We have to understand how movies have taught us to feel. That spell is always waiting to take us beneath the tracery of storyline so that we may plunge into the pit of what the story is about. And why we are breathless to see what happens while wondering if we will ever escape the pit. The picture business says this is fun for all, but lasting spells are more complicated than that. It is evening, dusk, at one of the better homes in Beverly Hills. We are in the garden, by a pond. Our guy is there early, waiting, smoking a cigarette. We like this fellow a lot, though we know by now that he can be a chump. He is waiting for the bad man, the pivot of the mystery that our chump has been exploring. And because he got there early, we feel his superior position, and share in it. This is added to when the man he has called to the meeting arrives. This second man is older, not far short of elderly; he leans on a cane and his eyesight is not what it was. So then our guy nails the old man, tells him everything he knows. And what he knows is terrible, including the way the older man had raped his own daughter and become father to his grandchild. There is talk between the two of them, stealthy and maneuvering, so it seems. But something else emerges in the way the older man declines, in his urbane and polite way, to be ashamed or apologetic. The meeting is not quite what the chump anticipated. Noah Cross is a monster, but there is something serene about him that is entrancing. Really, that is the word. For in the way he admits his crimes and his ambition, this hideous man becomes immaculate. If someone talks sense grammatically in a movie for a couple of sentences in a row, there’s a chance he’ll have us by the throat. “I don’t blame myself,” Cross says. “You see, Mr. Gittes, most people never have to face the fact that at the right time and right place, they’re capable of anything.” There you are, it’s not even two sentences. But he has us at “Mr. Gittes,” the smoky disdain in “most people,” and the authority we adore. It’s why we are there in the movie dark, because it is a process, a séance, in which we want to pretend that we could do anything. The chump is really very appealing: it’s Jack Nicholson, after all — has anyone ever been more lovable? But Noah Cross doesn’t bother to be even likeable. He has too much command to be needy. That serenity of his comes from running the show. And all our lives at the movies we have been in awe of the show and the way life starts turning over on the screen, better than we have ever known it and understanding our hopeless dream — of being like that. You have to admit to what you are buying into in Chinatown. Far from just a clever film noir and a cool 1937, it’s the heart of darkness, and we know that it’s the heart because that is where we live. The conclusion of that movie has evil taking over the town, without a hint of mercy or escape for that daughter and granddaughter. That was a point of dispute between the screenwriter of the film, Robert Towne, and its director, Roman Polanski. Towne had wanted her to get away. Polanski won that argument and took charge of the story. Why not? He knew that being in control was the point of the game. That’s what lost children dream of. John Huston (the man doing Noah Cross) was born in Nevada, Missouri, in 1907, an only child, the son of the actor Walter Huston. His parents divorced when he was young, and he traveled with his father, touring in theater, and watching horse races with his mother. He adored his father but had troubles with his mother, and a good deal of ill-health, though it was said that he was a very strong, athletic boy with a willful
or
Register for 2 free articles a month Preview for freeAlready have an account? Sign in here.