Chinatown : Tom Collins with Lime 🥁 🥁 🥁 🥁
/Year Released: 1974
Directed by: Roman Polanski
Starring: Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, John Huston
(R, 131 min.)
Genre: Film Noir, Phycological Thriller
“Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.” – Lieutenant Escobar (Perry Lopez)
California’s corruption and water mismanagement go all the way to the 30s in this excellent film noir. So now this classic that was nominated for 11 Oscars is not just a great cinema; it’s a wakeup call as well.
Published January 17, 2025:
“It’s the story of ‘Chinatown,’ and it likely led to the intensity of the fires.”
“Corruption is ingrained in Los Angeles,” said Jamie Court, president of Consumer Watchdog, a non-profit public interest group.
The 1974 Hollywood film, which stars Jack Nicholson as a crusading private detective, chronicles the corruption in LA’s public utility company that controls water flowing to the city.
Today that same company — the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power — is a sprawling bureaucracy in need of serious reform but has remained largely unchecked by politicians as it brings in billions from ratepayers to city government, Court said.
“It’s a sacred cow and a slush fund for the city, with a serious lack of accountability,” he said. – Isabel Vincent
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Let’s examine that 1974 film. But first you have to put away some iconic images of the famed actor.
Primarily that picture of a diabolical Nicholson from The Shining, which he made only 6 years after Chinatown
And also wipe from your mind the aging corrupt crime boss Frank Costello in 2006”s Oscar winning The Departed. Where he his improv in the bar scene scared Deonardo KeCaprio senseless.
In fact, in Chinatown Jack Nicholson is surprisingly young, handsome, and almost debonair as P.I. Jake Gittes, even when he loses his Florsheim shoe in the mud, or nearly drowns and is soaking wet. He cleans up nice.
***
So what have we in the 1974 classic then?
A private detective hired to expose an adulterer in 1930s Los Angeles finds himself caught up in a web of deceit, corruption, and murder.
Jack Nicholson’s hard boiled P.I. Jake Gittes is not quite as heartless as Bogart’s Sam Spade. He’s more like the older version of himself in the recent Monsieur Spade, a bit mellowed, at least.
But both are relentless in their rabid pursuit of the truth and the utter contempt they have for those who hide it. Only here as in any good film noir, it is a long time coming, what with at least one femme fatale, the lovely Faye Dunaway as a formidable widow:
“I don't get tough with anyone, Mr. Gittes. My lawyer does.”
Several corpses turn up – 511 according to at least one site. That is if you are counting the 500 killed when the Van Der Lip Dam collapsed earlier but is referenced in the film.
Like The Maltese Falcon as well as the recent Monsieur Spade, the plot is complex and constantly keeps us and our intrepid Jake Gittes off balance.
The first being that the Mrs. Mulwray, (Diane Ladd), who first asks Jake to find evidence of her husband’s adultery, is not the real Mrs. Mulwray.
Gittes later confesses to the real Mrs. Mulwray (Faye Dunaway) that he once worked in Chinatown where he followed orders from the D. A. and did “as little as possible.” Only once he tried to help someone out, and it ended badly.
It seems those days in Chinatown, the forced suppressing of his natural curiosity, as well as a case with more depth than getting photos of cheating husbands or wives, reawakens some long dead part of Jake. And he pays for it, too. As evidenced by his patched-up face.
Enter John Huston, playing Noah Cross, Hollis Mulwray’s former partner, and things really start to get dicey. Of course, his name being Noah might suggest a few things, right?
Noah Cross: Exactly what do you know about me? Sit down.
Jake Gittes: Mainly that you're rich, too respectable to want your name in the newspapers.
Noah Cross: Of course I'm respectable. I'm old! Politicians, ugly buildings and whores all get respectable if they last long enough.
The more Jake digs the deeper in he gets. And behind it all, at least it seems to him, is water in that desert town. It only starts with the death of Hollis Mulwray, the water commissioner.
“Middle of a drought and the water commissioner drowns. Only in L.A.”
But buried even deeper are too many secrets. Secrets and people who draw Jake in. Who is telling the truth? Who is lying? Is the beautiful widow really drawn to him or is that just another of her games? Especially when she steals off suddenly after a night in his arms.
And what about her father, Noah Cross, so eager to reconnect with his daughter. Or the urgent call from Diane Ladd’s fake Mrs. Mulwray? Not to mention the multiple residents of a luxurious nursing home who now seem to own real estate about to be bought up on the cheap outside of town? And even his old former Chinatown partner from his cop days, Lieutenant Escobar (Perry Lopez) ,who accuses Jake of extortion?
You will have to watch the film again to find these answers, but again, it is not the plot itself that intrigues but the characters themselves. And the screenwriting is deliciously witty. No wonder screen writing was the only Oscar win out of the 11 nominations.
I will close with a nice sampling of that wit:
Evelyn Mulwray: Hollis seems to think you're an innocent man.
Jake Gittes: Well, I've been accused of a lot of things before, Mrs. Mulwray, but never that.
[an anonymous caller has telephoned Gittes]
Ida Sessions: Are you alone?
Jake Gittes: Isn't everybody?
Yelburton: My goodness, what happened to your nose?
Jake Gittes: I cut myself shaving.
Yelburton: You ought to be more careful. That must really smart.
Jake Gittes: Only when I breathe.
Well worth revisiting this classic, especially now as L.A. shows itself still wallowed in the foul corruption that Chinatown exposed over a half century ago.
–Kathy Borich
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Trailer
Film-Loving Foodie
Different Drummer is going to be a bit lazy and defer to the talented Nora Maynard for her crisp description of the perfect cocktail to go with our film:
Chinatown (1974) is a thirsty film. Private eye Jake “JJ” Gittes (Jack Nicholson) uncovers a water scandal in a drought-stricken 1930s Los Angeles, taking him from parched riverbeds to the lush, green lawns and ornamental fish ponds of a private estate.
Evelyn Cross Mulwray (Faye Dunaway, below) is an icy-cool socialite, dressed impeccably in crisp linens and pearls. She serves tea from a silver service with sugar and lemon, and apéritifs in cut crystal glasses. So, naturally, when she orders a cocktail, it’s something chilled and brisk: “a Tom Collins with lime, not lemon.”
The Tom Collins is just one in a family of fizzy, citrus-y drinks. First before it was the John Collins, said to be invented by a bartender of the same name in early 19th century London. Made with the Dutch juniper-flavored liquor, jenever (an early ancestor of gin), the drink never really caught on in the U.S. until another bartender substituted Old Tom Gin (a sweeter London-style gin), and the Tom Collins was born. (To add to the family confusion, a John Collins today is usually made with whiskey or bourbon.)
Tom Collins with Lime
(makes one highball drink)
Ingredients
1 3/4 oz. gin
1-2 dashes gomme syrup (a.k.a. simple syrup) (1 tsp superfine sugar may also be substituted)
juice of one lemon (or lime)
club soda
Directions
Combine gin, sugar, and lemon (or lime) juice in a cocktail shaker and shake gently. Pour into a highball glass filled with ice. Top up with club soda and garnish with an orange slice and a maraschino cherry.
