Here’s what I said last time I watched this.
There is a lovely, quiet moment in Chinatown in which Gittes has more or less solved the mystery, asserted his masculinity against the hoodlums, and even won the girl, but as he lies in bed smoking a postcoital cigarette, he remains unsatisfied. Evelyn takes a mysterious, late-night phone call, and Gittes continues to delve. And although Evelyn begs Gittes not to ask any more questions, to simply wait for her to return, he capitulates to his instinctual curiosity, following the mystery — even forcing it — to its fatal conclusion.
What struck me on this viewing is that it is Gittes’ role as a (not so) private eye that actually brings this conclusion about. This is to say that Polanski’s neo-noir is not about pursuing the truth, even if it means accepting tragic consequences. Rather, it is Gittes’ noseyness, his relentless pursuit, that causes these tragic consequences to fall into place. It is not so much the femme fatale’s act of concealment that proves her undoing as it is the hero’s gaze, now fully implicated and a party to her tragedy. Back in Chinatown, Jake had “thought I was keeping someone from being hurt and actually I ended up making sure they were hurt.” Here again, his persistent looking (through a flawed iris of his own) enacts the presumably similar consequences.
by Leo Goldsmith | Source: Paramount Pictures DVD
06 Feb 2007 12:51 PM | Submit Comment
