Chinatown: The real-life California scandal that inspired the iconic Los Angeles thriller
… The film looked back to the dirty dealings behind Los Angeles’s transformation into a major urban centre, taking inspiration from the original California “water wars” that erupted at the turn of the 20th Century. These occurred when the Los Angeles water department bought up a swathe of land in east California in order to divert water to sate its growing population, to the detriment of the rural community it was taking supply away from. What’s more, Chinatown borrows some aspects of the life of civil engineer William Mulholland, the controversial figure who was the first superintendent of the Los Angeles water system and tasked with creating the aqueduct to ensure the city had sufficient water supply; all this aided the film’s sense of authenticity to the point where its dark fictions have influenced the perception of the city’s real history.