Memory can change the shape of a room. It can change the colour of a car. And memories can be distorted. They're just an interpretation, they're not a record, and they're irrelevant if you have the facts.
Every neighbor is suspect, every outsider, every period ; even one's own husband or wife or sweetheart. There is no ease on Uneasy street. The longer one's tenancy the more untenable it becomes.
Is that all there is, is that all there is
If that's all there is my friends, then lets keep dancing
Let's break out the booze and have a ball
If that's all there is
Is That All There Is
(Leiber/ Stoller)
Peggy Lee
1969
When he awakened again he could stand, and did. He doused his head in cold water and drank four glasses of water. The water made him sick and after that he began to shake with a chill. He went down to the bedroom and lay down on the bare blood-stained mattress.
They had been corrupted by money and he had been corrupted by sentiment. Sentiment was the more dangerous. Because you couldn't name it's price. A man open to bribes could be relied upon below a certain figure, but sentiment might uncoil in the heart at a name, a photograph, even a smell remembered.
Quite possibly the best Retro Noir ever made.Written by Robert Towne in 1974 with a definite Chandleresque feel and legendary performances from Nicholson as Jake Gittes and John A. Alonzo on cinematography that lead us to the closing line and what it could mean.