May 29, 2006
Chandler's 1948 screenplay was presumed lost until its rediscovery in Universal Studios' archives in the 1980s, although the author had adapted it into a Philip Marlowe novel in the meantime. More recently, a French publisher adapted it into a graphic novel that is now being presented in English for the first time. While the story has down the requisite cynicism, acerbic humor and casual violence of film noir, it lacks the compelling plots and timeless characters of the author's classic scripts. A whodunit centering on Betty Mayfield, a beautiful, doomed woman on the run from a troubled past, Playback
starts promisingly enough with tough, brisk dialogue and the unusual Vancouver setting. Yet by the third act the plot is bogged down by its own dejected heroine, as Betty's permanent air of defeat proves more tiring than tragic. Despite Philippe Garnier's assertion in his introduction that the script was passed over due to the vicissitudes of the studio system, it's possible that an unrelenting gloom was the real culprit. Ayroles's art employs a stiff, angular woodblocklike style that does little to capture the dark eddies of Chandler's tale.
November 15, 2006
Betty is running from her vengeful father-in-law, who thinks she murdered his son. Then in a playback of her husband's death, a scorned suitor's body turns up on her hotel room patio and flushes her from cover. Millionaire playboy Clark offers a no-strings escapeor will another playback leave "her" dead this time around? Based on a late 1940s unproduced screenplay, this crime-noir drama, driven by characters' secrets, seems best suited not to cinema but to comics, which allows the reader to puzzle out clues more leisurely along with clearheaded Inspector Killaine. Memorable supporting characters include (dead) gigolo-suitor Larry, his aging girlfriend and moneybags Margo, and corrupt P.I. Goble. The tough, dry dialog suggests a hard-boiled equivalent to drawing room comedy ("All I want are too many cigarettes and too much coffee"), and the angular woodcut-style art delivers satisfyingly black and bleak menace. But Killaine, who speaks with wan romanticism, is unfortunately drawn as a stiff dandy, while ingénue Betty is not as pretty or as irresistible as she's made out to be. First published in France. For older teens up.M.C.
Copyright 2006 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
July 1, 2006
Chandler was once approached about writing a newspaper strip. "I wouldn't know how to do it, and if I did I wouldn't want to," the notoriously crusty crime novelist retorted. Hence, this graphic novel adapts a never-produced screenplay, a murder mystery set in Vancouver shortly after World War II. A cad meets a woman fleeing her father-in-law, who thinks she murdered his son, though the trial judge set aside a guilty verdict. The heel gets her into a plush hotel, pushes himself too far, and later is found--by her--dead in her room. A pencil-mustached, monocled, war-hero police detective; a rich wastrel; the dead man's waspish older girlfriend; and an oleaginous PI are the other principals. Climax and denouement are more Hollywood than Chandler, but the tart, brusque, spoiled-romantic patter is breathtaking, and Ayroles' brutal artwork, akin to the blunt, high-contrast noir comics styles of fellow Frenchman Jacques de Loustal (" Barney and the Blue Note" , 1986), becomes more fitting with every frame. (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2006, American Library Association.)