Director Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard (1950) and Roman Polanski’s Chinatown (1974) are both Hollywood classics with strong film noir elements. Both are set in Los Angeles (or, more narrowly for Sunset Boulevard, Hollywood), and both contrast a visual love for the city with a dark disdain for the corruption beneath its glamorous facade.
Sunset Boulevard begins in classic noir style. A black-and-white Paramount Pictures logo is superimposed against a sidewalk. The camera pulls back to reveal the street name “Sunset Blvd.” stenciled on the curb in glowing white block letters. The camera continues to pull back, showing the title credits in the same glowing white type, superimposed at an angle against the street. Finally, the camera pans up to reveal a street scene in the 10000 block of Sunset Boulevard, with palm trees in silhouette against a foggy dawn sky. Police cars and motorcycles rush toward the camera, down the street, then turn into a driveway. Photographers and cops run toward a pool, where a man’s body is floating. Underwater, the camera looks up at the man. “The poor dope,” the narrator explains. “He always wanted a pool.”
Chinatown begins with a touch of noir. A Paramount Pictures logo and title credits are superimposed against a monochromatic sepia-brown background. However, Chinatown is a wider film, literally and metaphorically, than Sunset Boulevard. Chinatown is shot in Technicolor, in a widescreen Panavision format with a 2.35:1 aspect ratio. Sunset Boulevard, by contrast, is shot in black and white with a traditional 1.37:1 format. While Sunset Boulevard deals with personal corruption in a Hollywood where “It’s the pictures that got small” after characters began to talk, Chinatown’s plot involves a wider political corruption in a Los Angeles that was transformed by power that brought water and wealth to a desert city.
Chinatown grants a few nods to Hollywood. Black-and-white photographs of movie stars can be seen (out of focus, at least) on the walls of private investigator Jake Gittes’ office. Jake finds a “Screen Actors” card with other ID cards after he discovers the body of Ida Sessions, an actress who pretended to be the wife of Hollis Mulwray, the chief engineer of the Department of Water and Power. Jake’s barber is across the street from a theater that is screening a “Fred Mac Murray” movie. Sunset Boulevard briefly puts Norma Desmond’s Hollywood delusions in the context of a wider Southern California source of wealth. “I’m rich,” Norma explains on New Year’s Eve to Joe Gillis, the Dayton, Ohio, copy editor turned B-movie Hollywood screenwriter. “I own three blocks downtown. I have oil in Bakersfield—pumping, pumping, pumping.”
Even though Chinatown is shot in Technicolor, much of its Los Angeles is pictured in monochromatic beiges and browns, especially in interior settings such as the offices of J.L. Gittes & Associates or Hollis Mulwray’s office at the Department of Water and Power.
Jake and other characters dress in various shades of white, gray, black, brown, and beige. Jake, however, stands out from the government bureaucrats and cops such as Lt. Lou Escobar, his former Chinatown partner. While their suits are usually dark and relatively plain, Jake’s jackets, shirts, ties, and handkerchiefs have bold, contrasting (but still monochromatic) patterns.
While Chinatown’s settings are mostly monochromatic, pure red, green, and blue tones appear at times. Evelyn Mulwray (the real Mrs. Mulwray) dresses in off-white, beige, or gray (or black, when she is in mourning after the death of her husband). However, she also always wears bright red lipstick. The lipstick color, nearly blood red, is strongly echoed when she meets Jake at The Brown Derby. Red pervades the room. It’s the color of the flowers on the table, the insignia on the waiter’s jacket, the leather booths, and even the windows. Green stands out in scenes representing the city’s power. For example, the City Council chambers, where Hollis Mulwray rejects Mayor Bagby’s proposed Alto Vallejo dam, is a setting with a mix of earth and green tones. The Mulwray mansion has a lush green lawn, in front and back—even though Los Angeles is supposedly in a drought, and even though, as the Mulwrays’ gardener observes, a saltwater pond is “bad for grass” (which Jake hears as “bad for glass”). Blue represents water. Jake follows Hollis Mulwray from a parched riverbed to a cliff at the beach, where the ocean’s vast blue contrasts with the city’s brown and gray tones. Blue is the color of the Albacore Club, owned by Noah Cross, Evelyn’s estranged father and Hollis Mulwray’s former business partner. The Albacore Club’s blue logo later shows up in a quilt made by Emma Dill and other ladies at the Mar Vista Inn, where the elderly patients are (according to Los Angeles County records, at least) the new owners of vast land holdings in the northwest San Fernando Valley. Suggesting that even the city’s press may be beholden to water interests, blue shows up in the masthead of the Los Angeles Post-Record (Jake’s reading material of choice—next to the Racing Record).
Sunset Boulevard may be filmed in black and white, but its characters are portrayed in scenes with contrasting shades of dark and light, as well as contrasting acting styles. Norma expresses herself with the melodramatic eye and facial movements and hand gestures (often pulling her fingers into a claw-like clench) that made her “the greatest” star of the silent-film era, while Joe Gillis and his writing partner Betty Schaefer, a reader at Paramount, speak and act in an understated, natural manner. On New Year’s Eve, after Norma has revealed that she’s “Mad about the Boy,” thrusting a gift of a gold cigarette case into his hands, Joe storms out of her mansion into the damp darkness of a heavy winter downpour. He escapes to a bright, crowded, casually comfortable party thrown by his Hollywood friend Artie Green, who is engaged to Betty (who grabs Joe for some “shop talk,” then play-acts a love scene with him in Artie’s bathroom).
In both Sunset Boulevard and Chinatown, directors are cast as characters who control the fates of the main characters. In Sunset Boulevard, silent-film director Eric von Stroheim is cast as Max von Meyerling, the butler who protects Norma Desmond (and her delusions) from intrusion by the outside world. Cecil B. DeMille plays himself. At a soundstage on the Paramount lot, he orders a stagehand to turn a spotlight away from Norma (sending away the studio old-timers who flocked to her as she returned to Paramount to visit DeMille). However, DeMille cannot bring himself to tell Norma what he thinks of her Salome script, feeding her delusion that she will be making a comeback (or “a return,” as she insists) to the screen. In Chinatown, John Huston is cast as Noah Cross, whose personal and political corruption drives the film’s plot. At his island ranch, Cross meets with Jake. Cross’ butler serves Jake a tuna dinner; the camera shows the glazed eyes of the fish. “I believe they should be served with the head,” Cross says, grabbing his bifocals. The butler then serves Cross his dinner, with the head of the fish removed. Director Polanski is too small a man to be a typical goon, but he casts himself as a “Man with Knife” in a nighttime scene at the Oak Pass Reservoir. He tells Jake he’s a “very nosey fellow,” then slices his nose. “Next time you lose the whole thing.”
In successive scenes toward the end of Sunset Boulevard, Wilder uses darkness and light as characters’ truths are revealed. By now, Joe is escaping from Norma’s mansion (in particular, “the room of the husband—or of the husbands,” as Max had explained) to collaborate on a screenplay with Betty at her Paramount office. Joe drives back to Norma’s mansion to find Max waiting in a darkened garage, where Max reveals he was once a great director who discovered Norma and “made her a star.” To dramatic music, Max also reveals, “I was her first husband.” In the next scene, Norma notices a script in Joe’s coat pocket, clutches it, but keeping it an arm’s length away. She rushes to a bright lamp (and her reading glasses) in her bedroom. Confirming Norma’s suspicion that Joe has been spending time with another woman, the script reads:
“UNTITLED LOVE STORY
By
JOSEPH C. GILLIS and BETTY SCHAEFER”
Back at the Paramount lot, on a softly lit balcony outside her office, Betty reveals that she’s no longer in love with Artie Green. “What happened?” Joe asks. “You did,” Betty replies. They embrace and kiss. In the next scene, Joe is seen from overhead as he rushes in the gate at Norma’s mansion, and up the dark staircase to “that peculiar prison of mine.” Joe turns on the light in his bedroom. He hears Norma dialing her phone. She’s calling Betty to tell her the truth about Joe and “men of his sort.” Norma is in bed on her side, in a black nightgown, talking on a white phone. Betty is standing, wearing a white robe, talking on a black phone. Joe hears Norma, walks in shadows to her bed, grabs the phone, and tells Betty it would be a “better idea if she came over and saw it for yourself. The address is 10086 Sunset Blvd.”
Pivotal truths are revealed in a scene in Chinatown. At a home on Canyon Drive, Jake confronts Evelyn, unfolding from a white handkerchief a pair of eyeglasses found in the saltwater pond in the backyard of her mansion. Jake, a cigarette in his mouth thrusting at Evelyn, demands to know the truth about Katherine, the young woman he earlier photographed with Hollis Mulwray. “She’s my sister,” Evelyn says. He slaps her. “She’s my daughter.” He strikes at her again. Finally, she breaks down. “She’s my sister and my daughter!” Later, offhandedly, Evelyn says the eyeglasses “don’t belong to Hollis. ... He didn’t wear bifocals.”
Chinatown and Sunset Boulevard both hurtle their characters to dark fates at the end.
In Chinatown, Jake confronts Noah Cross at the Mulwray mansion. “You killed Hollis Mulwray,” he says, showing him the bifocals. In the next scene, Cross and his hired goon Mulvihill have taken Jake to Chinatown. Neon lights punctuate the dark, but crowded street. Katherine and Evelyn are headed for a car. Cross approaches Katherine. Evelyn tries to push him away. Her gun appears. She fires, but only grazes her father’s arm. She drives off, Katherine at her side. Shots are fired. The car stops. Evelyn is dead. Katherine is screaming. Cross shields Katherine’s eyes, then pulls her from the car. “Take him home!” Escobar tells Jake’s associates. “Forget it Jake,” his associate Walsh says, “it’s Chinatown.” The camera pans up to a wide shot of the Chinatown street, now mostly in darkness. The end credits show.
In Sunset Boulevard, Betty has arrived at Norma’s mansion. The home is like a shrine to Norma, photos of her on every table and nearly every wall. “Look sweetie, be practical,” Joe tells Betty, “I’ve got a good deal here.” Joe leads her to the gate, then turns on a switch. “Here’s the pool,” he says, its water brightly lit from below. Joe walks up the stairs, Norma waiting at the top. “Thank you, darling. Thank you, Joe,” she says. She checks her face in the mirror as Joe enters his room and packs his belongings. She runs to her room, and brings back a gun. Joe now is talking with his hands, his face, and his eyes. “Goodbye, Norma.” He walks down the stairs, out the door, as Norma follows. She shoots him. He stumbles toward the brightly lit pool.
Later, newspapermen (and gossip columnist Hedda Hopper), cops, and newsreel cameramen have swarmed Norma’s mansion. Norma believes the cameras are for Salome. “Tell Mr. DeMille I’ll be on the set at once.” In the end, Max is directing Norma’s final scene. She walks slowly down the staircase. Cops and photographers stand still on the stairs, but turn as she passes. She raises her arms, then pauses. She thanks the crew. It’s “just us. And the cameras. And those wonderful people out there in the dark,” she says, looking directly at the audience, as if there is no screen. “All right, Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my close-up.” She steps slowly, dramatically toward the camera, her claw-like hands reaching forward. But she doesn’t get her close-up. Her face blurs, the screen fades to black, and the end credits show.
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