Description
Directed in 1974 by Roman Polanski from a script by Robert Towne, Chinatown is a brilliant reworking of film noir set in a drought-stricken Los Angeles of the 1930s. Jack Nicholson, in one of his most celebrated roles, stars as a Private Eye who, despite his best intentions, can only bring disaster upon the enigmatic woman he has come to love. The reassuringly familiar conventions of the thriller are dissected to expose a chaos of political corruption and violent sexuality lurking beneath a glittering, sun-drenched surface. Michael Eaton analyses Chinatown in the context of the figure of the detective in literature and film from Sophocles to Edgar Allan Poe and Alfred Hitchcock. In a searching detailed and entirely absorbing account of the narrative development and visual style of Chinatown, Eaton uncovers both the film's relationship to the pessimism of American cinema in the 1970s and its veritably mythical structure and power.
