Textual Analysis Of Chinatown Movie

Trevor Brown
Professor Gigante
3/29/17
COM 221
10 Shot Assignment - Chinatown

The 1974 film Chinatown (U.S 1974, Roman Polanski) is about a private investigator, J.J Gittes, who was hired by a women impersonating Mrs. Evelyn Mulwray to investigate leads connected to her husband having an affair. J.J ends up meeting the real Mrs. Mulwray in the movie and learns about the sudden death of Mr. Mulwray. Once learning this, J.J quickly begins to realize that this case will be far different than his usual routine gigs. In the 10-shot sequence that I chose to evaulatue, multiple things take place. Firstly, J.J Gittes and Evelyn Mulwray are in the backyard of her mansion talking. Because of J.J’s injury during the altercation when a water department

Gittes is looking into her eyes while she is checking out his nose. The intimacy is building rapidly now. That whole shot, the camera never moved. The filmmakers could be trying to portray a sense of a calm environment to due steady camera, no music in the background which is all contributing to the intimacy. Now Gittes is in the full front position while Evelyn has her back to the camera. They are filming with a high-angle shot still making Gittes look smaller. It switched from a low-angle on shot #3 to a high angle on shot #4 because the camera changed the position as a mentioned

Their sexual eye is undeniable to the viewers. It is now just a matter of seconds before.. SKERT! The flashback sound effect comes in followed by the romantic rounds of a piano as their heads moved closer and are now touching. They start kissing slow, Evelyn puts her hand on his cheek and he’s wrapping her. As the kissing becomes more sexual, the trumpets then come in in the background. Now were are back at the over-the-shoulder close-up. Gittes is on the right closest to the camera with his back-to-camera. Evelyn sort of is full front but has the slightest quarter turn. The camera is a tad lower than Gittes head making for a lower-angle shot. The camera stays still just up until they start kissing. The camera man just dollied in a little bit for more of a tight picture of the 2 characters kissing. It was still just a close-up, just a more in depth close up. They filmed it with a little bit of a lower-angle shot