Quintessential Jack

by Scott Edwards

  Three legends in one study. Jack Nicholson, John Huston, and Roman Polanski prepare for the wrenching denouement of Chinatown (1974). The project suffered (or perhaps benefited) from friction between writer Robert Towne and director Polanski. Here, we witness some tension between star and director, natural for such a charged scene in such an intense film.

  As Roger Ebert proclaimed in his celebration of Chinatown as one of The Great Movies, “Great actors don’t follow rules, they illustrate them.” He summed up the character’s importance by saying that Gittes “stepped into Bogart’s shoes as a man attractive to audiences because he suggests both comfort and danger. Men see him as a pal; wise women find weary experience more attractive than untrained lust.”12

  He gives his character the kind of unparalleled range that helps make J.J. Gittes real and bring his story to life. Pretending to be a concerned son checking out a retirement home, Gittes is smarmy and disarming, hoping that the facility’s staff looks out for Dad. The same Gittes is later charming in his flirtation with Mrs. Mulwray.

  Ebert called Gittes “a nice, sad man.”13 And Jake only becomes alive when he cares about someone. He cares about Evelyn and he cares about her case, also something differing from his standard uninvolved manner. He is now a real person, perhaps for the first time since whatever took him from the D.A.’s office and did away with his former love. As a personality, J.J. Gittes was destroyed, with Nicholson perfectly setting up a jokester and P.I. hack to provide the later contrast to this man who reemerges because of an enigmatic woman and her strange mystery.

  This is much more than being interested in the woman and intrigued by her case. He actually becomes a human being because of it, living and acting and thinking instead of merely sleepwalking through an empty existence. Jake looks fresh and innocent after making love with Evelyn for the first time, exposing yet another aspect of the character. When he comes to life through his involvement with Mulwray, Gittes becomes an authentic detective, likely for the first time since he left the district attorney’s. He invests energy to uncover truths, using his wits to break through barriers and delve into the story behind the mystery.

  Actor Ed Nelson, who appeared in The Cry Baby Killer, told me, “Yeah, Chinatown … he was wonderful. It didn’t surprise me. There’s a lot of keys that he followed to make these [acting] choices. The actor knows the lines, but the character doesn’t. Now that’s a subtle thing, but it’s important. Kazan said the art of shooting films isn’t the dialogue, it’s the reactions.”14

  There exists the possibility that Nicholson based something in his portrayal on an admiration for antihero actor Jean-Paul Belmondo, best known for Breathless, whom Jack often discussed during the filming of Back Door to Hell, perhaps in the wish to “craft a persona like Belmondo’s dapper, alienated scoundrel of a man.”15

  Unlike in A Few Good Men, Nicholson’s character here demands the truth of Dunaway, slapping her to loosen away a truth that he cannot handle. The mother-sister revelation was given additional depth when a reporter uncovered the hidden truth in Nicholson’s own life by informing the actor that the woman he believed to be his sister his entire life was in fact his mother, while his grandmother had been representing herself as his mother due to the mores of the time.

  Noah Cross (John Huston) inhabits evil when he attempts to take his daughter Evelyn and his other daughter—by Evelyn—simply because he could. Cross carries himself throughout the film with assurance, which here escalates to a sick confidence. This sense of entitlement forces a chain of events that leave the daughter-mother dead and the remaining granddaughterdaughter as an assumed possession. The creepiest part is the way Huston envelopes Evelyn and Katherine in the car. He is the full embodiment of what was hinted at by Peter Lorre in M.

  Bakalyan, who played Loach (the cop who shot Evelyn in the final scene), knew what would happen yet didn’t know the type of horror to expect. “I tell you the special effects makeup was unbelievable. I had no idea what she was going to look like,” adding to the dread of its discovery, as Jake looks at her and her eye is blown out. “They took the eggshell, the inside liner of an egg … then they put the blood and all the other stuff there. Unbelievable. It gave me a strange feeling, I must say. It helps the actor when they do that because you’re really responding to that.”16

  That final scene “took one or two nights to shoot in the streets of Chinatown in Los Angeles, on Spring Street,” recalled Hong. “As I remember, Polanski tried many ways of ending the scene. It was very important to the whole movie, that ending scene. At times, tempers began to flare.”17

  Producer Robert Evans recalled the deep dispute about the film’s ending between Polanski and Towne. The writer had Jake rescuing Evelyn and her sister-daughter. “Roman saw it another way, an evil way, the unexpected.” Polanski called his violent and tragic ending “memorable” while Towne countered with “demented … ruinous … immoral.” Towne derisively referred to Polanski’s vision as “the tunnel at the end of the light” and attributed it to the director’s own personal tragedy of losing his wife and unborn child at the hands of the Manson Family. “‘Roman’s argument was: ‘That’s life…. Beautiful blondes die in Los Angeles. Sharon [Tate] had.’ He didn’t say that but that’s what he felt.”18

  The ending still shocks and pummels the emotions. Nicholson’s character is believable, a man left empty, cracked open to release his life’s essence like the diverted water itself. Chinatown leaves the viewer exhausted, feeling just a little of what J.J. Gittes must feel. Lou Escobar and Jake’s partners are tender with this damaged soul, but what consolation can there be for this sort of replay of whatever it was that broke him the first time? What solace can there be that these things can’t matter as much because it’s Chinatown?

  This is where it is better not to act and much better not to know, according to Michael Eaton in the British Film Institute’s study of the film. Towne called it “the futility of good intentions,” because if you do attempt to act, action will result in tragic, unforeseen consequences.19

  * * *

  Nicholson’s virtuoso performance, the embodiment of a man defeated and then reborn, only to be destroyed, is as far from his comedic turn in Mike Nichols’ The Fortune as can be found.

  The perhaps ironically named Oscar is the dimwitted brother of Warren Beatty’s Nicky, approaching a Dumb and Dumber caricature in spots, while sporting frizzed-up hair that’s part Larry Fine and part Art Garfunkel. Beatty plays a scheming, fast-talking Bud Abbott–type in what’s called a comedy more because of the necessity to assign a genre as a mere technicality than through any earned merit.

  It’s a farce that’s supposed to harken back to 1930s classic comedy teams, about avoiding a Mann Act charge (surely comedy gold). Married man Nicky (Beatty) persuades brother Oscar to marry the underage Freddie, wonderfully played by Stockard Channing—all layered with an additional scheme to snatch her daddy’s fortune.

  Not until the second time watching this movie did I realize that Nicholson was impersonating pal Bruce Dern throughout, thus enhancing its enjoyment greatly. Nicholson’s voice, expressions and gestures capture the man with whom he shares several film credits, particularly in a scene about buying a “mouse bed” (tampon) and talking about his character’s mother. When I asked Dern what he thought of Nicholson playing him for the entire movie, he had not even been aware of it, replying, “I never saw it. That was with Warren Beatty?” After my endorsement of Nicholson’s hilarious lampooning of his speech patterns and mannerisms, Dern proclaimed, “He’s got Bruce Dern privileges.”20

  Nicholson uses an eye-popped focus, open mouth and jutted upper teeth to create Oscar. He’s at his most hilarious in a breakfast scene in which he tells Beatty about his “foolproof scheme,” expressive and “Dernsie”-like.

  One of his smaller, finer moments is a great reaction close-up shot in bed in which Freddie falls in love with a baby chick, marveling, “It thinks I’m its mother” before crying.

 
For the most part, Bruce—no, Jack—and Warren quarrel and fight and roll around on the ground, more loud and raucous than fun and frolicsome. Beatty is too pushy to be likable, leaving Nicholson with greater empathy. Channing is the winner in this production; her fun, engaging and eminently zany portrayal earned her a Golden Globe nomination for best female acting debut in a motion picture. Small wonder that years later, the actress called it a life-changing project: “Despite the bad rap it got, I think The Fortune is a small gem—and I’m good in it.”21

  Considering the talent—Nichols as director and producer; writer Carole Eastman; actors Beatty, Nicholson, Channing, Dub Taylor, Christopher Guest and Scatman Crothers—no fortune was made on this picture (in an artistic or financial sense), which tellingly was not available for viewing until a 2015 limited release.

  In this mostly laugh-free comedy, there is one strong sustained scene, with the brothers attempting to toss Freddie off a bridge to her death inside a trunk, after getting caught up in a traffic jam along the way.

  Nothing, however, could save this bungled opportunity of a movie. The Fortune simply is not screwy enough to qualify as a screwball comedy, nor ballsy enough to push any limits. Beatty and Nicholson may be friends and six years later successfully collaborated on Reds, but a comedy duo they are not. Perhaps Dustin Hoffman might fare better…

  * * *

  Nicholson advanced immeasurably as hood Charley Partanna in the dark comedy Prizzi’s Honor. This time he was directed by Chinatown co-star John Huston and played opposite Huston’s daughter Anjelica, whose then-current relationship with Nicholson provides a juicy subtext. In Watch Me: A Memoir, Anjelica revealed, “Jack hadn’t hitherto understood that Prizzi’s Honor was a comedy … until Dad suggested that perhaps he wear a toupee as the main character, which Jack confided he had no intention of doing.”22

  In this film, Nicholson’s range is on display. His broad mannerisms and physical embellishments enliven the role without overtaking it. He wins by pushing the character instead of overtly pushing the comedy, allowing situation and exaggerated conflicts to create the humor and the humanity. Nicholson can be the hit man and the romantic; plays confused and in-command; romps and swings and bounces Kathleen Turner before conjugating with Anjelica “on the Oriental, with all the lights on” as her real-life father directs the proceedings.

  Turner valued the freedom to trust her instincts while working with Nicholson, to commit to her choices without worrying about the other actor. “All I had to do was my role [because] Jack is one of the best actors I’ve ever worked with.” She pointed out that though Huston was ill, on full-time oxygen, the director “wasn’t mentally diminished in any way. His personality and his mind, his decision-making was as powerful as ever.” Huston’s frailty let the actors come up with ideas and block out scenes, saying “Work up something and then show it to me.”23

  Yet subtlety counts. Charley sits silent and motionless in a meeting with the Family, conveying a change of heart as he questions “the system” when faced with the prospects of kidnapping a child.

  Partanna was an expansion upon and update of Nicholson’s uncredited role as Gino, a St. Valentine’s Day Massacre hit man. Like Charley, Gino is a pro, loading his garlic-dipped bullets into his Tommy Gun. The added ingredient is not for flavor, but a backup “so you die of the blood poison.” This could very well be the guy in Studs Lonigan a bit down the line, with Weary Reilly hardened by his jail time and trading his earlier juvenile delinquent gang for a real one to become a professional who loves his work a little too much, and three decades later becoming the twisted danger known as Francis Costello in The Departed.

  * * *

  Private eyes develop an immunity to “the life” and shut off all feeling, too. The J.J. Gittes of Chinatown returns as another, more slight and more detached J.J. Gittes 16 years later in the letdown of a sequel called The Two Jakes.

  Watching the two films back to back, it almost seems as if Nicholson is not playing Jake in the latter film, but rather a lighter, almost rom-com figure. In contrast, Perry Lopez’s Lou Escobar is the same guy.

  Film acting scholar Dennis Bingham called the film a sad failure sunk by the “confusion of middle-aged male fantasy with frankness about middle age,” and blamed the sequel’s weakness to Nicholson’s having “lost his level of irony and his Brechtian edge.”24

  Nicholson attributed the smoothening of Gittes’ character to America’s collective World War II experience, labeling the earlier incarnation “full of piss and vinegar” and now “a little more laid-back…. He watches people being immoral all day … he doesn’t believe marriage is an act of God, and he thinks he’s helping people.”25

  James Hong reprised his role as Evelyn Mulwray’s butler in The Two Jakes (1990), the Nicholson-directed sequel to Chinatown (1974). Hong explained, “I played the scene with Jack as though I was very happy to meet someone from the past; however, I think you caught the tension beneath the warm feeling.”

  James Hong reprised his role as Evelyn Mulwray’s butler, Kahn. In Chinatown, he was very faithful to the Faye Dunaway character and treated Gittes “as someone who would harm the family I served.” In the sequel, “I played the scene with Jack as though I was very happy to meet someone from the past; however, I think you caught the tension beneath the warm feeling. I can say this is one of Jack’s favorite scenes in The Two Jakes.”26

  Gittes’ first sign of life is his reaction to hearing the name Katherine Mulwray (Evelyn’s daughter and sister) on a wireless recording. Nicholson does grow into the character as the film unfolds, as if needing to catch up to the past in order to become himself. The question remains whether this is intentional to the circumstance portrayed, with Jake requiring the Mulwray connection to garner any kind of emotional involvement, or whether this is simply a product of a less intense portrayal matching the inconsequential material. It could also be a function of the production’s notorious troubles and Nicholson’s overlapping responsibilities as actor and director.

  Western Costume Company is famous for its wardrobe work, including providing the reproduction period pants worn by Nicholson’s character Jake Gittes in The Two Jakes (author’s collection).

  The duel between Nicholson and co-star Harvey Keitel (earlier paired in The Border) provides a rare element of interest, with Nicholson convincingly playing the outclassed and the outsmarted. He gets into the character more deeply after being nearly blown up, suggesting that the messed, disheveled appearance and resulting injury were necessary to push him into a more engaged mode—a sort of character’s muscle memory triggered by a dramatic, violent act that’s associated with his knifed-nose trauma in Chinatown.

  Keitel said the two rehearsed a lot. “We started by poring over the script together, by doing little improvisations together,” for about three weeks prior to shooting, and that “it was a pleasure to work with another actor in this manner.”27

  Nicholson does have a funny sequence, one that relates to the effects of the passage of time since the first film, during a sexual encounter with Madeleine Stowe in Gittes’ office. Jack denies his star glamour by humorously portraying vulnerability when he gets worn out through the lengthy undressing and coupling process, finally telling her to “take the rest of that goddamn thing off” and instructing her to get on her knees and raise her ass in the air.

  His most rewarding scenes in the sequel do cover a broad range of characterization. Nicholson is explosive and intense when he flashes back to Evelyn Mulwray’s shooting by Detective Loach and then returns to his current encounter with Loach’s son. This culminates in Gittes pushing his barrel into Loach Jr.’s mouth and scathingly commanding the cop to “suck it.”

  In sharp contrast, Gittes tends to Evelyn’s now adult daughter Katherine Mulwray (played by Meg Tilly) with sweetness and concern, almost like a father to a daughter in a protective and caring manner.

  Later, we see a nice actor’s courtship between Jack and Keitel (the other Jake), with the
more celebrated veteran generously allowing his co-star to enjoy the greater dramatic turn. In the narrative set-up, there’s a smart twist on how the detective usually shows compromising photos to his client, which inevitably leads to tears or some other histrionics. Here, the detective Jake Gittes returns X-rays to the client Jake Berman to let the realtor hide the fact that he is terminally ill. Now Berman’s wife can collect on his insurance. All Berman needs to do is die accidentally on purpose.

  Nicholson reacts to Keitel’s tearful exposition, tamping his own part down as he watches the younger Jake’s suicide in close-up, accomplished by lighting a cigarette in a highly gaseous environment during an earthquake on an oil-rich housing development.

  Nicholson ends the film by encapsulating the two movies’ journeys through tragedy and loss, age and loneliness, and the regrets over a meaningless career. His career’s only flashes of positivity have been helping Jake Berman and Katherine Mulwray. Kitty had asked him if the past ever goes away, but he responds only by pushing her away, in the guise of the learned elder and while looking appropriately weary. He subsequently answers the question to himself, imparting the message of the movie, and the two-part story, that the past itself never does go away.