Political Corruption In Chinatown Film

On the surface, Chinatown is a film about the political corruption surrounding the conflict over water rights in Southern California in the early 20th century. But really, it is a film that gives the audience a bleak and pessimistic view of humanity as it sheds light on the deep moral bankruptcy of which humans are capable. The opening scene of Chinatown gives the audience a taste of the human immorality to come and also hints at some key themes that continue throughout the film.

The film opens with a close up of a couple having sex in a field. That image is flung away and a second image replaces the first. This is of the same couple in an even more explicit position. The camera slowly zooms out as we see that the images shown previously are

Curly declares his wife “no good” and Jack vehemently agrees with him. From the very beginning, this film is focused on people doing immoral things and the upsetting consequences that come from these actions. The situation in this opening prepares the audience for the sicker, more twisted revelations to come.

The interaction ends as Jack escorts Curly out of his office. In this final conversation, Curly makes what seems to be a throwaway comment about the price of albacore versus the price of skipjack. The audience may not know it yet, but this mention of albacore is the first of several subtle references to “albacore” in the film. As it turns out, albacore is an oblique reference to the Albacore Club owned by Noah Cross. Taking it one step further, the phrase albacore is actually a stand-in for Cross, his looming presence, and the far reaching consequence of his actions.
In short, in this scene that is less than two minutes in length, Polanski sets up two of the critical motifs in the film: the irony that photographs can be very deceiving and albacore as metonymy for Cross. From the very beginning this film is full of people doing immoral things and those around them suffering because of