Chinatown: The real-life California scandal that inspired the iconic Los Angeles thriller

Now 50 years old, Chinatown is one of the all-time great crime movies – and that's partly because of a gripping story based on the real history of California's so-called "water wars".

"Forget it Jake, it's Chinatown…" is one of the most famous lines in film history. The dialogue wraps up a key moment in post-war US cinema: Roman Polanski's Chinatown (1974). The 1930s-set neo-noir, which is celebrating its 50th birthday this week, is still a hot topic in pop culture, from its celebrated screenplay by Robert Towne (who won an Oscar for it) to its amazing score by Jerry Goldsmith, its incredible lead performances by Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, and John Huston, to the scandalous downfall of its criminally convicted, fugitive director.

Polanski and Towne's story was part of a certain trend in crime movies of the time. While thrillers like Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation (1974) and Alan J Pakula's The Parallax View (1972), and intense cop movies like Don Siegel's Dirty Harry (1971) and William Friedkin's The French Connection (1971), were all caught up in current issues, a new kind of crime movie was on the rise – the lavish period crime film.

Chinatown wraps noir characters – including private investigator Jack Gittes and femme fatale Evelyn Mulwray

Arguably reaching its peak with Coppola's The Godfather (1972) and The Godfather Part II (1974), the movement was really kicked off by the success of Arthur Penn's Bonnie and Clyde (1967), and also led to other great films like Dick Richards' Farewell, My Lovely (1975), Bernardo Bertolucci's The Conformist (1970), and Jacques Deray's Borsalino (1970), to name a few. Basically, these films moved away from the nostalgic feel of the past to instead delve into its darker side – and like many of them, Chinatown did the same by actually drawing on real history.

The film looks back at the shady dealings behind Los Angeles's rise to a major city, drawing inspiration from the original California "water wars" that happened at the turn of the 20th Century. These were the times when the Los Angeles water department bought up a lot of land in east California to get water for its growing population, leaving the rural community it was taking from without water. Chinatown also borrows some elements of the life of civil engineer William Mulholland, the controversial man who was the first superintendent of the Los Angeles water system and was in charge of building the aqueduct to make sure the city had enough water. All this helped the film feel more authentic, to the point where its dark stories have even influenced how people see the city's real history.

John Huston (pictured left, with Jack Nicholson) plays corrupt and depraved businessman Noah Cross

Chinatown starts off with a classic film noir setup.

Back in the 1930s in Los Angeles, private eye JJ Gittes (Nicholson) gets a job from a lady named Evelyn Mulwray to clear up her husband's cheating. Thinking it's an easy fix, he digs into Evelyn's husband, Hollis (Darrell Zwerling), and finds some photos that look like he's been seeing another woman. But things get messy when these photos end up in the newspaper, and it turns out Evelyn was just playing a game. The real Evelyn (Faye Dunaway) shows up at Gittes' office and says she's going to sue him for causing a scandal.

Gittes finds out that Hollis is a big deal at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power and Evelyn's dad is Noah Cross (Huston), who used to run the department with Hollis but now wants the city to go ahead with a dam project. From there, he gets mixed up in a lot of shady stuff, including violence and murder. Hollis ends up dead in a water reserve, and Evelyn is keeping a really dark secret that might explain why Gittes is getting into so much trouble as he tries to figure out who the woman he first saw Hollis with (at Evelyn's and Noah's separate and competing demands) is.

When asked about his work in 2001, Towne mentioned that he first got into journalism before he started writing scripts. "I always thought I'd be a journalist," he said. "I believe screenwriting is super well-served by knowing the world well. And journalists basically just report stories... Their knack for spotting details is perfect for screenwriters."

Towne approached making Chinatown like a journalist, pulling in details from real life but mixing them up with fiction. The movie's backstory focuses on the struggle over clean water supply in Los Angeles as the city grew bigger in the early 1900s, though it's mostly set in the 1930s. The real-life "water wars" over water taken from Owens Valley, east of the Sierra Nevada mountains, and the aqueduct built by Mulholland and his crew in 1913, are brought to life in Chinatown, but the story is set in the San Fernando Valley, which is closer to LA and was later added to the city.

Although the movie doesn't exactly copy the "water wars," the plot around the water scheme feels real and digs deeper into the exploitation. "The real history was perfect for Chandler-style mystery plots," says Professor John Walton from UC Davis's Sociology Department, who looked into the "water wars" for his book. "The project was led by a small group of rich promoters; the public didn't know much about it in the beginning; money and power were the main forces; the people involved were kept in the dark about being exploited; there was a lot of intrigue in the dealings between the city and the valley."

The Owens Valley, in eastern California, which the LA water department bought up to divert water from

Chinatown shows how big shots in Los Angeles's battle for control over natural resources ended up ruining the lives and work of regular folks, like farmers.

In Chinatown, the water department, with Cross pulling the strings, is up to something sneaky. They're planning to secretly dump water from a key reservoir at night during a drought. The idea is to make the local farmlands useless and less valuable, so they can buy them cheap from people who have to leave. Gittes figures out that the land is being passed off to random names from the folks living in a nearby retirement home. This is to keep the real owners of the investment a secret. Plus, Cross's dream of building a new dam would fix the water shortage problem, making the land worth a lot more once it's properly watered.

When it came to the real deal with the water supply project, it quickly turned into a letdown. "By the early 1920s, any hope of everyone getting something good out of the Los Angeles water department buying up Owens Valley was gone with a drought and more pumping of groundwater to keep up the water supply to the city," Walton tells the BBC. "Farmers and people living in small towns saw their water tables drop and their wells dry up." This was what the people against the project had been warning about, leading to attempts to stop it. "After a bunch of failed tries to get a piece of the shrinking water pie, local folks took matters into their own hands. They first blew up the aqueduct and then took over the Alabama Hills spill gates in 1924, letting the city's water flow into the valley."

It's clear that Towne just wanted to use this story as a starting point, not as a big reveal. "Towne's story is pretty made-up," Walton goes on, "reimagined as a Raymond Chandler mystery for a history that wasn't really a mystery. The main events of building the aqueduct and taking over the water rights happened from 1905 to 1924, not in 1937. They happened in the far-off Owens Valley, not in the San Fernando Valley. And in the fight that followed, no one was killed or even seriously hurt."

But despite all these differences, Chinatown really shows how the big shots in Los Angeles's battle over natural resources ended up ruining the lives and jobs of regular folks, like farmers. When Gittes checks out an orange farm hit by Cross's water mess, he's not exactly welcomed by the orange growers, who think he's from the water department and end up beating him up when he tries to get away. It's pretty likely that the real Mulholland would have gotten a rough welcome in Owens Valley too.

The guy who inspired everything

When it comes to Mulholland, even though he didn't do it alone, he's definitely the one who most inspired parts of Chinatown. But here's the twist: he's not shown as one person in the movie. According to Vincent Brook in his book Land of Smoke and Mirrors (2013), Mulholland is split into two characters to cover up the different sides of his real-life legacy. "William Mulholland is turned into a noble Water and Power boss, Hollis Mulwray… and a gangster, Claude Mulvihill (Roy Jensen)." This shows that Mulholland did important work that helped Los Angeles survive and grow, but it also let him use it for his own selfish and corrupt ends.

Chinatown is often seen as the real story of the water wars in Los Angeles – John Walton

Hollis Mulwray's name pops up again, but it's ironic because the character who's supposed to be the engineer against the movie's water-supply plan actually opposed it because he thought the ground was too unstable for a dam. This is what led to his death. His stance is similar to the real Mulholland in that, after the original "water wars," the engineer was involved in a real dam disaster. In 1928, Mulholland visited the St Francis Dam in San Francisquito Canyon just hours before it broke, causing a flood that killed over 400 people. This event really ended Mulholland's career. The character of Hollis seems to come from a parallel universe where Mulholland was given a second chance and learned to be more careful about taking on risky projects.

In a way, the way Hollis, the good guy who got taken advantage of, ended up looking might have actually helped make Mulholland more famous, especially since Hollis is kind of a mystery. But that doesn't mean he was perfect. He was actually involved in a water project that hurt the farmers in Owens Valley and made some rich people even richer by getting special deals on land, kind of like what you see in Chinatown. Mulholland even had some things in common with Cross, and it's even rumored that Cross's outfit and look in the movie were based on real Mulholland photos, making things even more confusing.

But really, the whole story about the city's water is pretty much over by the end of the movie. It turns out, Cross's whole scheme was just a cover-up for his worst crimes – like raping his own daughter, Evelyn, and having a kid with her, which is pretty messed up. In Morrow Mayo's 1933 book about Los Angeles, the part about the Owens Valley project is famously called The Rape of Owens Valley. Even though people have mixed feelings about calling Cross that way, it's a way of showing how powerful people can do terrible things without anyone stopping them, and how they can leave a lot of people behind.

Polanski and Towne's movie might not have been trying to be totally true to life, but by using real events and mixing them up, it really stands out from other movies. So convincing is it that Walton says Chinatown is often misunderstood as the real story of the Los Angeles water wars, which is what a lot of people think happened. Even though it's a movie, Chinatown is one of the best noirs because it really shows how politics and business can mix with crime and corruption, and how those at the top can leave a lot of people behind.

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