The scene towards the end when Faye Dunaway admits who her daughter is involves a real slap from Jack Nicholson. They had tried several takes and it wasn’t working with the fake slaps – so Dunaway told him to actually hit her, because she was getting annoyed.
Jack Nicholson was actually dating Anjelica Huston whilst the film was being shot – the daughter of John Huston. This made the scenes rather awkward for Nicholson when shooting with Noah Cross, especially during the table scene when he asks him, “Are you sleeping with her?”
The whole movie is shot from the main character’s perspective. Polanski said this was an ode to Raymond Chandler’s detective stories. Gittes is also present in every scene of the film. The camera is often pitched behind Nicholson, so that we learn the clues and see the sets as he does.
Off set, Nicholson would watch LA Lakers basketball games, and this tended to interrupt shooting. Polanski and he had already been arguing across the production, and at one point Polanksi lost his temper entirely and smashed Nicholson’s television.
Robert Towne wrote the screenplay with Nicholson in mind to play Gittes.
