The hard-boiled detective seems a decidedly modern invention – the noir gumshoe who cynically navigates a world that seems to conspire against him, working his way through a seedy culture that he can capitalize upon. With hard-boiled detectives in film and literature, there is often a measure of moral ambiguity, as the main character is conflicted between what he does for a living and who he wants to be, or is otherwise blind to the harsher truths that surround him. Roman Polanski’s classic 1974 noir film Chinatown certainly fits this description, with Jack Nicholson’s Jake Gittes being a dark, morose yet deeply motivated human being (to the point of stubbornness). That being said, the character of Jake Gittes and the situation he finds himself in during Polanski’s film also carries parallels with Sophocles’ Greek myth Oedipus Rex, in which the title character must become a detective of his own, becoming embroiled in a twist of fate that leads him to a tragic end. Both Gittes and Oedipus, in their respective stories, are guilty of hubris as they navigate a world they think they understand far more than they actually do.
Both Oedipus and Gittes are fairly similar as characters; masters of their field and supremely confident, with a past of good deeds that they coast on in order to maintain their present notoriety. Oedipus, at the start of Oedipus Rex, has become the new king of Thebes, with the respect and command of the people thanks to his defeat of the Sphinx, which had blockaded their city before he freed them. Gittes, on the other hand, is a former Chinatown detective-turned-private eye, who appears to have a tremendous amount of success and the confidence to match. When they are asked in the opening minutes of their works to crack a new case (Oedipus with the plague of Thebes, Gittes with Hollis Mulwray’s affair), they eagerly take it, hoping to either serve his people or get paid, respectively.
In both Chinatown and Oedipus Rex, the detectives must solve a problem that plagues the city in which they live, and take it upon themselves to set things right. Oedipus is tasked to deal with the aforementioned Theban plague, which casts a pall over the entire city; the cure is contingent upon his discovering who murdered the previous king, Laius. Gittes, on the other hand, starts out with a simple job of photographing a client and eventually becomes wrapped up in a scheme involving an increasingly drought-ridden Los Angeles, all while attempting to solve the murder of Hollis Mulwray. Both men work to solve a murder, the consequences of which involve saving their home city from a devastating environmental condition, lending their small-scale investigations great weight and consequence.
Gittes and Oedipus alike must both face their own fractured perceptions throughout their respective works, all the time struggling to gain a greater insight into the world they navigate. Oedipus, for instance, takes it as his civic and heroic duty to serve the people: “I would be blind to misery not to pity my people kneeling at my feet” (Sophocles, line 14). Unlike Gittes, Oedipus has the best of intentions, working to be the virtuous king they want him to be. Gittes, meanwhile, runs a dirty business and knows it; he even gets defensive when someone at his barber shop snipes at him after his pictures are used to reveal an affair (“I make an honest living!”).
One of the deepest, darkest secrets carried in the world of both works is incest – a deeply troubling revelation that lends even more of a dark side to the seedy underbelly of both Thebes and Los Angeles. In the course of his tryst with Evelyn Mulwray, Gittes discovers that she is both the sister and the mother of the young girl they have been looking for (having been raped by her father, Noah Cross). For Oedipus, the consequences are much more directly devastating – Oedipus discovers that he, in fact, was Laius’ killer, and that his wife Jocasta is actually his own mother.
Both Jake Gittes in Chinatown and Oedipus in Oedipus Rex fulfill many of the tropes of the hard-boiled detective genre. As cocksure, self-assured problem-solvers, they bluster their way through an investigation into a systemic problem within their city, only to find out that the truth is being hidden from them (ostensibly for their own good). Their respective investigations take them through a world that is far more complicated and interconnected than they initially realize, and end up disfigured, disillusioned messes with dead lovers. Both of these works are profoundly tragic, and serve as a reminder that the world of noir is not a nice one; bad things can happen, even to good people.
Works Cited
Fawell, John. “Cruel Fates – Parallels Between Roman Polanski’s Chinatown and Sophocles’
Oedipus Rex.”
Polanski, Roman (dir.). Chinatown. Perf. Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway. Paramount Pictures,
1974.
Sophocles. Oedipus Rex. Trans. Ian Johnston. Richer Resources Publications (2014).
