THE SCREEN:
Wesrerbeck, Colin L. Jr.
"service of Christian community" ("News and Views,," Chinamen, are usually left to their own devices. Commonweal, April 26). I wouldn't be...
...Even using a Chinese motif to add an talk, double-crosses, double dealing and double trouble...
...J. J. is Marlowe, Evelyn is Vivian Stearnwood, and Noah Cross (John Huston) is a malevolent version of Vivian's eccentric father...
...ple capable of...
...eye specializing in divorces, to nail her husband...
...When the rich dame who has hired him tries to buy 3. J. off the THE SCREEN case just as Vivian tried to buy off Marlowe, J. J. won't be bought because, like Marlowe, he's upset about being made a chump...
...My sister," Evelyn replies...
...All that of them...
...wants to make between the dregs of society and the John's University, Collegeville) no longer exercise sig- cream might have inspired a good movie...
...Since only half the equation gets into the natives...
...of society also apply at the top...
...Still unconvinced, J. J. slaps her around some Polanski's idea is that all of Los Angeles is a China- more, so she goes back to "My sister," and this starts town...
...The scene ocan ethnic shaggy-dog story, about how the Chinese make curs when J. J. discovers Evelyn trying to skip town love, and this episodic, punch-line-less joke is a preview with the girl he originally exposed her husband for of the coming attraction...
...not unimportant...
...J. J. delivers the has done the job, J. J. happens to be in the middle of punches and Evelyn delivers the lines...
...But Chinanificant influence for change, we are left with few alter- town isn't it...
...But then that believe that and starts slapping her around to get at the Abbott and Costello routine isn't really about baseball truth...
...J. J. knows because he used to work The whole movie is an attempt both to hint that Polanfor the D. A.'s office in Chinatown, where the practice ski is still a serious, original stylist and to make a comwas to look the other way and leave the Chinese to mercial hit no matter how derivative and trendy...
...private decorated in chinoiserie...
...My daughter," Evelyn tries now, changing her either...
...Like wallow in their crime and corruption...
...Who is that girl, J. J. demands to course...
...The skeleton in Chinatown's closet, or rather the skeleton on whose bare bones Polanski and scriptwriter Robert Towne have hung Chinatown's sagging flesh, is THE SMALL SLEEP Hawks' The Big Sleep...
...Father six reels later he does fish out of that pond a piece of John Keane is a man, in Karl Shapiro's words, whose glass which solves the murder he's spent the whole film "bearing is a school of thought,/But he is not funny and investigating...
...When Chinatown isn't quite a shaggy dog story, though, bethe real Evelyn (Faye Dunaway) turns up after J. J. cause it does have a punch line...
...the Chinese subculture contributes is the double talk, In the drab Catholic landscape, a commitment to a as when Evelyn's Chinese gardener observes that the revival of the old forms may be the surest sign of litur- water in her husband's backyard pond is "bad for glass...
...That's right: Who's on first, What's the way is, very much in The Big Sleep's style, imposon second," etc...
...As in Hawks' film, so here, we go all The plot of Roman Polanski's Chinatown is a bit like the way to the end trying to figure out whether the dame that old Abbott and Costello routine "Who's on first...
...tack...
...The film is a 1930s melange of double- sible to follow...
...Rich WASPs, like poor COLIN L. WESTERBECK, JR...
...But J. J. doesn't joke, this movie is not about Chinatown...
...I wouldn't be surprised if Polanski came by this inAt a time when few people even recognize the need sight-an insight, in part, into the attitudes of middlefor liturgical experiment, for an authentic people-center- class cops-when he had to suffer through the investigaed celebration...
...Chinatown is just an inscrutable metaphor here...
...After about ten rounds of Everywhere J. J. turns he finds duplicity, conspiracy and this Evelyn finally tries to have it both ways, which is evil that you just never would have thought white peo- essentially what Polanski has been trying to do too...
...Commonweal: 405...
...the whole cycle over again...
...gical life that one can find...
...town...
...As you may have noticed already, unlike the know...
...exotic touch is straight out of Hawks' film, where the There's also a Doppelganger of sorts, Evelyn, who one murder scene to which Marlowe so often returns is day hires J. J. Gittes (Jack Nicholson), an L.A...
...Frances Cabrini parish, Minneapolis...
...For the reasons I have indi- J. J. smiles at the man's mispronunciation of grass, but cated, that movement should be taken seriously...
...is on the up and up, and the plot we encounter along ("Who's on first...
...Whatever the case, the formulation Polanski the large Midwestern university Newman Centers...
...The greatest threat to liturgical life in the Catho- movie, and we never see how the other half lives, lic Church is not a variety of experiments, but an absence Chinatown is just a pretty, kinky period film...
...J. J. explains that scene where J. J. tries to get the truth out of this ethos several times during the movie, but he never Evelyn, the entire film is a bunch of contradictory imcatches on that these same rules in force at the bottom pressions alternated with outbursts of sex and violence...
...and at a time when the centers for leader- tion of his own wife's murder right there in J. J.'s home ship in liturgy (St...
...Except in one regard, of having an affair with...
Vol. 100 • July 1974 • No. 17
