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Sunday, January 17, 2016

Winter Movies 2016: Chinatown

I’m heading to the movies to beat the dark days after all the holiday fun, and to wait for the longer days of spring. Our theme for this year’s winter movies is “water wars”, the perfect ending to a year spent researching and thinking about drought here in the San Francisco Bay Area. In each of these movies, the back drop to the drama is water as a scarce commodity. I hope you'll grab a bowl of pop corn and join me!

Chinatown

The first movie is “Chinatown,” which was released in 1974, and won an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay (written by Robert Towne). The movie was shot on location in and around Los Angeles. I first saw the movie while attending college in Southern California.

 
The story opens with J.J. Gittes reporting the unhappy results of a matrimonial investigation to his client. The place is 1937 Los Angeles, and Gittes is a small time private investigator, who was once a police officer in Chinatown. A Mrs. Mulwray hires Gittes to find her husband, Hollis Mulwray, who is the Water Commissioner of Los Angeles. In an unexpected twist, the real Mrs. Mulwray also hires Gittes to investigate her husband, whom she suspects of having an affair. Hollis Mulwray turns up dead (drowned in salt water, yet found in a reservoir), so Gittes services are no longer needed. But Gittes won’t quit, and ends up investigating a bigger mystery, involving the Owens Valley water scandal, a water bond, water dumping, orange groves, L.A. city corruption, and a land grab in the Central Valley. “Chinatown” becomes a euphemism on many levels for “things are not always as they seem”.

I love how the movie captures the look and feel of 1937 Los Angeles – the architecture (let's bring back the California bungalow), the hard-boiled detective (think Raymond Chandler), and the style (from hair and clothing, to cars and decor). I was grateful that I had spent a few minutes going over the Owns Valley timeline before watching the movie again. Although fictionalized, the movie depicts the complexities of the water wars of the early 1900s, and is still relevant 80 years later. Watch the trailer (click “Watch Trailer”): http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071315/ 
 

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