Right up to the Bang: Chinatown and Revisionist Noir The room is dark and dingy, cigarette smoke curling around the furniture. He’s slouched in his chair, rumbled shirt, malt liquor in on hand, snarl on his lips. She enters like the parting of the Red Sea, misty eyed and beautiful, whisky-voiced and dangerous. She pleas for help, he laughs her off, is reminded of the month overdue rent, and calls her back. He’s a film noir detective; she’s a film noir femme fatale. They come from different social settings, have different outlooks on life and love and despite the presumption she has him wrapped around her finger, he always sees through her coy game of seduction and brings her to justice, the perfect film noir. Chinatown is not that movie. Far from standard, but close to perfect, Roman Polanski’s Chinatown is the zenith of revisionist noir, turning trope filmic elements of the popular 1940s genre on its head. Polanski imbues the characters and plot of the film with clever wit and an earnestness that clearly separates Chinatown from the customary, gritty and blunt film noir. That is, up until the tragic and chilling final scene of the movie. The last five minutes of Chinatown destabilize the revisionist position the film takes by becoming a typical film noir ending, albeit, with the exclusion of the Production Code that would have strictly regimented and restricted such gruesome violence. Still, through the use of cinematography, the femme fatale’s comeuppance, and the knowledge that the corrupt bureaucracy that creates the villains remains untouched, Chinatown’s brilliant subversion of the film noir genre is undermined. Dark alleyways, mean, unforgiving streets and an overarching sense of despair perpetually haunt classical noir films. Schrader states that, "the central character is likely to be standing in the shadow" yet, for a significant chunk of the movie, Chinatown is filmed outside as the scorching sunlight drenches the film with the feeling of dry, thick heat (219). Even the scenes that are filmed in the nighttime occur in or near brightly lit houses that never for an instant shroud the characters in shadows. This changes at the end, when the cheerful lighting that the audience becomes accustomed to, is swapped in lieu of flickering streetlamps, veiled lighting from the insides of stores on the strip of road, and car headlights. As Schrader points out, "An actor is often hidden in a tableau of the city at night, and, more obviously, his face is often blacked out by shadows as he speaks" (219). In the ending scene of Chinatown the characters are cloaked in shadows, their features distorted and blackened as Jake struggles with the police and Evelyn attempts to flee. After Evelyn is shot, even the mediocre lighting the audience receives from the streetlamps is washed away. When Jake and the entourage of people swarm Evelyn’s car, the scene appears to be seeped in black and everything but the iridescent whites of the characters eyes are visible. The camera then pans upward as Jake is pulled away, which leads to a long shot of Jake walking down a dark stretch of road, the silhouette of his figure blending more and more into the shadows as the movie ends with a tasteful fade to black. This ending is indicative of many film noirs, where the lone detective walks away from the characters, which he surrounds himself with the entire movie, one case solved, countless more to follow. Moreover, Evelyn comes to be identified as the femme fatale of Chinatown. Once again, Chinatown manages to critique the film noire genre by portraying Evelyn as bashful and awkward instead of the epitome of seduction and grace. For the entire movie, Evelyn seems to fumble from scene to scene like a fawn on broken legs while her naivety captures Jake and keeps him enthralled. Like all femme fatales Evelyn is shady, secretive, and clearly hiding something that Jake assumes is dark and sinister – the murder of her husband. Polanski rather brilliantly defuses this noire cliché by purging Evelyn of the malicious deviousness that drives a femme fatale. As Cawelti claims, "In almost every case, the hard-boiled hero encounters a beautiful and dangerous woman in the course of his investigations and hinds himself very much drawn to her" (186). Evelyn does have a secret, and it is dark and sinister, yet it is nothing like what Jake pictures it to be. Yet, once again, the ending undercuts the critique of noire by having Evelyn suffer the typical fate of a femme fatale. Evelyn is punished for her sexuality in a slightly different fashion from typical noirs. Evelyn is killed for the lie she keeps concealed concerning the incestuous assault that spawns her daughter/sister. Most often that not, the femme fatale is vanquished by the law, gunned down in a blaze of glory. Cawelti further states, "Even if the beautiful woman does not turn out to be a murderess, the detective usually separates from her at the end to return to his marginal situation" (186). Evelyn’s death is grotesquely hyper-violent - a miraculously well-aimed gunshot to the back of the head – that becomes overly symbolic of a previous scene which talks about flaws and imperfection. Evelyn is treated like a femme fatale at the end, discredited and disfigured, her secret left to die with her and fade from Jake’s memory. Lastly, the corrupt city that propagates the true villain of the film remains unscathed. In critiquing Chinatown, Cawelti recognizes the ambivalence by stating, "Instead of bringing justice to a corrupt society, the detective’s actions leave the basic source of corruption untouched. Instead of protecting the innocent, his investigation leads to the death of one victim and the deeper moral destruction of another" (186). The audience becomes aware of the corrupt nature of the film as the haunting last line of the movie- "It’s Chinatown" - echoes in the streets. The phrase works to decimate the cry for justice that Jake stands for as he is literally dragged away from the scene of a crime that he is unable to prevent. Noah Cross, the extravagantly wealth villain of the film, triumphs over Evelyn and Jake by avoiding the criminal accusations that Evelyn would have brought forth (the rape) with her death and as Evelyn reveals, Cross owns the police, thus he easily evades the murder charge that Jake accuses him of. Evelyn dies in an attempt to keep Cross away from her daughter/sister, Catherine, and Cross becomes the first person to take possession of Catherine after Evelyn’s car rolls to a halt. The audience is aware of Cross’s evil deeds, but the justice system expunges them from his moral record with the help of a pocketful of money. Justice is not served and the system charges onward, ready to produce copies of Noah Cross to unleash upon the world. As one can see, Chinatown manages to walk itself out of a revisionist critique and straight into a film noir cliché with the last scene of the movie. The lighting is reminiscent of classical noirs, the femme fatale is brought down, and the society that allows the villains to flourish remains intact. Whether or not this is a conscious decision of Polanski and his crew, Chinatown concludes on a note that leaves a sour taste in ones mouth. The violence is unflinching and graphic and Evelyn’s death followed by Jake’s exit ends the movie on such a dark note that the scene feels detached from the rest of the film. Chinatown is a revisionist noir, that is, right up until the bang.