Essay On Chinatown Movie

Chinatown
The movie Chinatown directed by Roman Polanski has points in the movie that directly relate to the California Water Wars. In the movie you have a man named Hollis Mulwray, who is a fictional character based off the superintendent and chief engineer of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, William Mulholland. He was the man that came up with the design of the Los Angeles aqueducts. These aqueducts brought water from Owens valley to Los Angeles to help better the city and to help it grow. In the movie Chinatown the writer Robert Towne connects real life events like the Owens Valley Land grabs and St. Francis Dam and into his movie.
Robert Towne wrote the plot based on the Owens Valley Land grabs. The character Noah Cross was based of Mulholland and the mayor of Los Angeles Fred Eaton. Both Mulholland and Eaton believed that Los Angeles need more water in order for the city to grow. The men started to look out for places that could provide water to the city. Eaton then found Owens Valley east of the Sierra Nevada’s. The only problem was that the federal Reclamation Service wanted to use Owens valley as an irrigation project. The Valley farmers wanted the water to irrigate their lands. But, Eaton had a man on the inside by the name of J.B. Lippincott, who worked for the Reclamation service. …show more content…
In the movie Mulwray denies the building of a dam because he doesn’t want to repeat what happened in his passed. This implies to the St. Francis dam braking in 1928. Noah Cross is the man in the movie who owned the water company, he bought up a bunch of land around Owens valley. His character is based off Mulholland and Eaton who did actually by up land around Owens valley. Which they did to make profit by selling the land to Los Angeles for them to build aqueducts that Mulholland had thought of to bring water to the

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