Chinatown
Story Stream
Roman Polanski’s ‘Chinatown’ Fifty Years On August 16, 2024
Nineteen seventy-four was a great year in the history of cinema. The American New Wave was in full swing, revitalising Hollywood after a long period of stagnation and decline. It was a year that gave audiences The Conversation, The Parallax View, The...
Chinatown’s Tragic Allure July 29, 2024
Roman Polanski (no relation to the author of this text) has perhaps the greatest claim of any filmmaker to being a character in a real-life film noir—first as a victim, when his wife Sharon Tate was murdered by members of the Manson Family in 1969; t...
The God-Haunted World of ‘Chinatown’ June 24, 2024
The English novelist P.D. James once wrote that murder mysteries aren’t about death, but about “the restoration of order,” stealth theodicies sealed by happy endings. We expect an orderly universe. When a mystery breaks the rules, it gets our attenti...
