Film's+Context

 **  Historical Context   ** Some of film history’s most memorable directors created films that were autobiographical—for example, Woody Allen’s //__Annie Hall__// (1977), and Federico Fellini’s //__8 ½__// (1963). The heroes in these films often seem to be simply better-looking versions of the director. //__Chinatown__//, released in 1974 but set in 1937 Los Angeles and starring Jack Nicholson as a hapless private investigator battling real estate crooks, doesn’t seem at first glance to fit into this category. Director Roman Polanski didn’t come to L.A. until 1968, never worked as an investigator, and hardly resembles the brash, all-American Nicholson. Nonetheless, //__Chinatown__// does draw heavily on Polanski’s life and experiences. The director’s biography is fragmented and refracted onto many separate elements and characters in the film, which both recalls his life’s tragedies and foreshadows the scandals that would subsequently befall him. Polanski was born in Paris 1933, to a Polish father and Russian mother, both Jewish. Some of his first memories, however, would be of Krakow, where the family moved three years after his birth to escape rising anti-Semitism in France. Nazi Germany invaded Poland in 1939, and when Polanski was seven, he witnessed the construction of a wall marking his neighborhood as a Jewish ghetto. His parents were soon sent to concentration camps. Polanski escaped the camps by hiding with a local Catholic family his father had bribed, but he had to manage largely on his own, dodging the bullets of German soldiers. After the war, Polanski reunited with his father, but his mother had perished in a Nazi gas chamber. Polanski entered art school in Krakow when he was around seventeen years old, spending his free time with acting groups and in movie theaters, which screened primarily German films. In 1954, the elite state film school in Lodz welcomed Polanski as one of only six accepted students. After graduating in 1959, Polanski made several short films. In 1962 his first feature-length film, //__Nóz w wodzie__//, was well received and even nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film after its American release (as //__Knife in the Water__//) a year later. Eager to take the international stage, Polanski left Poland for England, where he directed //__Fearless Vampire Killers__// (1967), which starred American actress Sharon Tate, who soon became his wife. The couple settled in Los Angeles, where Paramount producer Robert Evans invited Polanski to direct //__Rosemary’s Baby__// (1968). The occult thriller’s huge popularity secured Polanski’s professional reputation, showcasing his compositional perfectionism, his ability to sustain a suspenseful and gripping narrative, and his strikingly bold artistic flair. The triumph of //__Rosemary’s Baby__//, however, did not last long. On August 9, 1969, cult leader Charles Manson’s “family” attacked the Polanskis’ Beverly Hills home, murdering a pregnant Sharon Tate and her four guests. Polanski, who had been abroad the evening of the murders, was devastated. Harassed by the relentless American media, he retreated to Europe to make //__Macbeth__// (1971). That film’s extreme violence reflected aspects of the Manson slayings. Polanski reluctantly agreed to return to the United States to work with his old friend, producer Robert Evans, on //__Chinatown__//. Though it was Robert Towne’s masterful screenplay that had lured him back to the States, Polanski made many revisions to it. While Towne fought in favor of an optimistic film, Polanski’s haunted and pessimistic vision prevailed, marking the picture with a devastating flourish that signified the hopelessness of a world gone rotten. //__ Chinatown __// ’s dark theme is one of the elements that places it in the category of neo-noir, the second generation of the genre known as film noir. Film noir genre evolved through a combination of German expressionistic drama (such as F. W. Murnau’s 1922 //__Nosferatu__//), American gangster film (Mervyn LeRoy’s 1931 //__Little Caesar__//), and popular British mystery novels (Agatha Christie, and the like). Several common features characterized film noir pictures: the presence of a beautiful but dangerous woman (known as the //femme fatale//), gritty and generally urban settings, compositional tension (highly contrasting light and dark colors or oblique camera angles, for example), and themes of moral ambiguity and alienation. To prepare for the making of //__Chinatown__//, Polanski studied John Huston’s //__The Maltese Falcon__// (1941), which is accepted as the first full embodiment of film noir. (Huston himself plays Noah Cross, //Chinatown’s// most despicable villain). Polanski also read Raymond Chandler’s mystery novels, several of which had been made into film noir classics, such as //__The Big Sleep__// (1946). Many insist that film noir is intrinsically linked to World War II and the difficult years of postwar reconstruction (several champion directors of film noir, such as Fritz Lang fled Nazi-occupied territories for Hollywood), and thus Polanski’s war-torn history suits him especially well for the genre. //__Chinatown__//, however, is a //neo//-noir film, and its departures from classic noir elements help to define the newer genre. Most obviously, Polanski shot //__Chinatown__// with colour film, and though his colours do appear especially vivid (Katherine Cross’s bright, spotless dress and Evelyn Mulwray’s rich, deep eyes, for example), colour film precludes the contrast intensity that black and white film offers. In addition, Evelyn Mulwray is emphatically not a femme fatale like the heartless Kitty of //__The Killers__// (1949). Though Jake mistakes her for her husband’s killer at first, Mrs. Mulwray eventually emerges as the story’s most tragic victim. //__Chinatown__// also exemplifies the neo-noir theme of big-money corruption. Though this theme is also present in classic noir, //__Chinatown__// and its neo-noir progeny (such as 1997’s //__L.A. Confidential__//) emphasize malignant commercialism and obsession with money to a far greater extent than did their predecessors. //__ Chinatown __// was a box office sensation, and after its nomination for eleven Oscars in 1975, Polanski was a darling of the critics. But only two years later, Polanski was charged with the statutory rape of a thirteen-year-old girl, throwing his name into American tabloids once again and connecting him in the public mind with //__Chinatown’__s// child-molesting villain Noah Cross. Nevertheless, Polanski continued directing, having fled to France to avoid standing trial. He won his first Best Director Oscar in 2003 for //__The Pianist__//, which he could not accept in person because he is still a fugitive.