Editing Chinatown (1974 film) (section)

==Historical background==
In his 2004 film essay and documentary ''[[Los Angeles Plays Itself]]'', film scholar [[Thom Andersen]] lays out the complex relationship between ''Chinatown''{{'}}s script and its historical background,

<blockquote>''Chinatown'' isn't a docudrama, it's a fiction. The water project it depicts isn't the construction of the [[Los Angeles Aqueduct]], engineered by William Mulholland before the First World War. ''Chinatown'' is set in 1937, not 1905. The Mulholland-like figure—"Hollis Mulwray"—isn't the chief architect of the project, but rather its strongest opponent, who must be discredited and murdered. Mulwray is against the "Alto Vallejo Dam" because it's unsafe, not because it's stealing water from somebody else... But there are echoes of Mulholland's aqueduct project in ''Chinatown''... Mulholland's project enriched its promoters through insider land deals in the [[San Fernando Valley]], just like the dam project in ''Chinatown''. The disgruntled San Fernando Valley farmers of ''Chinatown'', forced to sell off their land at bargain prices because of an artificial drought, seem like stand-ins for the Owens Valley settlers whose homesteads turned to dust when Los Angeles took the water that irrigated them. The "Van Der Lip Dam" disaster, which Hollis Mulwray cites to explain his opposition to the proposed dam, is an obvious reference to the collapse of the [[Saint Francis Dam]] in 1928. Mulholland built this dam after completing the aqueduct and its failure was the greatest man-made disaster in the history of California. These echoes have led many viewers to regard ''Chinatown'', not only as docudrama, but as truth—the real secret history of how Los Angeles got its water. And it has become a ruling metaphor of the non-fictional critiques of Los Angeles development.<ref>Andersen, Thom (writer, director), voiceover narration in ''[[Los Angeles Plays Itself]]'' (2004), released (2014) by [[The Cinema Guild]].</ref></blockquote>