‘Chinatown’ Oscar flashback: The 11-time nominee won for Robert Towne’s original screenplay
The 1970s is considered a stellar decade for film – the height of the New Hollywood movement – which makes 1974’s “Chinatown” all the more classic. It is arguably one of the most memorable films to come out of that decade, becoming a defining feature for the era and earning 11 Oscar nominations. The mystery neo-noir is often cited as one of the greatest films of all time, particularly for its script, which won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. Now on its 50th anniversary, let’s look back at the awards run of “Chinatown” – written by Robert Towne and directed by Roman Polanski – which was released on June 20, 1974.
The psychological mystery stars Jack Nicholson as private detective J.J. “Jake” Gittes. He is hired by a seemingly wealthy socialite to simply investigate her husband’s extramarital affairs, but gets entangled into a whirlpool hidden beneath the surface involving a deeper and deadlier situation that include political scandals and murder during the middle of a drought in 1937 Los Angeles. The main focus is the relationship between Gittes and Evelyn Mulwray, played by Faye Dunaway, as they juggle between their professional relationship and what develops into a personal and sexual one as the movie goes on, while Gittes is still unsure of what to make of Mulwray and her potential involvement in what he is investigating.
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What makes Towne’s screenplay a major study is the way he incorporates various layered stories by amplifying the water scandal in the movie, inspired by the California Water Wars, and the character development of Gittes. Every answer as the film goes along brings more questions to ask, and Towne uses the world of the water supply in the storyline to serve a bigger purpose and engross the audience in a much darker story, never shying away from the hard-hitting realism and the larger implications and consequences that Jake Gittes uncovers. The mystery of the case and how it unfolds draws similarities with Gittes’ past case and his disturbing relationship to the city of Chinatown, keeping himself at arms length with getting emotionally attached to his subjects, but he cannot help opening himself up to Evelyn and becoming protective of her to an extent as it gets more convoluted and despite Evelyn hiding something traumatic.
Under Polanski’s direction, the film provides many visual motifs and themes of darkness, despite the brightness of the Los Angeles background. It makes the evil less obvious and even more painful as the story elaborates and characters are witnessing the corruption of greed and power, personified by the antagonist Noah Cross played by John Huston, the wealthy father of Evelyn who tries to keep the facade to cover up his heinous crimes. When all the small clues are slowly woven together, we get an ending that is nothing but tragic for two lead characters as they are exposed to the true violent nature of life and everything that they had discovered and invested in, vanished in the blink of an eye and succinctly summed up by the film’s iconic final line.
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In its awards run, “Chinatown” won four of the major prizes at the Golden Globe Awards: Best Drama Picture, Best Director for Polanski, Best Actor for Nicholson and Best Screenplay for Towne. The latter three categories it repeated at the BAFTA Awards, while Nicholson won Best Actor at the New York Film Critics Circle and the National Society of Film Critics, and Towne nabbed the Writers Guild of America Award for Best Original Screenplay. So it came as a surprise when Towne was the only Oscar winner of the film’s 11 nominations, with it losing Best Picture and Best Director to “The Godfather Part II,” and Nicholson losing to Art Carney for “Harry and Tonto.” It was additionally recognized for its cinematography, editing, score, sound, production design, costume design and Dunaway for Best Actress.
Regardless of its Oscar performance, “Chinatown” has become not only one of the timeless classics, but also one of the most relevant. Its themes still ruminate about political power and specifically the corruption that exists all around us, however visible as it seems, and the figures that push the evil agendas forward to gain control to raise status combined with the danger of greed. It continues to serve as an influence to some of our most prolific modern filmmakers and is consistently being analyzed and revisited by generations, for rethinking the film noir genre and its complex structure. The film was selected for preservation by the US National Film Registry by the Library of Congress in 1991, cementing its place in film history.
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