Where to watch Chinatown (1974)

Trivia & production notes

• Robert Evans commissioned Robert Towne to write the Chinatown screenplay for $25,000 after Towne declined a $175,000 offer to adapt The Great Gatsby, believing he couldn't improve on F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel.
• The character of Hollis Mulwray was inspired by William Mulholland, the engineer who built the Los Angeles Aqueduct, though the film's events were set thirty years earlier than the historical events they drew from.
• Robert Towne wrote the screenplay with Jack Nicholson in mind and took Chinatown's title from a conversation with a Hungarian vice cop who worked in Los Angeles's Chinatown and believed police were better off doing nothing there.
• Polanski and Towne disagreed over the ending, with Towne wanting the villain Cross to die and Evelyn to survive, but Polanski insisted on Evelyn's death and wrote the final scene just days before filming it.
• Jane Fonda was strongly considered for Evelyn Mulwray, but Polanski insisted on casting Faye Dunaway instead.
• The cinematographer changed mid-production when Polanski grew frustrated with Stanley Cortez's slow pace and unfamiliarity with Panavision equipment, replacing him with John A. Alonzo after only a handful of scenes were shot.
• Polanski and cinematographer John A. Alonzo communicated in Italian on set because Polanski's English was poor, with Alonzo translating for the crew.
• Polanski appears in a cameo as the gangster who slashes Gittes' nose using a special knife designed to prevent accidentally cutting Jack Nicholson.
• The film uses a subjective viewpoint technique where protagonist J.J. Gittes appears in every scene and the audience experiences events through his perspective, mirroring the approach Francis Coppola used in The Conversation which began shooting eleven months earlier.
• In 1974, shortly after Chinatown's release, Jack Nicholson learned from Time magazine researchers that his biological sister was actually his mother, mirroring the revelation about Evelyn and Katherine in the film.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article Chinatown (1974 film), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Rewritten for StreamShack; errors are ours — tell us about them.