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Whatever life holds in store for me, I will never forget these words: "With great power comes great responsibility."
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J.J. "Jake" Gittes is the main protagonist of the 1972 neo-noir mystery film Chinatown. He's a Los Angeles private detective, as well as an ex-police officer. He's hired to investigate an adultery case, and he stumbles onto a labyrinthine plot of a murder involving incest and the privatization of water through government corruption and shady real estate deals that incriminate some of the city's most powerful tycoons.
He was portrayed by Jack Nicholson.
Biography[]
Past[]
Some time before the events of the films, Jake was a police officer for the district attorney in Chinatown. Not much as known about he duties as an officer, although he was stated to have done "as little as possible". One day on the force, he had tried to prevent something terrible from happening there to a woman he cared for, only to hasten the tragedy. This caused him to quit the police force - his life was changed forever. He never forgave himself for his failure and decided to become a private detective instead opening a business known as "J. J. Gittes & Associates, Discreet Investigations". He knew it wasn't as dangerous and risky as being an officer. He did less complicated work, simply identifying cheating partners, instead of getting entangled in deceptions. He hired some some partners, Lawrence Walsh and Duffy to assist him.
The Fake Mulwray[]
One day, a client named Curly is in his office, looking at incriminating evidence - black and white photographs of his wife, awkwardly having adulterous sex with another half-clothed man in the woods. Curly is so upset that he throws the pictures into the air and grabs the venetian blinds. The self-assured, unperturbed Jake understands his agonized pain and commiserates with him, but cooly and detachedly cautions him to stop gnawing on the newly-installed fixtures.
Jake offers him a stiff drink instead. He supports Curly's belief that his wife is unfaithful and no good. Curly is ushered into an outer room where Jake assures the lower-class fisherman that he won't take his "last dime." The client mumbles about begging off paying the fees until the next week - after his next fishing boat haul to catch more profitable albacore tuna.
In another room are Jake's well-dressed partners, "operatives" Walsh and Duffy, associates who assist Gittes in gathering evidence, taking photographs, and snooping on the extra-marital indiscretions of rich, wayward spouses. They introduce Jake to a second client, a woman named "Mrs. Mulwray" (actually an imposter), who also complains about a suspected infidelity. Jake's unsurprised by this, stressing the fact that these are the sort of cases he deals with most. Not permitted to speak to Gittes privately, she asks him - with his operatives present - to investigate her husband's alleged affair with another woman.
Investigating Hollis[]
Although Jake attempts to dissuade the lady-like "Mrs. Mulwray" from pursuing the case with an ironic expression, she insists on his investigation of the extra-marital affair. She identifies her husband as Hollis Mulwray, the well-known chief engineer of L.A. city's "Water and Power" Company. "Mrs. Mulwray" insists that his expensive services are no problem.
Jake begins his investigation of the Mulwray case by listening to public hearings discussing the latest waterways project - a proposed Alto Vallejo Dam and Reservoir. Proponents and opponents of the dam present their cases at the city council meeting. Bored listening to the Mayor Bagby's speech about how "Los Angeles is a desert community" needing irrigation projects that must be paid for by a public bond, Gittes reads the Racing Record with headlines. When Hollis Mulwray is called to speak, the man lambasts the politician's project that would give the desert area north of LA (the San Fernando Valley) irrigation water. He argues with an engineer's grasp of facts against its construction - using previous experience from the Van der Lip dam disaster that killed five hundred people. Mulwray's opinion that effectively denies water to the area is unpopular is instantly booed upon.
Gittes trails Hollis Mulwray, who spends most of his time checking out the city's water supplies. Gittes spies on him with binoculars but doesn't understand Mulwray's paradoxical actions. He first walks in a dried-up riverbed and speaks to a Mexican boy on horseback, and then opens a large ledger book on the hood of his car. Gittes, then tails him in his car, watching him from his rear-view mirror for more clues. He watches Mulwray as he gazes for many hours at the ocean from a coastal beach. At nightfall, water mysteriously runs out of a run-off pipe near the ocean and channels itself into the Pacific.
When Gittes returns to his car at 8:20 pm, he finds a notice on his windshield from the Citizens' Committee to Save Los Angeles. He tosses away the flyer about the drought-stricken city's water supply. A cheap pocket watch placed by Gittes under one of the tires on Mulwray's car is later picked up and indicates that he was "there all night" - he left at 1:50 am. Gittes' off-screen assistant, Walsh, thinks that Mulwray is obsessed with water after visiting three reservoirs a day earlier.
Walsh shows other investigative evidence to Gittes - candid photographs of Mulwray in a heated argument with another unidentified man (Noah Cross). He heard only the mention of the words "apple core" (Albacore). Jake chastises his assistant for bungling ineptness in the taking of the photographs. When Duffy phones that he has located Mulwray with a young woman in a rowboat on a lake in Echo Park, Gittes exclaims he was near water again. Gittes rushes there to take secretive, incriminating still photos of Mulwray rowing the two of them, and then he uses his phallic-probing camera to shoot more pictures of the engineer hugging and kissing the unknown, un-named blonde girl (Katherine) on the back patio of the El Macondo Apartments. Off-screen, Gittes turns over the pictures to "Mrs. Mulwray," but then finds that they are published for some reason a few days later for everyone to see. The pictures of Mulwray with his alleged girlfriend precipitate a scandal - they hit the Los Angeles Post-Record tabloids.
Smaller columns are headed: "J. J. Gittes Hired by Suspicious Spouse," and "Chief's Use of Funds for El Macondo Love Nest Being Investigated." which Gittes discovered at the barber. Through the barber's window, a car overheats during LA's hot summer. Jake also becomes hot-headed when he must defend his sleazy profession to another shop customer who is employed by the First National Bank Mortgage Department.
To cool things down and forestall a fistfight with the other customer, Jake's barber tells him a dirty story (a crude ethnic joke) about matrimonial "screwing" like a Chinaman (prolonged intercourse interspersed with interruptions).
Jake is anxious to tell the same off-color joke to his confreres when he returns to the office, but he first excuses his slightly-offended secretary Sophie from hearing the inappropriate joke. He doesn't realize his embarrassed operatives' discomfort that he has another female client behind him who appears listening to the entire tasteless, and only mildly funny racist joke.
Meet the Real Mrs. Mulwray[]
Jake is the last to learn of her presence. He turns and meets the client behind him - the real Evelyn Mulwray, a beautiful, cool socialite in a blue outfit who is not amused by his joke or by his smearing of her husband's reputation in the newspaper. Jake suddenly realizes he was set up, and used for some other purposes in a deceitful web of double dealings. Remaining composed, she threatens a lawsuit to sue him for defaming her husband's character as she stalks out with her lawyer.
Jake is determined to conduct further snooping and figure out just what's going on. At lunchtime, he visits Mulwray's "Water and Power" office, but he isn't there. Lying to pretend that he has an appointment, he snoops around the office and opens up Mulwray's desk drawers. He finds nothing of interest - bank checks, neatly organized records, a large magnifying glass, and a leather case holding personal grooming tools. Gittes then opens up a large ledger book on the table where he reads a scrawled, enigmatic note on one of the pages: "Tues night - Oak Pass Res. 7 channels used."
The engineer's chief deputy, Russ Yelburton is first seen in a flash of light through the glass of the door. Yelburton, with an icy but pleasant request, greets Gittes and ushers him out of Mulwray's office. In his own office with walls adorned by a large stuffed game fish, photographs, and a painted symbol of a fish, Yelburton is convinced that the scandalous stories about colleague Mulwray are totally groundless. Unaware of the findings that he's made, Gittes offers a telling comment. On the way out of Yelburton's office, Gittes requests a business card, but pockets a bunch of the deputy's cards with sleight-of-hand. According to Yelburton, Mulvihill's main duty, now that he is employed by the Water and Power Company, is to protect against numerous threats of protesting farmers in the Valley to blow up the city's reservoirs.
He drives up the long, expansive driveway to the Mulwray mansion, tended by at least four Asian servants - all from Chinatown itself. In the rear of the palatial house is a fish pond and fountain - a strange anomaly in the midst of a drought. The gardener mumbles as he removes a clump of dead vegetation: "Bad for glass/(grass)." Something shiny in the bottom of the goldfish pool catches Gittes' attention, but he can't fish out the glinting object when Mrs. Mulwray approaches. While sitting down to some iced tea, Gittes confronts Mrs. Mulwray who is sweaty and flushed after riding bareback. He is determined to convince her that he had nothing to do with the publication of the incriminating photos or stories. Jake is embarrassed for having been caught and set up and he doesn't want to become "a local joke." She appears dangerous and threatening to him - but almost instantly and to his astonishment, she offers to drop the lawsuit.
Gittes senses something mysterious underlying the quick offer to drop the suit and is interested in delving deeper into the case to uncover the larger plot issue. He conjectures, slightly obsessively, about her husband's "little girlfriend" and their disappearance. Evelyn sends Gittes to look for Hollis at Oak Pass or Stone Canyon Reservoirs, where he frequently wanders during his lunchtimes. If Gittes returns to the house to see her later, she requests that he calls first.
Using as an entry pass one of the business cards he lifted from Yelburton's office, Gittes is easily allowed admission by police guards through the gates into the Oak Pass Reservoir when mistaken as Yelburton. There, he meets a former partner of his when they were Chinatown cops: Hispanic police detective Lieutenant Lou Escobar, who is accompanied by another cop named Loach. Escobar enviously notices that they both have come a long way since their Chinatown days, especially Gittes with his flashy, expensive suits and his gold cigarette case. He also speculates that Jake may have 'found himself' in the interim.
Escobar has been transferred "out of Chinatown" - but the locale from Gittes' past still haunts him. Before Gittes can speak to Hollis Mulwray, he ends up finding him mysteriously drowned in the middle of LA's summer drought. The victim of an apparent accidental drowning according to Escobar, the fall knocked him unconscious and his body was washed down the entire length of the run-off channel. Mulwray is missing his glasses and one shoe, and his bow-tie is crooked.