Friday Minute
No. 146 | August 13, 2010

All About Evelyn

Our theme this week
Evelyns at the movies

Featured this week (theme introduction)
Monday         —   Evelyn Salt, Salt (2010)
Tuesday         —   Evelyn Harper, Caged (1950)
Wednesday    —   Evelyn Draper, Play Misty for Me (1971)
Thursday        —   Evelyn “Billie” Frechette, Dillinger (1973), Public Enemies (2009)

Evelyn Mulwray

Whatever she may say, Evelyn Mulwray is a tough customer.  The trouble starts when Mrs. Mulwray hires Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson) to investigate her husband.  But when Gittes’s photos show up in the newspaper, he finds out he was duped by an imposter pretending to be Mrs. Mulwray.  The real Mrs. Mulwray (Faye Dunaway), not at all pleased at the public attention, pays him a visit.  “I don’t get tough with anyone, Mr. Gittes.  My lawyer does.”

The plot of Chinatown takes one labyrinthine, disturbing twist after another.  Mulwray hires Gittes, but when her husband’s body turns up at the morgue, she pays the p.i. to drop the case.  By then Gittes is in too deep.  He needs to find out what’s going on.  Why is the mysterious woman who hired him, and with whom he falls in love, lying to him?  He feels betrayed, and near the end arranges to turn over Mrs. Mulwray to the police.  But then he learns the secret of her past, a shocker that’s hard for even the worldly-wise, unsentimental Gittes to accept.  Noah Cross, the rich and rotten figure who is Evelyn’s father, had warned him:  “You may think you know what you’re dealing with, but believe me, you don’t.”

Cross is played by John Huston, in his most indelible performance onscreen.  Nicholson and Dunaway were never better, which is saying a lot.  The film, directed by Roman Polanski, from a script by Robert Towne, is a scathing look at the power, politics, and corruption behind Los Angeles, a city itself with a past.  No surprise, at the heart of the story is a tragic woman named Evelyn.

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Chinatown (1974)
Roman Polanski, director
Robert Towne, writer
Trailer

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Chinatown (1974)
Faye Dunaway, as Evelyn Mulwray

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Quote of note
Jake:  There’s something black in the green part of your eye.
Evelyn:  Oh, that.  It’s a—it’s a flaw in the iris.
Jake:  Flaw?
Evelyn:  Yes, it’s a sort of birthmark.
—Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson), Evelyn Mulwray (Faye Dunaway), Chinatown (1974)

…58…59…60.