Cherchez La Femme: Roman Polanski's Chinatown

            Chinatown’s director Roman Polanski has a complicated relationship with Los Angeles. His wife, Sharon Tate, and his unborn daughter were both brutally murdered by devotees of Charles Manson in 1969. According to the coroner’s office, Tate had been stabbed sixteen times, and of those stabbings five “were in and of themselves fatal." Her neck was tied with a long rope to that of her hair stylist, also murdered. Police arrived on the scene to find the word “pig” (ostensibly a reference to the Beatles’ Little Piggies) smeared in her blood on the front door of the house. So, when producer Robert Evans came to Polanksi in London four years later to pitch Chinatown, one would understand his apprehension to return.

            Still, Polanski could not resist an opportunity to cut his teeth on what he called in his autobiography “a potentially first-rate thriller showing how the history and boundaries of L.A. had been fashioned by human greed.” Indeed, this description quite accurately fits Chinatown, but it seems that much of the trademark cynicism that pervades Polanksi’s take on noir is focused on the women of Los Angeles rather than its development. Evelyn Mulwray, for example, could so easily have been the menacing femme fatale Gittes initially suspects of killing her husband (screenwriter Robert Towne preferred Jane Fonda for the character because her looks fit the bill); instead, Polanski insisted on Faye Dunaway and reportedly cultivated her look to resemble memories of his mother. Dunaway’s Evelyn was soft, sophisticated, and left a resounding impression of selflessness unique among Chinatown’s cast of characters. Her angelic looks suggest a shame and victimization due to her incestuous relationship with her father that might have been absent had Towne had his way and casted Jane Fonda. Comparing her with Faye Dunaway almost evokes the leopard from Double Indemnity–not that Fonda’s Evelyn would be predatory but rather a product of her circumstances, someone whose humanity had been partially taken from her by the world she was born into.

Jane Fonda in 1963

            

Faye Dunaway in Chinatown

            After months of squabbling over their artistic differences, Robert Towne and Roman Polanski finally parted ways after a dispute over Chinatown’s final scene. Towne pleaded for a brighter ending without the death of Evelyn. Eager to eschew a melodramatic “adventure story for the kids” and perhaps more eager to express some of the darkness he felt in LA, Polanski instead forced him to redraft the scene:

"…Towne and I couldn't agree on an ending. Towne wanted the evil tycoon to die and his daughter, Evelyn, to live. He wanted a happy ending; all would turn out okay for her after a short spell in jail. I knew that if Chinatown was to be special, not just another thriller where the good guys triumph in the final reel, Evelyn had to die."

Ultimately, it seems Polanski was right. The tragic end is haunting and infuriating, driving home the theme of futility that cements Towne’s Chinatown as a microcosm of Los Angeles. Maybe there is some bias to account for since the film was so universally well received, but there must be more emotion evoked by “Forget it, Jake, it’s Chinatown” than “We did it, Jake, it’s Chinatown!” Perhaps his director’s eye saw this, or perhaps Roman Polanski was troubled at the thought that his return to Los Angeles four years after the death of his wife would have a happy ending. Robert Towne is of the second persuasion; he sums up Polanski’s last scene like this: “That's life. Beautiful blondes die in Los Angeles. Sharon had.”

Our Femme Fatale the Queen of the Angels

Los Angeles began as the Spanish settlement El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles. Upon American acquisition, Our Lady the Queen of the Angels was the target destination of a morally pure city for aryan Protestants. But as thousands of immigrants trekked west across the country, our city developed into the melting pot of America. Los Angeles was meant to be our city, open to the people seeking to achieve the American Dream.

For the next thirty years, that's exactly what LA was. This was no land of luck, this was the Land of Opportunity, where a mere thought can produce a harvest of oranges, and a simple appearance at the hottest bar would land you a golden star on your door.

The angelic portrayal of Los Angeles was not meant to be. The chaos that ensued the Great Depression left many at loss and many more pouring in from the Dust Bowl. There were new tensions, towards the Oakies, towards the government, and towards the city itself. The labyrinth layout of Los Angeles no longer signified LA's freedom, but rather its disorganization and lawlessness.

Buntin pronounces that "Los Angeles invariably proves to be a femme fatale," who loves you then leaves you with a bullet in your chest and a murder pinned to your back. In the way that Faye was the embodiment of Hollywood to West, Phyllis is the incarnation of the 1930's noir Los Angeles to Cain. Her seductive facade hiding her sociopathic detachment is the booster's temptations, luring people to the city, and the the corruption of the police, holding the front of protection while running the organized crime. Her native Californian blood runs deep within the society of the time, and her femme fatale character brings disaster to Huff and Angelenos alike.

People defined the representation of Los Angeles, and in turn, Los Angeles defined a representation of its people.

Identity and Inauthenticity in The Day of the Locust

Nathanael West is fascinated by the fake. In The Day of the Locust, West continually explores the false reality that seems to permeate his Los Angeles.  Early in the novel, West uses description of the architectural styles of the Hollywood Hills to depict L.A. in its most artificial. 

"Only dynamite would be of any use against the Mexican ranch houses, Samoan huts, Mediterranean villas, Egyptian and Japanese temples, Swiss chalets, Tudor cottages, and every possible combination of these styles that lined the slopes of the canyon. When he noticed that they were all of plaster, lath and paper, he was charitable and blamed their shape on the materials used." (West 61).

Los Angeles Architecture in West's eyes is synonymous with a clumsy mishmash of structures from a set designer's dream. The buildings are anything but authentic, and West's emphasis here suggests that the occupants of such houses, like the "plaster, lath and paper" from which their homes are built, "know now law, not even that of gravity." His implication is that Angelenos are mostly aloof, airy, and mocked-up. Unlike the presumably grounded occupants of the "[s]teel, stone, and brick" houses classically associated with the older Eastern cities of the United States, West implies that those who build and inhabit homes like the "miniature Rhine castle" of Los Angeles are woefully insincere to others and to themselves (West 61). Hackett, an East Coast transplant, is specially equipped to notice these details for the reader.

But West's fascination with inauthenticity goes beyond the physical elements of his scenes. Faye Greener, beautiful but ultimately devoid of any great complexity, is a key expression of West's interest in false identity. Tod, who informs the novel's primary perspective, looks down on Faye as both an object and as prey. His desire to exert control over Faye by raping her suggests Tod (a member of the East Coast establishment) believes there is something heinously wrong with the inauthentic way in which Faye behaves. And yet, Faye represents the "ultimate achievement" for almost every character in the novel: they want to sleep with her, and yet they seem to hate Faye's conniving and narcissistic tendencies. In the promotional poster for the 1975 film adaptation of the novel, Faye Greener (portrayed by Karen Black) is front and center, positioned above the remaining characters, gleefully holding a cocktail, suggesting blissful ignorance of anyone but herself:

Another poster for the same film, in a nod to The Burning of Los Angeles, illustrates the clamoring masses struggling to reach out to Faye:

The Faye we see, both on paper and on screen is certainly a caricature of the archetypal vapid actress. And West's other areas of exploration, which I will truncate, also underscore the presence of inauthenticity in Los Angeles. For instance, West portrays the developing consumer economy as a shell for selling beauty, and it becomes the catalyst for the climatic riot at the end of the novel.

It is unsurprising then that West himself struggled with his own identity. Born Nathanael Weinstein, West was accepted to Tufts on a forged high school transcript, expelled for the offense, and later accepted to Brown University by using the transcript of another student from Tufts named Nathan Weinstein. At Brown, he called himself Nathanael von Wallenstein Weinstein, using his mother's maiden name. As the son of Russian-Jewish immigrants, he did not easily fit into the existing social structure of the University or of the Eastern upper class in general, and eventually anglicised his name to West before moving to California. Of every character and scene he created as an author, it's possible that the man himself was the most elaborate fake of all.

Sources:

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/Nathanael_West.html

http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0609041.txt

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/65685.Nathanael_West

Images from Wikipedia

Los Angeles: Is it Utopia?

I think exploring the demographic history of Los Angeles is quite frankly fascinating; for a city that considers itself so profoundly diverse today, it is fascinating to think that much of our settling and history came from a yearning for a safe place for the American, white, Protestant farmer from the Midwest. From 1880 to today, Los Angeles has gone through a wave of change, almost arriving back to what it was originally. While we laugh at Compton being settled by Iowans today, Los Angeles was congratulated for being a “Model Christian Community” by over sixteen different organizations; from 1900-1920, Los Angeles was a utopia for the “Middle Westerner.” As witnessed by both history and Nathanael West’s interpretation in Day of the Locust, the “utopia” experienced by the Middle Westerner is finite, and experiences a painful demise for both the Middle Westerners of Los Angeles’s history and Homer Simpson in Day of the Locust.

I find Homer’s existence in Day of the Locust very interesting, because he, while in many ways is a personification of the Midwestern mentality, came to Los Angeles in the 30s. Homer was not a part of the original mass migration to Los Angeles, but he still embodies many Midwestern ideals. He came to Los Angeles looking for an escape just like the original “Middle Westerners”. While on the surface Homer’s reason for coming to Los Angeles was his pneumonia and doctors’ orders to go to California; Homer is really coming for an escape from a terrible memory. In some ways, both Homer and the original “Middle Westerners” came to Los Angeles for an escape from sin; Homer flees from the actions of his hands and his shame stemming from his interaction with Miss Martin, and the Middle Westerners flee from the sin of the new immigrants.

At the same time, I think both Homer and the Middle Westerners don’t really find what they were looking for in Los Angeles. They both have a time where they are enchanted with the city – the Middle Westerners during the “Model Protestant City” time and Homer during his “relationship” with Faye. They both experience a time of happiness and contentment, but then they come to a realization of just how much things have not been going their way. Hollywood crushes the Middle Westerner. As illustrated by the riot at the end of the book, when Homer loses it, so too do the rest of the Middle Westerners.