tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13294573.post7110133703042531606..comments2024-03-28T06:25:00.013-04:00Comments on Cockeyed Caravan: Rulebook Casefile: How Does Chinatown Get Away with 73 Loose Ends?Matt Birdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07319984238456281734noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13294573.post-13564416302456107282016-10-04T10:53:15.202-04:002016-10-04T10:53:15.202-04:00I think I could go through the list and disabuse e...I think I could go through the list and disabuse every point. I mean, concerning first point, I think Cross or his associates knew that Mulwray has been investigating the dumping of water. Gittes later investigated it and Cross' operatives were aware of him so he would have had to be at the beach at some point. I do think Cross planned to kill Hollis at their meeting when he was confronted and was trying to frame Evelyn for her murder, which he did. So he eliminated one of the people you mentioned took the credibility away from the other and that leaves Gittes. Gittes didn't have anything to supply to anyone. In addition to Cross implicating him in the cover-up and stripping away his credibility, the explanation about the runoff was all they really needed to do to explain themselves. After that bond issue passed, earlier in the film, they didn't need to dump anymore water in the ocean that could be discovered. Gittes technically could have provided details about the identity fraud at the Mar Vista Rest Home but his credibility was already damaged at that point given all the alleged crimes Escobar rattled off.<br /><br />Another point mentioned The Big Sleep. Chinatown is not a homage to The Big Sleep. Chinatown is a subversion of The Big Sleep and all detective noir from the 1940s and 1950s.zxcvbhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03546348655724928049noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13294573.post-76940181571370061132016-09-20T14:50:03.381-04:002016-09-20T14:50:03.381-04:00Good call on Spike Lee - I missed that one when I ...Good call on Spike Lee - I missed that one when I was looking over your list.Markhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15295138520775220050noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13294573.post-29450241098132927802016-09-16T10:16:13.733-04:002016-09-16T10:16:13.733-04:00As I've mentioned before, the thing about that...As I've mentioned before, the thing about that quote is that Chandler know who killed the chauffeur in the *book*, it was the sister, but nobody knew who killed him in the movie, because under the Hays Code, murderers had to be punished and the sister wasn't punished. But yes, this movie's many unanswered questions are reminiscent of "The Big Sleep", so it's an homage in that sense as well. In both cases, material was cut out at the last minute that would have made it make more sense. <br /><br />Not to quibble, but I would call Spike Lee an art-house director at the time of "Do the Right Thing"<br /><br />Yes, I agree Polanski was not very interested in plot or logic, and I think the reputation of the movie proves that he was right not to worry. Again, it was only when I watched it twice in a row that all of these problem suddenly popped out at me. Matt Birdhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07319984238456281734noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13294573.post-34806977545238441602016-09-15T17:11:51.798-04:002016-09-15T17:11:51.798-04:00The even more pertinent comparison is to The Big S...The even more pertinent comparison is to The Big Sleep (and other 1940s detective films), which Chinatown is so clearly an homage to. Famously, neither the writers of the film, nor Raymond Chandler himself knew who had killed the chauffeur, which is sort of what starts the whole plot going. Whether or not you believe that anecdote (and I can't recall off hand whether Hawks and his writers fixed that problem in the movie itself), it is a fiendishly difficult plot to follow (as is The Maltese Falcon). The hard-boiled novels (and the films based on them) were pretty clearly not going for the kind of clock-work precision of the Golden Age mystery writers (Christie, et al).<br /><br />It also may be worth pointing out that except for Blue Velvet (which had its own big set of loose threads and broken rules) this is (I think) the first movie you've subjected to the checklist by a bone fide art-house director. Sure, Chinatown was produced by Robert Evans and was a big Hollywood production, but Polanski had just come off (in reverse order): What; Macbeth; Rosemary's Baby; The Fearless Vampire Killers; Cul-de-sac; and Repulsion. All of those were independently produced and various combinations of exploitative, atmospheric, confusing, quasi-plotless, bonkers insane, and more. (I've seen all but What and love them all). Then he followed Chinatown with The Tenant, which quickly loses the thread of all logic at about the 2 minute mark. The point being: I don't think Polanski was ever much interested in plot or logic (at least until his weird early 2000s renaissance as a Prestige filmmaker).<br /><br />Markhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15295138520775220050noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13294573.post-81090057232528765982016-09-14T10:24:30.645-04:002016-09-14T10:24:30.645-04:00Totally agree. Nothing in that movie made any sen...Totally agree. Nothing in that movie made any sense. Why it's well-regarded, I'll never know. Matt Birdhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07319984238456281734noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13294573.post-57956573541382326542016-09-14T09:32:21.224-04:002016-09-14T09:32:21.224-04:00James Bond films are notorious for not making a lo...James Bond films are notorious for not making a lot of sense in retrospect but flowing well at the time. The individual scenes make sense; it's the connections between them that tend to be the problem. As long as the scenes work and the general flow of the story holds up, we're usually okay with the weak connections. A crucial element to this working is not drawing attention to it. As you said about Jake Gittes, if the protagonist isn't worried about it, neither are we. <br /><br />A proof by counter-example is <i>Skyfall</i>. MI-6 identifies an assassin by the bullet fragments Bond pulled from his own body with a folding knife, a bit of self-mutilation he performs months into his recovery? What? Move fast enough and I wouldn't have thought about how ludicrous it was that they hadn't taken the fragments out of him ages ago, or that they were so shallow he could cut them out with a pocket knife. But no, they wanted to play up the badassery of it, which forces us to give it a moment's thought, and it comes across as dopey.<br /><br />Later, Q is examining computer code on a big screen to figure out where The Bad Guy is -- the system represented by a weird geometric pattern with gibberish alongside, and in a room full of tech whizzes, Bond finds the key: the gibberish sometimes kinda spells out the name of a tube station, which, when entered into the system, decrypts it. [facepalm] <br /><br />They wanted to make Bond super-badass, super-competent. But both scenes are so ludicrous that they can't bear any weight of examination. The pokey direction forced us to put weight onto them, and the story suffered. Granted, <i>Skyfall</i> made a squillion dollars so this wasn't a lot of suffering, but still. Harvey Jerkwaterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07118848012122050416noreply@blogger.com