Chinatown (B.F.I. Film Classics)

Rating:
Summary: A great film inspires a fair book
Review: I wish I could say Michael Eaton's Chinatown is required reading for film buffs, or for people who love the movie as I do, but I can't. It's not a bad book by any means, but I'm somewhat ambivalent about recommending it. The author deals in great detail with some aspects of the work in great (too much?) detail, while glossing or ignoring other important aspects of the film and why it is a masterpiece (and coincidentally why its ill-advised sequel failed). He also gets bogged down on some trivial coincidences in which he sees all too much meaning, as well as his Freudian interpretations. (What is it with film "scholars" and their "Freudianization" of everything?) But most of all the structure of the book is just flat-footed and monotonous, with too much scene recitation and too little insight. It reads more like a set of Cliff Notes than anything else.

Rating:
Summary: A great film inspires a fair book
Review: I wish I could say Michael Eaton's Chinatown is required reading for film buffs, or for people who love the movie as I do, but I can't. It's not a bad book by any means, but I'm somewhat ambivalent about recommending it. The author deals in great detail with some aspects of the work in great (too much?) detail, while glossing or ignoring other important aspects of the film and why it is a masterpiece (and coincidentally why its ill-advised sequel failed). He also gets bogged down on some trivial coincidences in which he sees all too much meaning, as well as his Freudian interpretations. (What is it with film "scholars" and their "Freudianization" of everything?) But most of all the structure of the book is just flat-footed and monotonous, with too much scene recitation and too little insight. It reads more like a set of Cliff Notes than anything else.