Chinatown influenced Blade Runner

Blade Runner is a detective picture before it is science fiction, and the detective picture it is modelled on is the 1970s revision of noir that Chinatown defined. The shared frame: an investigator hired for a narrow job who uncovers a crime built into the city itself, a powerful old man who owns the infrastructure and cannot be touched, a woman who is the old man's creation and the investigator's failure, and an ending in which nothing is put right. Deckard's interrogation of Rachael is Gittes questioning Evelyn: the man asking for the truth is the one who does not understand what he is doing to her. Filed MEDIUM: an inheritance from a genre Polanski's film had just reinvented, rather than a debt Scott has stated.