Chinatown and Double Indemnity

The Dispelling of Myths in Relation to Double Indemnity and Chinatown

The reasons why Double Indemnity and Chinatown are so different have to do with the fact that they were made during two different time periods. Chinatown is a film that states to the audience that society is inherently evil, and the morally upstanding person who tries to fight the system ultimately cannot do so because the problem is too vast for them to comprehend. This negative implication on the filmmakers’ part has to primarily do with the time period that the film was made in, which was the 1970’s. This was the time when Americans had deep distrust of their government due to America’s involvement in the Vietnam War and Watergate. People wanted to fight the system and question their government, but how? There were so many problems to fight, and they were so complex to figure out due to cove ups and due to the vastness of the problem. There’s a hopelessness in many seventies films, that deals with the idea that the system is so corrupt that the solutions to solving the problems of corruption can never be adequately solved. The problem is just too vast for an individual to handle. The only way filmmakers thought to comment on this situation was through distrusting the myths of the past; so they made subversive films. Even though many of these films took place in the setting and the particular genre that they belonged to, these films subverted the ideology of those particular past films. Chinatown is considered a subversive genre film. Polanski’s statement in Chinatown is that: what’s the point of fighting corruption? The fighting extends the problem even further. Hence, the derision that the film Chinatown has towards the film noir myth of one male figure being able to fight the system. However, a man coming back from war during the 1940’s would want to if anything rebel against the system, even if it were not corrupt, in order to have some say and in order to fight through the sterility of such concepts as family values and working at a nondescript job for a living, which were greatly emphasized throughout that time period. However, the filmmakers of Double Indemnity feel that that myth of transgressing the system is not only heinous but an impossible dream. If Double Indemnity is the quintessential film noir film, than the ideology in that film is the quintessential film noir myth. The cultural myth in Double Indemnity—that society is not inherently evil but rather that individuals that try to transgress society are—is dispelled in the film Chinatown. If anything there is a reversal of ideological perspective; hence the film’s complexity in relation to Double Indemnity.

The John G. Cawelti reading entitled Chinatown and Generic Transformation in Recent American Films is very important in regards to how Chinatown differs to a great extent in comparison with other Noir movies. One of the striking passages in the reading is in regards to the style of the film. Cawelti writes that, “…there is something not quite right, something disturbingly off about it (Chinatown). In this case, it is the color. The world of the hard-boiled myth is preeminently a world of black and white. Its ambiance is that compound of angular light and shadow enmeshed in webs of fog that grew out of the visual legacy of German expressionism…Polanski carefully controls his spectrum of hue and tone in order to give it the feel of film noir, but it is nonetheless color with occasional moments of rich golden light.” In other words, the look of the film is more complex, than the look of practically any other film noir film.

What the writer doesn’t mention is that the film is also shot in widescreen, which makes objects in the frame in the case of Chinatown far less distinct than they are in Double Indemnity. For example, in the scene when Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray) first sees Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck), his point of view is very much concentrated on her and the full screen format makes this easier for the character to do so because there are far less distractions around the frame. Phyllis is shot with a key lighting halo effect. This notion of Walter being madly obsessed with Phyllis is a very important concept, because the film is about masculine impairment and how men who are so fall into a femme fatale like Phyllis Dietrichson’s trap. While in Chinatown, the first time J.J. Gittes (Jack Nicholson) meets Evelyn Mulwray (Faye Dunaway), she is almost in the far right corner of the widescreen frame. Mulwray is the interruption of Jake’s “great” joke. She’s the downer of the moment, while Phyllis is the highlight of Neff’s dull existence. The bright light on her is very much in contrast with the dark lighting throughout the film. Neff wants to enter into that light; he wants to rebel against the system with her. Gittes wants nothing to do with Mulwray, and Mulwray especially wants nothing to do with him; in the scene, she’s threatening to sue Gittes. Mulwray is shot very darkly and her body is not shot in an objective manner, but rather merely in close-up. Her body is not showcased the way Dietrichson’s is. Chinatown is a film all about how Gittes searching for the truth leads to even more dire consequences because the truth is so vast. This flaw in his character tragically results in Evelyn’s death. It’s all felt in that widescreen format, where Gittes view is never concentrated on the right object.

This concept of Jake’s misguided viewpoint is very apparent in the scene early in the film with the gardener. The widescreen shot for the most part never pinpoints the pond with the glasses as the center of the frame. The center of the frame is for the most part the gardener. Michael Eaton, the author of the BFI book on Chinatown, writes about this when he states that, “In parodying the gardener’s accent—‘very bad for the glass’—Gittes is nearer to the truth than he can realize. He spots something in the pond, a clue which could lead to the solution of the entire mystery right now. Once again, the detective is seeing without seeing, he doesn’t get what is right before his eyes.” Walter Neff always keeps Dietrichson, who is the key to the whole movie, because she is the person who makes Neff rebel against the system, in the center of the frame i.e. the center of his focus. Going back to the Gittes scene, it is a very deceivingly brightly lit scene, almost as if there is no threat of any kind, and almost as if the scene itself is not a particularly important key scene. Besides the opening moment with Phyllis, there are no deceivingly brightly lit scenes in Double Indemnity. The audience knows that they are watching a distrust worthy woman in the film. Chinatown, in the fact that it misleads the viewer and the main character throughout the film, is therefore a more complex film in terms of its look and design. This idea of complexity, and of Gittes misplaced focus, is in relation to the film’s ideology that society is a vast problem to combat. It’s so vast for Gittes that he plays right into society’s trap, which in the context of this subversive film noir film, is immoral. This is interesting if one compares this with Double Indemnity’s having Neff fall into Phyllis trap. One film depicts the main character as becoming immoral by trying to transgress society, while the more modern film depicts the main character as becoming immoral by working within society’s confines.

In reference again to Chinatown being shot in color and to its lighting, surely the message that Polanski is trying to convey to the audience is that the film noir terrain is more complex than how it was depicted in the past. This is very apparent if a viewer compared the scene towards the end of Double Indemnity when Walter Neff kills Phyllis, with the scene towards the end of Chinatown when Gittes beats Evelyn in order to get the truth about the whole situation out of her. In the scene in Double Indemnity, the dark moody Expressionistic lighting conveys the feeling that these two lovers are becoming more and more corrupt and more and more malign in nature, all the way up to their deaths. This is an example of the cultural myth in Double Indemnity, which really is that black and white. In Chinatown, the situation is more complex than merely having to do with individuals trying to transgress society being evil. Evil in Chinatown is represented by the system i.e. Noah Cross. It could be argued that as more and more of the grissly facts are brought to the surface in Chinatown, the picture ironically enough becomes even sunnier and brighter, which is very different from the style in Double Indemnity. Basically, the corruption is ingrained in the land. Noah Cross (John Huston) is trying to illegally build a water system that redirects much of L.A.'s water supply to a certain part of land that he owns, in order to dramatically increase the property value of that land. (Wikipedia article on Chinatown). There’s no way for Gittes to fight this pervasiveness of corruption. Neff can’t fight the system either, but he basically realizes this by the end of the film while Gittes is still lost and confused by the end of Chinatown. It’s such a complex problem to fight that Gittes is constantly looking in the wrong direction (i.e. playing right into corrupt society’s hands), which results in tragic consequences. This is prefigured in the daughter/sister scene. Gittes, unlike Neff, probably never heard of common courtesy before especially in regards to women. Even though Neff is violent in that last scene, throughout the film Neff is enraptured with Dietrichson. He has fallen for the femme fatale’s trap; by the end of the film he goes back to her spider’s web and gets shot in the process. However, Neff has his own reasons besides falling for Dietrichson. He says this in his narration when he states that, “You get to thinking how you could crook the house, yourself.” Gittes certainly doesn’t feel the same way. He wants to fight the system, not in order to take part in illicit behavior, but rather to end illicit behavior. Gittes determinism is very false. His initial plan of finding out the truth and protecting Mulwray eventually becomes replaced by his untrustworthiness of Mulwray. He calls the cops over to her place, because he’s so certain that she did kill her husband. This is an example of Gittes wrong-headed attitude; in his trying to work within the system in order to be a diligent individual. This basically gets Mulwray killed at the end of the film.

The final scene between Neff and Dietrichson has that familiar Noir Venetian blind shade look, where the outlines of the blinds are shown on the characters faces and on the surface of the room. The sister daughter scene in Chinatown is shot more realistically and is not Expressionistic at all in terms of the lighting. Rather, there are golden hues in the scene. Mulwray’s apartment in general is a less threatening environment than Dietrichson’s, which gives a sense of realism and complexity to the scene. The Dietrichson scene is shot from many different camera angles, while the Mulwray scene is simply shot in an over the shoulder shot of Gittes trying to obtain information out of Mulwray, with very few cuts to Gittes reaction shots. This depicts Gittes false determinism, which is really simple-mindedness on his part; his lack of empathy towards Mulwray causes more problems rather than solves the problem. The key lighting on Phyllis’ face in the scene in Double Indemnity shows her emotions and her planning to do Neff in at that moment. She’s very evil and all-knowing in that chair; almost as if she didn’t have to move in order to dominate the action. On the other hand, Mulwray is shot in a very realistic natural way—in order to depict her plight and in order to give the audience sympathy towards her. The audience rarely sees Jake’s reactions towards what he’s doing to her, which is a depiction of his lack of empathy, while the audience feels Walter’s pain upon getting shot because the audience can see how his body reacts. The audience also sees how Mulwray’s body reacts towards getting beaten, but the audience cannot see how Dietrichson reacts upon dying. All the audience can see is her facial reaction because she is shot in a close up. The audience cannot see how her body reacts to the sudden violence, and this is a way of making Dietrichson almost inhuman, hence the evil quality given to the character which depicts the ideology of the film in relation to transgressing society.

The fact that the audience doesn’t see except for one or two shots Gittes reaction towards his beating up Mulwray is an example of his false determinism. He wrongly sees Mulwray as the femme fatale, and this misdirection ultimately gets her killed. This is reflected in the slapping of Mulwray which is totally unnecessary on Gittes part. Gittes, in his own sad way is masculinely impaired. An important aspect of Gittes character is his masculine impairment which is reflected by, “…an impotence symbolized earlier in the film by the slashing of the nose and the large comic bandage he wears throughout much of the action.” Neff is also masculinely impaired, but in a much different way. It’s because of his love with Phyllis that the man is impaired; he’s not impaired sexually but rather very much in love with the femme fatale. He loves her so much that he will kill in order to be with her.

The love scenes in both films are very interesting in how different they are stylistically. The Double Indemnity scene is very romantically done. It is lit in a very shadowed and full and very richly dark romantic way. The rain adds to that atmosphere of romanticism. When Phyllis comes in the room, and the door opens, the brightness from the hallway gives a sense of Phyllis being the light in Neff’s life. As the scene goes on, the lighting from the lamp, as if the lamp were the only illumination in the room, gives the scene a very heated sexual look. There are many long shots objectifying Dietrichson’s body, and there are also very tightly shot close-ups, depicting the complicit relationship between Neff and Dietrichson and the intensity that they have for one another. The scene in Chinatown is very different. It’s a less objectifying sexual scene, considering that this film was made in the 1970’s and graphic sex scenes were being shown throughout that time period. Here there’s barely any nudity, and the only indication that the two characters had sex is that they are in bed together and that Gittes cigarette is starting to wither down. It’s a very plainly done scene, not really consisting of any heated sexual moments between the two. That white light in the bathroom when the two are kissing is very bright and sobering, and the scene itself ends very abruptly. This style is supposed to depict Jake’s and Mulwray’s evasiveness about their past, which really gets in the way of their relationship. These two can’t really connect, because Jake is so determined to find out the truth about Mulwray. He in a sense is sexually inadequate. Neff knows that he is masculinely impaired, and in the thrall of Phyllis Dietrichson, and this is apparent because of the narration in the film, and yet he can’t help himself. He has to transgress the system. Gittes is hardly aware of the damage he is doing, nor of his masculine impairment, nor of any of the pertinent facts of the corruption in L.A. until it’s basically too late. It’s because of Jake’s lack of empathy towards Mulwray that she gets killed. Both masculinely impaired characters are doomed by the end of both films, yet they both are for two different reasons, hence the ideological differences between both movies.

Masculine impairment is a very important concept to consider for both films because they are the reason for the flaws in the two male characters that results in the tragic elements in both stories. Spicer writes that, “The male victim is the most pervasive character type in film noir, showing what Krutnik describes as noir’s fascination with the spectacle of the passive or emasculated man. The main type of male victim is the dupe of the femme fatale which derives from the two James M. Cain adaptations, Double Indemnity and The Postman Always Rings Twice, middleclass professional and working class drifter respectively. This figure is not admirable or innocent but morally weak, apparently helpless in the throes of desire and attempting to escape the frustrations of his existing life. As has been shown, Cain’s victims have a compulsion to tell their stories, to explain if not excuse their actions, and there is a powerful element of masochism, of self-loathing in their make-up along with their passivity.” If anything, the more modern male film noir character, which is what Gittes is, the one character who tries his hardest to uphold justice and tries to do the right thing for the first time in his life, the one man who actually tries to protect the innocent in a corrupt land, is even worse. Spicer writes about Kiss Me Deadly but he could just as well be writing about Chinatown when he states that, “Ralph Meeker plays Hammer as rudderless modern man, emotionally and sexually repressed, and without the leavening dead-pan humour of his predecessors and their worldly knowledgeability…He has the tough guy’s muscles and quick reflexes, but is oddly uninvolved even in the violence of his trade. He has become an empty, catatonic icon in a self-destructive world.” This sounds very similar to Cawelti’s description of Gittes:

“Nicholson also portrays, at least early on, a character who is not quite what he seems. His attempt to be the tough, cynical, and humorous private eye is undercut on all sides; he is terribly inept as a wit, as his attempt to tell his assistants the Chinese joke makes clear. Nor is he the tough, marginal man of professional honor he pretends to be at the beginning…By the middle of the film Gittes is determined to expose the political conspiracy that he senses beneath the surface, and also to resolve the question of the guilt or innocence of the woman to whom he has been so strongly attracted. Thus far, the situation closely resembles that of The Maltese Falcon and The Big Sleep. It is at this point, however, that the action again takes a vast departure from that of traditional hard-boiled story. Instead of demonstrating his ability to expose and punish the guilty, Gittes steadily finds himself confronting a depth of evil and chaos so great that he is unable to control it. In relation to the social and personal depravity represented by Noah Cross and the world in which he can so successfully operate, the toughness, moral concern, and professional skill of Gittes not only seem ineffectual, but lead to ends that are the very opposite of those intended.”

It seems that as corruption grows more and more throughout film noir films throughout the years, the men who have to combat this become less and less corrupted and more and more ineffectual. The fault has to be blamed on society and not on the individual, because society is the problem that is so vast that it makes the individual ineffectual. This subversive idea on the filmmakers’ part, that individuals that try to transgress society are not inherently evil but rather that society is, is in ideological opposition to the film noir myth. Who do you prefer: the man who doesn’t fight the evil malign corruption until it is too late, (Neff) or the man who is too inefficient to fight that corruption (Gittes)?

Even though both films end tragically, the two endings are very different. When Walter tries his best to get away from Barton Keyes (Edward G. Robinson), and tries to leave the insurance office, in a sense transgressing the system, he doesn’t make it past the door and knows full well by the end of the film that he’s probably going to the gas chamber for doing what he did. At the end of Chinatown, Gittes inadvertently gets Mulwray killed, and stands next to the other cops that killed her. This shows his complicity with the system, and the fact that by his not transgressing society, he gets other innocent people killed. Both characters are masculinely impaired, and yet Neff saves the innocent people in Double Indemnity; Lola and her boyfriend. His masculine impairment is not as ineffectual as the law-abiding Gittes is. This is the ultimate example of how playing within the system can make someone more impaired than if they transgressed the system; the ultimate example of the subversive quality of Chinatown in relation to Double Indemnity.