Chinatown (1974) is one of the bleakest films about California ever made. Like other 1970s neo-noir films, as Erik Dussere notes, it ‘interrogated and undermined the noir detective genre, self-consciously incorporating references to classic hardboiled films while constructing stories in which detectives are unable to solve the case or become unwitting pawns in a larger plot’. In Chinatown, the ‘larger plot’ in which fast-thinking private investigator J. J. Gittes (Jack Nicholson) finds himself embroiled pertains to the future of Los Angeles.

Chinatown screenwriter, Robert Towne, was inspired by a historical episode detailed in Carey McWilliams's Southern California: An Island on the Land (1946). The ‘Owens Valley Tragedy’ began when the city of Los Angeles deliberately created a drought to encourage citizens to vote for the construction of an aqueduct. But as Sam Wasson outlines:

Chinatown's chief villain is land developer Noah Cross (John Huston), who lives outside the city in a pretty ranchero-style property. Gittes, who has uncovered Cross's murderous scheme, asks the old man why he is going to all this trouble: ‘Why are you doing it? How much better can you eat? What could you buy that you can't already afford?’ Cross defiantly responds: ‘The future, Mr Gittes! The future!’

Cross is not only an immensely corrupt and powerful figure whose crimes will shape the material infrastructure of Southern California for generations to come. He is also the unrepentant rapist of his tormented daughter, Evelyn (Faye Dunaway), and the father of her child. Money, political clout and the inherent corruption of the young city mean that Cross is not only free to do whatever he likes in a business capacity: he can also engage in consequence-free acts of murder and incest.