|Publication Date||December 1997|
|Publisher||British Film Institute|
|Series||BFI Film Classics|
This study analyzes "Chinatown" in the context of the figure of the detective in literature and film from Sophocles to Edgar Allan Poe and Alfred Hitchcock. In the account of "Chinatown"'s narrative development Michael Eaton seeks to uncover both its relationship to the pessimism of American cinema in the 1970s and its veritably mythical structure.