Chinatown is set in 1937 and portrays the manipulation of a critical municipal resource — water — by a cadre of shadowy oligarchs. It was the first part of Robert Towne's planned triology about the character J.J. Gittes, the foibles of the Los Angeles power structure, and the subjugation of public good by private greed. The second part,
The Two Jakes, was about another grab for a natural resource — oil — with a thicker-torsoed Gittes in 1948. It was directed by Jack Nicholson and released in 1990, but the second film's commercial and critical failure scuttled plans to make
Gittes vs. Gittes, about the third finite resource — land — in Los Angeles, circa 1968.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinatown_(1974_film)#cite_note-inter-7