Chinatown

Chinatown started out fairly simply – a detective is given an assignment to discover if Mrs. Muwlray’s husband is having an affair. He follows Mr. Muwlray and sees her with a woman several times, takes photos, and the affair is publicized because he is an important businessman. Things become complicated when Mr. Gides, the detective, realizes that the woman who came to his office was not the real Mrs. Muwlray, and more complex when Mr. Muwlray is found drowned.
This is a classic case of film noir- the police mainly disregard the death, labeling it accidental, but Mr. Gides refuses to stop investigating it as murder. Traditionally, the police were too quick to judge, and the detective continued alone on a search for the murderer and the secrets of everyone involved.
What threw me off a bit was the character of (the real) Mrs. Muwlray and her relationship with the detective as they spent increasingly more time together. She seemed like a classic example of “femme fatal”- the two slept together, yet we still don’t understand her secretive behavior. I anticipated the scene when he would prove her guilty and the film would resolve. Frustratingly, it deviated here, and he learned that she was hiding something unrelated to the murder of her husband. This left her off the hook for murder, but it left me vaguely confused about some previous parts of the movie.
The ending also disturbed me by challenging the traditional narrative that I normally expect, especially in film noir with a distinct protagonist and a conflict he is working to resolve. Just when I was prepared to see everything resolve in a final scene, a sudden change in action took place and all control over the situation was lost. I thought there must be at least some additional dialogue or action in response, but it ended. I was left with unanswered questions and without the satisfaction of seeing the guilty taken away by police before the credits rolled. The movie was engaging, but its startling variations to the expected detective storyline left me disappointed, feeling like the previous two hours were useless.