Chinatown Film Noir

The genre film noir has some classical elements that make these films easily identifiable. These elements are displayed in the prototypical film noir, Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity. These elements include being filmed in black and white, a morally ambiguous protagonist, and a prominent darkness. However, the most striking part of a film noir is the femme fatale, a woman who craves independence through sexual and economic liberation. In his film, Chinatown, Roman Polanski uses many of the classic elements of a film noir, however he twists many of them to reflect the time period. This is particularly evident in his depiction of his “femme fatale,” Evelyn Mulwray.
Polanski’s depiction of his femme fatale differs from Wilder’s femme fatale, Phyllis Dietrichson, in

This differs from the classic femme fatale displayed in Double Indemnity. Mrs. Dietrichson strives to gain independence and sexual liberation from her current domesticated lifestyle. She achieves this by using another man, in this case Walter Neff, as an accomplice in murdering her husband. However, in the end, her plans go astray and instead of gaining independence, she ends up killed. Polanski, however, chose to portray the aspects of the classic femme fatale in a different type of woman. He chose Mrs. Mulwray, who in the beginning seems ominous and mysterious, but turns out to be a victim who only turns to these traits to deal with her situation. Instead of using a man to kill to achieve independence, Mrs. Mulwray uses a man to try to help her physically escape from her current life. However, while Evelyn Mulwray does not kill someone else to achieve personal independence, she does have many similar features to Phyllis Dietrichson, the classic femme fatale. Mrs. Dietrichson is portrayed to be an innocent seeming woman who, in the first encounter between her and Neff, is During the first part of the film, Mrs. Mulwray is shown with a slight shadow over one half of the face and does not