Mr. Gittes." Jake tells Mrs. Mulwray that he knows
where they are going in Chinatown: "Sure." He lowers the
front window's bamboo shade as he watches them leave from the front
of the street. He then calls colleagues Duffy and Walsh to meet him
at the Chinatown address in about two hours if they haven't heard
from him.
After Escobar and Loach arrive at the house, Jake is
able to elude them by leading them to Curly's home in San Pedro where
he alleges that Evelyn is hiding. He interrupts their dinner - Curly's
wife (Elizabeth Harding) answers the door - with a bruised black
eye from a beating by her husband for her adultery. Gittes convinces
his fisherman/client to drive him away in his truck parked in the
alley (this is the truck that Curly proposed selling to pay the detective's
fee). In exchange for his previous investigative services, he suggests
that Curly provide safe passage that night for Evelyn and Katherine
(and their luggage) by smuggling them from Los Angeles to Ensenada.
They will be waiting for him there in Chinatown. Cocky as always
about his plan, Gittes assures a wary Curly: "Do you know how
long I've been in this business?"
For his final showdown with Cross, Gittes calls him
and arranges a meeting at the Mulwray mansion - the scene of the
crime - and he baits him: "Have you got your checkbook handy,
Mr. Cross? I've got the girl." Gittes also possesses what he
believes provides clear evidence of who murdered Mulwray - the camera
pans down to Cross' pair of smashed bifocals that were fished out
of the pond - they sit on the table by the phone.
When Cross drives up to the house, a puff of smoke
is blown from the left - where an off-screen Gittes waits confidently.
During their encounter, Gittes tells Cross that "the girl" is
with "her mother." He also wants to pursue questioning
about the phony valley land investors by showing Cross his evidence
- the obituary column. [Another murder clue: Cross must hold his
replacement pair of spectacles (not bi-focals) at an angle to read
the paper in the dim light.] Secondly, Gittes dangles the spectacles
and accuses Cross of killing Mulwray in the fishpond ("where
life begins" - and ends) - and leaving his smashed bifocals
behind. Cross, however, explains his business aspirations and motivations
- while denying greed. He believes that the new dam will be constructed
to irrigate land in the valley - for
"the future." He would annex the Northwest Valley into
the City of Los Angeles, and then irrigate and develop it. That would
cause LA to grow and become one vast metropolitan area and it would
benefit those who owned land in the valley - such as himself:
Cross: What does it mean?
Gittes: That you killed Hollis Mulwray - right here - in that pond.
You drowned him, and you left these [the bifocals]. Coroner's
report shows Mulwray had saltwater in his lungs.
Cross: Hollis was always fascinated by tidepools. You know what he
used to say?...That's where life begins. Sloughs, tidepools. When
he first come out here, he figured if you dumped water into the desert
sand and let it percolate down to the bedrock, it would stay there
instead of evaporate the way it does in most reservoirs. You only
lose 20% instead of 70 or 80. He made this city.
Gittes: That's what you were going to do in the valley.
Cross: That's what I am doing. If the bond issue passes Tuesday,
there'll be eight million dollars to build an aqueduct and reservoir.
I'm doing it.
Gittes: Gonna be a lot of irate citizens when they find out that
they're paying for water that they're not gonna get.
Cross: Oh, that's all taken care of. You see, Mr. Gits. Either you
bring the water to LA or you bring LA to the water.
Gittes: How you gonna do that?
Cross: By incorporating the valley into the city. Simple as that.
Gittes: How much are you worth?
Cross: I've no idea. How much do you want?
Gittes: I just want to know what you're worth. Over ten million?
Cross: Oh my, yes!
Gittes: Why are you doing it? How much better can you eat? What can
you buy that you can't already afford?
Cross: The future, Mr. Gits - the future! Now where's the
girl. I want the only daughter I've got left. As you found out, Evelyn
was lost to me a long time ago.
Gittes: Who do you blame for that - her?
Cross: I don't blame myself. You see, Mr. Gits. Most people never
have to face the fact - (at) the right time and the right place,
they're capable of anything.
Cross has brought Mulvihill with him, with a gun pointed
at the detective's head. At Cross' urging, the incriminating evidence
- the glasses - are confiscated and Gittes reluctantly leads them
to Chinatown to the girl.
In the startling and despairing ending scene, the only
scene in the film that actually takes place in Chinatown, all the
characters converge including the unsuspecting police (on Cross'
payroll: "He owns the police"). The sequence opens in the
circumscribed area beyond true police and governmental control with
passing views of neon-lighted Chinese restaurants and colorful lanterns,
accompanied by discordant, blaring piano chords and a snare drum.
Gittes notices that his operatives Walsh and Duffy have already been
handcuffed. Jake appears willing to escape from Cross and holds out
his hand to be cuffed by Escobar's partner, Loach, "for withholding
evidence, extortion, accessory after the fact." But Gittes'
protests are ignored when he argues, powerlessly, that Cross, Evelyn's
incestuous father, is "the bird you're after...He's crazy, Lou.
He killed Mulwray because of the water thing...Lou, you don't know
what's going on here, I'm tellin' ya."
During Evelyn's getaway with Curly and the butler and
maid in their native town, Cross finally catches up with his two
daughters. He stumbles when guiltlessly identifying himself to the
girl as her grandfather. Evelyn pushes her evil father away and attempts
to get her depraved father away from the girl. Cross pleads with
her to release the young girl - his offspring:
Cross: Evelyn, pleeease, pleeease be reasonable...How
many years have I got? She's mine too?
Evelyn: She's never going to know that.
With that, Evelyn pulls out a small pistol and threatens
her father. Gittes suggests letting the police handle everything,
but she replies with futility:
"He owns the police." Cross tries to reason with her and
accuses her of being neurotic and paranoid: "Evelyn, you're a
disturbed woman, you cannot hope to provide...You'll have to kill me
first." And with that, she wounds her father in the arm in full
view of everyone, and then attempts to escape by car with Katherine.
In the gripping final scene, Escobar fires his pistol
twice into the air as a warning, and then once at the car's tires.
Loach, still handcuffed to Gittes, takes three more shots at the
escaping car as it recedes out of view - and one of his shots is
fatal. Suddenly the car slows to a stop in the far distance. The
blaring horn of the car signals a death for Jake. [The horn also
sounded when Evelyn's head fell forward onto the car's wheel outside
the house where Katherine was being kept.] There are Katherine's
screams, as the awful, horrible scene is revealed - slumped over
the wheel of her car is Evelyn, shot through the head from behind.
Gittes is the first to get to the car - he opens the driver's door
and she flops to the side. Her face is horribly blown apart through
her flawed eye - she has literally been destroyed by her father.
Escobar has the cuffs removed from Gittes' arms when he orders:
"Turn them all loose." Cross, lamenting "Lord, Oh Lord," clumsily
shields and covers the eyes of an hysterical Katherine - telling her "Don't
look, don't look" - to prevent her from comprehending the enormous
tragedy. The domineering, capitalistic water tycoon and controlling
father/grandfather comforts her and ends up taking her away.
Powerless to prevent the inevitable tragedy that he
has exposed, Jake is stunned, shocked, and numb -- and cannot help
but recognize (and see) the part he played in it. He is filmed in
stark profile from the left, accentuating the stitches on his wounded
nose. With Jake's last words, he mumbles what he told Evelyn he used
to do in Chinatown and has again succeeded in doing:
"As little as possible." His meddling into the mystery, and
his emotional involvement in this case has led to a chaotic finale,
where he is left to repeat past history in the dark streets of Chinatown.
The devastated Gittes is ordered by Escobar to get
the hell out of there and go home as a "favor":
What's that? What's that? You want to do your partner
a big favor? (To his men) Take him home. Take him home! Just get
him the hell out of here. (To Jake) Go home, Jake. (Whispering)
I'm doing you a favor.
Gittes' associate Walsh also tells the detective to
lay the inexplicable blame on the foreign area and repress the nightmarish
tragedy - as he is led away, in a haunting closing line:
Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown!
Gittes is cautioned to detach himself emotionally from
the case - something that he will find impossible to do. [In the
sequel, The Two Jakes (1990), an older Jake is preoccupied
by his haunted memories of tragic victim Evelyn and the unanswered
question of the fate of her daughter Katherine. After learning Katherine's
identity during another case in the conclusion of the sequel, he
tells/warns her with these words as the film ends: "It [the
past] never goes away."]
Sirens sound as Escobar orders the clearing of curious
spectators that are gathering on the street:
All right. Come on, clear the area. On the sidewalk.
On the sidewalk, get off the street.
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