Roman Polanski’s Chinatown (1974) emphasizes that the truth isn’t always what we see. Set in 1930s Los Angeles, this neo-noir film focuses on the city’s unseen seedy underbelly through the point-of-view of private eye J. J. Gittes (Jack Nicholson). Hired to investigate the extramarital affairs of Hollis Mulwray (Darrell Zwerling), Gittes stumbles on a larger conspiracy involving corruption, incest, and the city’s elite.

As the chief engineer for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, Mr. Mulwray had a vision for the city. After Mulwray drowns in a fresh water reservoir, Gittes turns his detective eye to the questionable circumstances of the water man’s death. While investigating the possible murder, Gittes stumbles on a nefarious scheme that involves diverting water from the San Fernando Valley, cheap land, and multi-millionaire Noah Cross (John Huston).

When Gittes has dinner with Cross, he is served fish with its still-attached head and eyes staring up at the P.I. as if to alert him to open his own eyes to what is going on. In an attempt to get county records out of the government office, Gittes fabricates an excuse about not being able to “see” without his glasses and needing a ruler to follow the rows in the land sales ledger. In actuality, he uses the ruler to rip out a page in order to get a clearer picture about how the dirty business is being perpetrated.

Looking at Mrs. Mulwray (Faye Dunaway), Gittes says there is a black spot in her green eyes. She calls it a “flaw,” a blotch which we find out represents the blot on her character due to immorality and unspeakable acts, as well as the mark of evil infesting the world depicted by Chinatown. Learning that Mr. Mulwray’s lungs were filled with sea water, Gittes connects the discovery to Mrs. Mulwray’s pond and finds a pair of glasses there. Gittes assumes that they belong to Mr. Mulwray, but Mrs. Mulwray corrects him and says they belong to her father, Noah Cross. A pair of bifocals, the glasses represent not only Cross’ distorted worldview but also the separate duality of vision and reality.

After her incestuous relationship with Cross is revealed, Mrs. Mulwray attempts to flee to a safe-house in Chinatown with her daughter/sister in tow. Tipped off, Cross and the police are already there and waiting. Determined to save her daughter, Mrs. Mulwray shoots Cross in the arm and tries to drive off. The police then open fire, which results in a bullet through Mrs. Mulwray’s eye. As Cross gets away with their daughter, he covers the eyes of his daughter/granddaughter to shield her from the sight of his daughter/lover’s corpse. This last scene is all the more disturbing through its juxtaposition of polite shielding and hidden immorality. Cross covers his daughter/granddaughter’s eyes, just as he shielded the Los Angeles public from knowledge of his illegal money schemes and illicit relationship.

The film implies that this state of things will continue in perpetuity, that Gittes’ work and the Mulwrays’ lives were for nought, that this film was an exposure of corruption without any solid resolution. The more the the film resonates, the more the viewer wants to pick apart the puzzle, but we must heed the film’s iconic last line, “Forget it, reader. It’s Chinatown.”