Comparing The Long Goodbye And Roman Polanski's Chinatown

     Roman Polanski's 1974 film, 'Chinatown', revolutionized the film noir genre. Aside from the absense of voice-over, the film shares all the same characteristics with earlier noirs. That is, of course, except for the fact that ?Chinatown? is

Chinatown is based on Roman Polanski’s lifeworks. Polanski’s goal is to emphasizes the meaning of how cinematography is made, and how it inspires by understanding the concept of setting, lighting, and how the image is captured. This film was released in 1974 by director of Roman Polanski to focus on private investigator J.J. Gittes, played by Jack Nicholson to investigate the elements behind the truth. Polanski’s goal is to emphasize the audience to give an ominous feeling of the main character, J.J. Gittes and his point of view by showing in color instead of black and white pictures. Due to these reasons, Polanski wanted to use Panavision to give a flawed vision about the past, which the story is set in the years of 1937. Polanski states, “a traditional detective story with a new, modern shape” for Paramount picture. (1) This paper focuses on the film Chinatown which is neo-noir, not only because of the setting, but the concept of cinematography that connects duplicates occurrences together that describe three categories: background of the cinematographer, point of view of the main character, and the interpretation of the ending scenes.

The star-studded romantic comedy Midnight in Paris is one of Woody Allen’s most recent films which he did both, wrote and directed. It is a film about a man named Gil (Owen Wilson) who travels to Paris with his fiancée’s parents in order to expand his imagination and he ends up embarking on a journey to the 1920s while walking the streets of Paris at night. Not only is this film engaging and witty, but it also manages to provide both, overt and covert examples of postmodernism in film. By analyzing Woody Allen’s 2011film Midnight in Paris, we can identify the presence of many underlying motifs in both the narrative and the characterization of the film when using some of Frederic Jameson and Jean Baudrillard’s concepts on postmodernism.

Throughout the term I have begun experiencing movies in a different way. The class has taken ideas of cinematography, theory, and film history and practically applied it to physically watching movies. By breaking down scenes and movies as a whole, the way I look at films in general has developed. A reflection on two of the films from this term, Casablanca (Curtiz, 1942) and North by Northwest (Hitchcock, 1959) will carry the bulk of the essay. Though, I will also be discussing how this class changed the way I saw a movie just a few weeks ago. Casablanca’s script and acting are of particular caliber, and North by Northwest unfortunately does not deliver with the dialogue and casting of lead actor Cary Grant. Though, overall, they both

Imagine a story that has everything- cheating spouses, secret affiliations, deception, action, lies, and a pretty girl or two on top of it all. Chinatown is the name of this story, and it exists in the form of a Film Noir movie. Chinatown is a film from 1974, directed by Roman Polanski and written by Robert Towne. Chinatown is a story about truth and misinformation, with heavy themes of mystery and ultimately tragedy. With Jack Nicholson as Detective J.J. Gittes and Faye Dunaway as Evelyn Mulwray starring in the film the characters in Chinatown are especially memorable. As a whole, Chinatown is a prime example of a movie from the Film Noir genre and is proven to be a well-liked example of it.

Film Noir, a term coined by the French to describe a style of film characterized by dark themes, storylines, and visuals, has been influencing cinematic industries since the 1940’s. With roots in German expressionistic films and Italian postwar documentaries, film noir has made its way into American film as well, particularly identified in mob and crime pictures. However, such settings are not exclusive to American film noir. One noteworthy example is Billy Wilder’s film Sunset Boulevard, which follows the foreboding tale of Joe Gillis, the desperate-for-success protagonist, who finds himself in the fatal grips of the disillusioned femme fatale Norma Desmond. Not only does the storyline’s heavy subject matter and typical character

Chinatown, directed by Roman Polanski, was a private-eye film released in 1974. Private investigator J.J. Gittes investigates what looks to be a classic case of adultery, but he quickly uncovers much more than just broken wedding vows. Throughout the film, Gittes is captured by the camera such that only his face is in the scene, thus allowing the audience to observe details that may otherwise be overlooked. In Chinatown, directed by Roman Polanski, the main character J.J. Gittes is frequently shot with close-up shots to portray his emotions, his heightened senses, and his reasoning process to demonstrate his investigative process and thus build up suspense in a scene.

Film Noir was a result of it's time - The war had just ended and It was time where prohibition had influenced an abundance in crime and corruption. Film noir serves to highlight the darkest aspects of human beings. ‘Society is making the machinery of it's own destruction.

Another element of the gangster genre that is seen in Wellman’s film is the rise and fall trajectory of the central gangster protagonist. In order to avoid glamorizing the life of a gangster and his perverted American Dream, his crimes must be punished. This is a central element to any gangster film created under the auspices of the production code. To obey the rules and regulation of the PCA, any gangster in film will live “a short but glamorous life..that reaffirms the audience’s knowledge that in Hollywood, lawlessness cannot go unpunished” (Køhlert 857). The era under the PCA shaped the narrative of the gangster genre to include the death of essentially every gangster protagonist. In one of the most powerful scenes of the film, after Tom has taken revenge on the rival members, he stumbles, shot, clutching his chest into the raining streets and gutter (The Public Enemy). He is alone, isolated by the rain, and likely going to die. This is not a character the audience is supposed to sympathize with, and this is exactly to goal of the gangster genre. After the audience has seen Powers rise through the world of crime starting as a little boy

While classic film noir is characterized by high compositional tension, or low lit black and white cinematography, Polanski managed to infuse Chinatown with that sense of corruption and nihilism so prevalent in noir in bright Southern California despite employing a photographic element previously thought antithetical to film noir style: color film stock. The dominant colors of Chinatown are brown, gray, and black, which can be seen as an indication of the film’s allusion to the noir tradition of black-and-white. The various hues of brown and gold can be seen throughout the film, from clothing to homes

West Side Story is a musical that includes gang violence and full-hearted relationships Between Tony, the ex leader of the Jets and Maria, the leader of the Sharks sister. It all takes place in Verona, a township in New Jersey. The movie starts with an Ariel view of the city shifting from site to site showing off of the pleasant areas. The movie goes on to show that there is a gang of white boys that call themselves the Jets, the Jets have a rival gang made up of Puerto Rican guys that go by the name of the Sharks. The jets are informed by the police that if they cant get along with the other boys, they will all be taken to jail. Obviously none of them want to go to jail so they come up with an idea for a settlement, a sort of agreement with the other gang. This agreement is a “Brawl” a fair even fist fight between the toughest guys of the two gangs, whoevers gang loses the fight has to leave the area. Tony aka Richard Beymer and Maria aka Natalie Wood are in an unbreakable relationship

Across all noir periods there exists a unifying set of traits that link them all together and at the core of that set is the desire to destabilize and unsettle the audience while also portraying a world in which light and dark are in constant battle. As the 21st century furthers technological advancements in the film industry the boundaries of what-can-be-noir become even more blurred, giving way to what many scholars call the post-modern neo-noir, or postmodern-noir era. A fundamental aspect of postmodernism is a propensity to destabilize the genre’s realistic grounding. Postmodern film noir involves a “fundamental shift in the conception of artistic production in which creativity is no longer conceived in

Directed by Martin Scorsese in the year of 1976, one of the epic movies of late 1970’s movie history, without any doubts is ‘‘Taxi Driver’’. The movie is not only about a Vietnam war veteran who drifts through the dark streets of Scorcese’s New York City, but also it is about his transformation within the terms of how he turns into a ‘‘monster’’ while actually turns into the hero because of his attempts of trying to save a young, 12,5 years old prostitude. While watching, Martin Scorsese’s use of cinematic devices -in order to convey the state of mind - of the protagonists’ the movie let audiance to see with the eyes of the protagonist character, who’s name is Travis Bickle, played by Robert DeNiro. In Taxi Driver, Scorsese utilizes film-noir characteristics and apply to his film in order to convey Travis’ delirious vision of New York. The New York that we see in Taxi Driver is actually what Travis sees. And audience, engage with his loath, disgust, anxiety via this neo-noir approachportrays the protagonist of his movie Taxi Driver ,Travis, as an isolated, insomniac,

Noir (noir means black in French) is a style which was frequently seen in 1940-1950s film mostly consisting of crime, sex and fiction. Modern motion pictures use the same genre, but updated visual, theme and content. Neo-noir, Greek term neo means new, making term new black. Noir movies are very popular among the audiences. Chinatown (1974) directed by Roman Polanski, starring Jack Nicholson (Protagonist) as Jake Gittes, Faye Dunaway (Co-actor) as Eve Mulwray and John Huston (Antagonist) as Noah cross is a successful Academy award winning popular neo-noir movie of 1970s. On the other hand The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2009) directed by Niels Arden Oplev starring Michael Nyqvist (Protagonist) as Mikael Blomkvist, Noomi Rapace (Co-actor) as Lisbeth Salander and Peter Haber (Antagonist) as Martin Vanger, was also a commercial success at the box office. Even though these two neo-noir movies were released 35 years apart, they are parallel in the movie elements, common background history of female character and psychological situation of the main protagonist. The Two movies share common visual element and audio elements like camera focus, the angle of the camera and thrilling soundtrack. In both movies the actress has past abused history being raped and taken advantage of. Protagonist in both movies shares similar behavior and state of mind throughout the scene.

This week's movie is Chinatown by Roman Polanski. This movie in short follows this private investigator J.J. Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson) who is hired by the wife of the chief engineer of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. At first, the person who hires him is a facade to the real wife of the chief engineer. The original intentional for hiring him was to find out if the chief engineer was having an extramarital affairs with someone else; he was not. As time goes on, the plot thickens with the chief engineer mysterious dying from a supposed suicide. Yet, undeterred J.J took it upon himself with the help of the actual chief engineer wife Evelyn Mulwray (Faye Dunaway) to find out who murder the chief engineer and other saddening things related to deceit, corruption, and murder. The actions committed by J.J. are in some ways a heroic in one form and in others the exact opposite where in turn it caused a fiasco of events. Some of the ways the directors show this is through the dramatic terms of close up shots, pans, and crane shots. Chinatown by Roman Polanski uses the dramatic elements of close up shots, pans, and crane shots to show J.J. Jake Gittes as an antihero.