His driver had gone to Chinatown. He had given-the-slip to the police. It was just him, without a gun, and those broken glasses which could have put the father away.
Didn't he think the old man would bring some protection with him?
Yes, Gittes is probably overconfident from his days as a cop; he must think he can perform some sort of citizen's arrest on Cross. (It's probably safe to assume that he's unarmed, though it's also possible that he just can't draw because Mulvihill already has a gun to his head.) And he certainly shouldn't have laid out the case and presented the evidence to the criminal himself, like a dime novel detective might.
Also, I think since he had beaten Mulvihill down before, he thought he could do it again only Claude got the drop on him.
"There will be blood. Oh, yes! There will be blood."-Jigsaw; "Saw II"
You're right, it does seem irrational. Maybe Gittes is just overconfident by nature, or maybe it's just one of those necessary plot holes.
shareI originally thought like Lewis above. Now I think it could also be that he was not positive that the glasses belonged to Cross. He had been lied to by everyone especially E. Mulwray, and did not know who to trust. IIRC he had never seen Cross in glasses at all. Until Cross read the paper, he did not know the glasses were his.
Gittes WAS still overconfident to go to the meet alone, he could have had one partner go to Chinatown and one come to the house.
I do think Gittes believes Evelyn's confession--he just went through the elaborate machinations with Curly to keep a step ahead of the police--and he already knows about the water scheme--he's just looking for some physical proof. But the glasses didn't necessarily have to be Cross's to point to his culpability, they could've belonged to Mulvihill or some other unknown henchman.
shareI might add that Gittes is a flawed character, and not as bright or as good a detective as he thinks.
1) He SHOULD have gone to that reporter Whitey Something at the LA Times, like he semi-threatened to do in Yellburton's office. Particularly after that run-in with the Okie farmers who told him the water dept. was poisoning their wells, plus the Mexican kid on the horse, plus the homeless guy who drowned under the bridge of a dry river.
2) He SHOULD have gone to the cops when he realized who killed Hollis Mulray - if not before. He should have told Escobar before the last minute in Chinatown.
3) He SHOUULD NOT have tried to confront Noah Cross. The man was rich, a corrupt thug very capable of murder and with a likely set of henchmen.
But then consider the script-writers of this flim. If you send Gittes to the cops and the newspapers, it takes away from the man-against-the-corrupt-system theme of the movie.
Gittes knew Noah wore bi focals because Noah put them on to look at the fish "served with the head". That was before the confrontation at the tide pool.
share[deleted]
Why did he take them to Chinatown at the end? Of course, he has his two associates there who could help him. But why not just take him to the orange grove or something?
Not a big deal. I suppose Jake works from his gut, not from planning.
The glasses are circumstancial evidence at best and can Jake prove where he found them? Certainly Jake of all people knew how powerful and corrupt Cross was. The ending seems contrived.
shareWhen people cease the tendency to inflate Jake Gittes' intelligence, then the ending isn't contrived at all. He already knew how dangerous the person behind the conspiracy at the reservoir where he could have been killed and still continued his investigation, undermining the notion that him knowing that Noah Cross was a dangerous man should preclude him from confronting Cross near the end of the film. And, in keeping in line with the rest of the film, his hubris exceeds lucidity. Most of all, people should consider Gittes' last words of the film because it basically answers the title of this thread.
shareThe gardener witnessed the finding of the glasses. Still, it would be hard to prove murder with just their testimony, but it would be easy to prove the water scam, and thus send him to prison in a just world. With the photos of the argument at the Pig & Whistle and the whole story of the water scam and possibly even the story of the rape of Evelyn, Cross would be ruined. Or so Jake thinks.
He also may have wanted to see if Cross was willing to pay him off. He claims he draws the line at extortion but we don't know if we can believe him or not. Jake got a good look at how rich Cross seemed, and an even better look at the Valley and what that must be worth.
In the world we are shown however, Jake thinks he can protect Evelyn and take down Cross, or at least make him stop chasing after Katherine. He's on a tragic path to repeat his mistake in Chinatown, where he tried to save a girl and ended up making sure she was not saved.
In film noir, the man is usually brought down by a femme fatale and fate. Here, Jake brings himself down by being less clever that he thought he was, and by trying to uphold a code of honor. But he is in Chinatown - we are all in Chinatown where no good deed goes unpunished. He confronted Noah Cross because he thought doing the right thing was what got results. His plan was to prove his own superiority as a detective and "solve the mystery." He solved it. It just didn't change anything. He found out corrupt people run Los Angeles. It wasn't news to them, and it wasn't news to Evelyn Mulwray, either.
It wouldn't really be easy for him to prove the water scam since he was given that opportunity in the film and couldn't do it.
Even with the photos at the Pig & Whistle, because of the alleged crimes that Jake Gittes himself committed, "withholding evidence, extortion, accessory after the fact" and obstruction by misleading the police to a dead end, whatever he has to say wouldn't be believed.
The truth is Evelyn didn't need any saving and neither did the woman in Chinatown when he was a cop.
Evelyn and her sister/daughter should have been going to Mexico, not Chinatown, and Gittes foils this by misreading evidence and calling the police.
He was hard-boiled in his investigation and took action(s) rather than doing as little as possible . Taking action, the very effort of trying "to keep a woman from being hurt" despite "not always being able to tell what's going on" sealed their fate.
Given that his investigation is wholly unconstructive given that he has no effect on the water scheme and only two people learn about the it throughout the film and his misreading of evidence and clues directly lead to a woman's death, Chinatown is a subversion of the classic film noir hard-boiled detective because it undermines its premise.
Evelyn and her sister/daughter should have been going to Mexico, not Chinatown, and Gittes foils this by misreading evidence and calling the police.
Another poster who wants to romanticize the clumsy and unconstructive Gittes.
Gittes called the police on Evelyn because he clumsily misread evidence. It's as simple as that. You want to excuse his incompetence because you want to romanticize him.
Secondly Evelyn wasn't going to make it to Ensenada on Curly's boat either. Why? Because of Jake Gittes.
After telling Evelyn to go to Khan's address in Chinatown, he erroneously tells his associates to wait at the office there for two hours and if they don't hear from him to then meet him at 1712 Alameda, Khan's address. This is a mistake because Gittes then leads police to a dead end at Curly's house, which is again, another mistake since a now incensed Escobar and Loach have enough time to go to Gittes' office to look for him; they instead find his associates and compel them to take them to Gittes and the address Gittes gave them is where they would be able to arrest Evelyn whenever she appears. And they were clearly there before Evelyn had a chance to leave.
Evelyn still probably had a better chance getting to Mexico on that day without Gittes' interference. Gittes obviously made it worse for Evelyn escaping because that 4:30 train was probably imminent and may not have still been in L.A. by the time that 1 hour deadline Escobar gave Gittes was up. Gittes exacerbated the situation because "Escobar would have been looking for [Evelyn] everywhere" because Gittes gave the police her present location and if she had then tried to take the train after Gittes' time-consuming, unjustified confrontation with her following her not being at the address Gittes gave him, then he would have put out an all-points bulletin that would have probably stopped her at the station or stopped the train before it left L.A.
Of course, Escobar could still have foiled her escape by getting in contact with all the recent trains that left the city and pointing out that Evelyn Mulwray is a wanted fugitive.
But all this nonsense about the train is meaningless. The main point is that if Gittes had not continued his completely unconstructive investigation, Evelyn would have been in Mexico days earlier, something Gittes essentially acknowledges at the end of the film.