My Bouchercon 2016 panel: Odds Against Tomorrow

The New York Times was right: William P. McGivern's 1957 men-on-the-run novel Odds Against Tomorrow is "a powerfully exciting action-melodrama." Let's look at the last part of that description.

Melodrama fell out of favor in the middle of last century, perhaps after French movie critics came up with a fancier name for the mid-century American movies that were called melodramas when they first appeared. The French called them films noirs and unleashed a wave of cultural cachet that swept up everything in its path.

So, what's melodramatic about Odds Against Tomorrow?: Two men, one white, one black, thrown together when a bank heist goes wrong and forced to overcome mutual hatred and suspicion and yadda, yadda, yadda (McGivern's novel was the basis of the 1959 movie starring Harry Belafonte and Robert Ryan and produced by Belafonte.)  What saves the novel from being a brave, dated relic? Astonishing characterization like this:

"He wasn't worried about failure, because he didn't have the imagination to picture disaster in vivid and personal terms."

The taut professionalism of McGivern's work. The repetition of certain words that work through, with, under, and around the narrative, reinforcing it and building suspense: Confused. Confusion. Unconscious (impressions).  Co-protagonist Earl Slater's invocation of his military background. Johnny Ingram's cool. Some delicious plotting, much of it involving the interpersonal dynamics between Slater and Ingram.  The canny decision to add a brief coda so the novel does not end on the somewhat schmaltzy note that brings the main action to a close.  McGivern knew what he was doing.

(Poster by Jon Jordan)

(McGivern also wrote the novels on which the movies Rogue Cop and Fritz Lang's classic The Big Heat were based.)

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Eric Beetner will discuss William McGivern as part of a panel I'll moderate at Bouchercon 2016 in New Orleans in September. The panel is called "From Hank to Hendrix: Beyond Chandler and Hammett: Lesser Known Writers of the Pulp and Paperback Original Eras," and it happens at 9 a.m., Thursday, Sept. 15, at the Marriott, 555 Canal St., New Orleans. The room is LaGalleries 1. See you.

© Peter Rozovsky 2016

David Goodis on screen and beyond borders

The 1972 movie ... and Hope to Die crosses a number of borders, notably from print to film (it's based on David Goodis' novel Black Friday) and from the U.S. to France (the movie's original title is La course du lièvre à travers les champs, and its director is René Clément, one of several French directors who adapted Goodis.)

I knew about both before I rented the movie. But I was stunned to see the opening chase scene take place not on a cold Philadelphia street, as in the book, but in front of one of Montreal's iconic most familiar buildings: Buckminster Fuller's United States pavilion from the Expo '67 world's fair.  

This was no case of Montreal filling in for New York or Chicago, either. Characters make several references to Montreal, and the camera lingers at least once on a sign for the real University Street. The cash strewn around throughout the movie looks American, though. Maybe the gang's hideout is just over the border in Vermont,  or perhaps they popped down to the States for a bit of shopping in Plattsburgh.

The movie, like the book, lays bare Goodis' yearning for family, and it features a number of fine performances, notably by Robert Ryan as Charley, the gang's leader and father figure. (The Wikipedia article on Ryan omits the movie. This only adds to the small errors and omissions I have found in Wikipedia's articles on movies. Use Wikipedia at your peril!)

(The screenplay is by the French crime novelist Sébastien Japrisot, whose novels include A Very Long Engagement. You may know that book from its adaptation into a movie starring the adorable Audrey Tautou, whose last name is probably one of the more often misspelled in moviedom. )

Read an appreciation of Black Friday. Read Vincent Canby's highly unappreciative review of the movie from the New York Times.

© Peter Rozovsky 2011