To your first point, the glasses: they're bifocals, and we see Cross use them only twice, both times to inspect something closely. We have to make inferences about the actual mechanics of Hollis' death, but the simplest possibility is that, in the middle of a heated argument, Cross had those glasses in his breast pocket and they simply slipped out unnoticed while bending over to force Hollis under the water's surface.
To the second, the matter of Jasper Lamarr Crabb: we can easily theorize that the actual paperwork involving the land transfers was being processed not by Cross personally, but by low-level functionaries (secretaries, perhaps) who, likely unaware of the meaning of the work they were doing, merely handled what they were given as a routine matter of course, and had no reason to cross-check the names on the paperwork against obituaries or death notices. A simple clerical oversight.
Edit for an afterthought: When Jake is at the Hall Of Records, he asks the clerk, "Why do they have all those names pasted in the plat books," to which the clerk replies, "Land sales out of escrow are always recorded within the week." The sale to Crabb may have been initiated while he was still alive; under normal circumstances, such a sale would probably either have been cancelled or revised to reflect that the buyer was now the estate of a person who died during the escrow period, but because the transaction was probably being undertaken without his knowledge or understanding, this wasn't done by either Cross' operatives or Crabb's relatives.
Poe! You are...avenged!
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Iceflamez
9 years ago
Satisfying enough to overrule my objections. With the given chance what's your insight on Ida Sessions, as to who hired her and how come she knew about the properties scheme (tipping Gittes off to check the obituary column).
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Doghouse-6
9 years ago
That's among the things I like to call "Chinatown's Unsolved Mysteries:" unanswered questions to which we can formulate our own conclusions.
For a long while, I considered one of those to be: "Was Yelburton in on the scheme, or merely an innocent dupe?" I've satisfied myself that he was in on it since noticing something I hadn't on previous viewings: a framed Albacore Club flag on his office wall. In the case of Ida, my personal opinion is that both of the theories in your post on the topic are correct. Yelburton was the "inside man" at the Water Dept who could oversee the dumping and concoct cover stories about diversion and runoff, but when it comes to any of the dirty deeds, all roads lead ultimately to Noah, who's behind them all.
So this would represent one of the instances in which Jake's instincts were dead-on: "You hired me. Or you hired that chippie to hire me," he says to Yelburton. I've come to conclude this can be taken at face value. But what Jake didn't yet know was that everything was at Noah's direction.
How she knew the specifics about the land transfers presents any number of possibilities. As with the other "unsolved mysteries," any theory on which a viewer settles is as good as any other, as long as it fits in with story elements about which we do know.
We know, for example, she has a SAG card. But her face is obviously not well-known and she lives modestly, so almost certainly has one or more other sources of support. She refers to herself as "a working girl," which some have taken as a euphemism for "prostitute," and that she acquired her knowledge by loose talk from a client involved in the scheme.
Another possibility is that her day job was as one of the secretaries to which I referred earlier who was known to do acting work when she could get it. Or she could have been a girlfriend that Yelburton - or Mulvehill or even someone else involved that we never saw - had on the side (maybe a corrupt city councilman who favored the dam). Or any combination thereof. Or...?
Chinatown provides a number of such opportunities for viewers to play detective long after the film's over and, as long as they fit within the existing story elements as I said above, I'm not sure any answers viewers come up with on their own can be called wrong. Kinda like choosing among different routes to drive from Point A to Point B: any one that gets you there is as good as another.
Poe! You are...avenged!
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chninlp
9 years ago
It's wonderful that somebody pointed out the Albacore flag in Yelburton's office because of its subtle importance.
The director/cinematographer has Gittes look directly at the flag which is significant because when he later enters the Albacore Club after having suspicion of Yelburton and then confronting him, the same flag is flying above head and Gittes makes no connection. Then when he gets to the Mar Vista Rest home and witnesses its residents sowing a quilt of the same flag that he encountered multiple times previously, he still couldn't make any connection until he had to be told by a resident what was going on.
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Doghouse-6
9 years ago
It's wonderful that somebody pointed out the Albacore flag in Yelburton's office because of its subtle importance.
I'd be ashamed to tell you how many times I saw the film before that detail registered with me.
But as you say: subtle. As is that later scene in the Mar Vista Home, when the actress playing Emma Dill (Cecil Elliott) at first skillfully garbles the pronunciation of "Albacore" just enough to suggest how it can be misheard as "apple core" - and Nicholson just as skillfully repeats it - before correcting very distinctly,
"No, the AL-bacore."Just one of a number of beautifully nuanced moments in the film executed with precision.
Poe! You are...avenged!
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PopperTheKungFu-Dragon
9 years ago
Great post Doghouse and "Chinatown's unsolved mysteries" is one of the many reasons I love this movie. Always something new to learn or figure out or at least try to with each viewing.
Poorly Lived and Poorly Died, Poorly Buried and No One Cried
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