Chinatown film locations
Film locations: Los Angeles
Chinatown filming location: ‘The Mar Vista Rest Home ’: Eastern Star Home, Brentwood, Los Angeles
Reportedly a fraught production, director Roman Polanski added bags of atmosphere and a tragic ending to Robert Towne’s brilliant script (based on the corruption involved in the Los Angeles water programme) and the result was a classic neo-noir.
Although the film uses plenty of period Los Angeles locations, there are some stunningly convincing sets: the interior of the Hall of Records, the Department of Water and Power, Gittes’ living room, the interior of the old house in Pasadena are all fake.
The lake at the centre of the intrigue is the real thing. Lake Hollywood, a reservoir built by Water Commissioner William Mulholland in 1925 as part of the water programme, can be reached by entrances on Lake Hollywood Drive (north) and Weidlake Drive (south).
JJ Gittes (Jack Nicholson) tails the water commissioner in a rowing boat across the palm-fringed 15-acre lake in Echo Park, at Glendale Boulevard and Park Avenue, Silver Lake.
Chinatown filming location: Gittes meets Mrs Mulwray at ‘The Brown Derby’: The Prince Restaurant, 3198 West Seventh Street, Koreatown, Los Angeles
The dry river bed, where mysterious flows of water indicate that something fishy is going on, is the Big Tujunga Wash at Foothill Boulevard, Sunland, north of the city in the San Fernando Valley.
Gittes gets his nose sliced open (by director Polanski) at Point Fermin, Point Fermin Park, Gaffey Street at Paseo del Mar, San Pedro, south Los Angeles.
He goes to see Noah Cross (John Huston), the power behind the plotting, on Catalina Island, just off the Los Angeles coast. That’s the 1928 white Spanish-Moderne Avalon Casino by the landing stage at the northwest end of Crescent Bay (it contains a beautiful 1,000 seater cinema, a grand ballroom plus a small museum and art gallery), 1 Casino Way, Avalon.
The mansion of Evelyn Mulwray (Faye Dunaway) is supposedly one of Pasadena’s grand houses on South Oakland Avenue.
She supposedly meets up with Gittes at the old ‘Brown Derby’ restaurant, but the scene shot in one-time French restaurant, the Windsor, now Korean restaurant (but, thankfully, unchanged) The Prince, 3198 West Seventh Street, Koreatown. The Prince crops up again, in Crank, as the restaurant in which Chev Chelios (Jason Statham) uses a meat-cleaver to hack off the hand of the villain’s brother.
Chinatown filming location: Gittes discovers the body of the fake ‘Mrs Mulwray’: East Kensington, Echo Park, Los Angeles
Gittes discovers the body of the fake ‘Mrs Mulwray’ in the apartment complex at 8481/2 East Kensington in the Echo Park district, near to locations seen in LA Confidential and The Fast And The Furious.
The ‘Mar Vista Rest Home’, where Gittes and Evelyn go to “find a place for dad” but discover a whole load of unwittingly rich inmates, is the Eastern Star Home, 11725 Sunset Boulevard, on the road’s western reaches in Brentwood.
The uncompromisingly downbeat climax (not surprisingly, this was Polanski's idea) was filmed in Los Angeles’ real Chinatown, on Spring Street, near Ord Street, which has since been largely redeveloped.
All material Copyright ©2008 The Worldwide Guide To Movie Locations
Designed by Intelligent Designing
Chinatown, 1974
Director
Cast
visit the film locations
Los Angeles: Flights: Los Angeles International Airport (LAX)
The Prince, 3198 West Seventh Street, Los Angeles, CA 90005-1652 (tel: 213.389.2007) at Catalina Street
Visit Santa Catalina Island
Trivia
Sequel The Two Jakes (directed by Jack Nicholson himself) was part of a proposed trilogy