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 stars as J. J. Gittes, a private eye who, despite his best intentions, can bring only disaster on Evelyn Mulwray (Faye Dunaway), the enigmatic woman he has come to love. Gittes's investigation into the death of Evelyn's husband exposes a chaos of political corruption and sexual violence lurking beneath a glittering, sun-bleached surface. Michael Eaton's compelling study situates Chinatown in relation to a history of fictional detectives, from Sophocles to Edgar Allan Poe and Alfred Hitchcock. In an absorbing account of the film's narrative development and visual style, he traces Chinatown's relationship to the pessimism of American cinema (and, by extension, the wider culture) in the mid-1970s, and the source of the film's narrative and visual impact. In his afterword to this new edition, Eaton considers Chinatown's 1990 sequel The Two Jakes and also the movie's changing fortunes in the years since its release.

A new edition of Michael Eaton's study of Roman Polanski's Chinatown (1974) in the BFI Film Classics series.

About the Author
Michael Eaton is a screenwriter and playwright based in Nottingham, UK. His screen credits include Fellow Traveller, Signs and Wonders, Shoot to Kill and Why Lockerbie?, and he is the author of Our Friends in the North in the BFI TV Classics series. In 1999 Eaton was awarded MBE for services to film in the New Year's Honours List.


Book Information
ISBN 9781839028151
Author Michael Eaton
Format Paperback
Page Count 96
Imprint BFI Publishing
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing PLC