L.A. Noir: The Two Jakes

L.A. Noir: Shadows in Paradise

Presented by Greg Olson Productions

In 1978 screenwriter Robert Towne, director Roman Polanski, actors Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, John Huston and company gave us Chinatown, a Watergate/Vietnam War-era statement about moral and socio-political corruption in the stylish form of a 1938 film noir detective story. It’s a knockout, a favorite film of many, that spawned the Neo-noir concept, since scholars told us the first wave of noir ended in the late 1950s. Private investigator J.J. Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson) got paid for spying on people, but he had a strong moral compass. His mission was to keep those he cared about from being hurt, but he didn't comprehend the nefarious desires and motives driving certain people, and his beloved Evelyn Mulwray was killed, her daughter Catherine enveloped in the monstrous clutches of Evelyn’s incestuous father, water baron Noah Cross. Thus Chinatown concluded, leaving Gittes a shattered man. What good is a moral compass when the bottom drops out of your world? A decade later screenwriter Towne and star Nicholson are back in The Two Jakes, with cinematically savvy Nicholson directing. Chinatown was about owning and controlling L.A.’s water supply; in Two Jakes the valued commodities are land for housing developments, and the oil hidden beneath the golden hills. Gittes has pulled himself together, and with another Jake (developer Berman: Harvey Keitel), is involved with a sudden murder, amorous widow Madeleine Stowe, and oil tycoon Richard Farnsworth. Gittes has a lot to occupy him, but he’s still haunted by his loss of Evelyn Mulwray and the mystery of what happened to her daughter Catherine. What can he find out that will ease his heart? When Two Jakes came out it was blamed for not being a bigger and better Chinatown, as if such were possible or desirable. Critics Siskel and Ebert loved the film, seeing it clearly as a sophisticated, intelligent, and emotional work of Southern California cinematic literature, with the enticing look and feel of 1940s L.A.

Individual Tickets: $15
Passes: $109 | $91 SIFF SAM, Swedish Club, UW Cinema Studies, NWFF, SFI, TheFilmSchool, Festa Italiana, Alliance Francaise de Seattle, Scarecrow Video, & KING FM members