37, and this locale is the archetypal setting for the hard-boiled detective, exemplified in literature by the novels of Raymond Chandler. Cawelti notes a number of elements in this film which conform to the hard-boiled genre, but the real source for the nature of this film is the film noir, a style which was used for the hard-boiled story in the past (The Maltese Falcon, The Big Sleep) as well as for other dark crime stories.
Chinatown is not a true film noir for several reasons. For one thing, while it evokes a certain time, it is not really of that time and so imposes a vision of the era rather than drawing from the social displacement and psychological disorder of the time itself. Cawelti notes another reason why Chinatown is not a true film noir, notably because it is in color:
The world of the hard-boiled myth is preeminently a world of black and white. Its ambience is that compound of angular light and shadow enmesh
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