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Chinatown

by Michael Eaton

Type
Studies
Subject
One FilmChinatown
Keywords
Roman Polanski
Publishing date
2024 (November 14, 2024)
Publisher
BFI Publishing
Collection
BFI Film Classics
Language
English
Size of a pocketbookRelative size of this bookSize of a large book
Relative size
Physical desc.
Paperback • 96 pages
5 ¼ x 7 ½ inches (13.5 x 19 cm)
ISBN
978-1-83902-815-1
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Book Presentation:
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.

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.

See the publisher website: BFI Publishing

Previous edition

Chinatown

Chinatown (1997)

by Michael Eaton

Publisher: BFI Publishing
(previous edition)

Subject: One Film > Chinatown

See Chinatown (1974) on IMDB ...

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