- Bannier, Pierre.
Pleins feux sur… Columbo.
Paris: Horizon illimité, 2005.
ISBN 2-84787-141-1.
-
It seems like the most implausible formula for a successful television
series: no violence, no sex, no car chases, a one-eyed hero who is
the antithesis of glamorous, detests guns, and drives a beat-up
Peugeot 403. In almost every episode the viewer knows “whodunit”
before the detective appears on the screen, and in most cases the story
doesn't revolve around his discovery of the perpetrator, but rather obtaining
evidence to prove their guilt, the latter done without derring-do or scientific
wizardry, but rather endless, often seemingly aimless
dialogue between the killer and the tenacious inspector. Yet
“Columbo”, which
rarely deviated from this formula, worked so well it ran (including pilot
episodes) for thirty-five years in two separate series (1968–1978 and
1989–1994) and subsequent telefilm specials through 2003 (a
complete episode guide
is available online).
Columbo, as much a morality play about persistence and
cunning triumphing over the wealthy, powerful, and famous as it is a
mystery (creators of the series Richard Levinson and William Link said
the character was inspired by Porfiry Petrovich in Dostoyevsky's
Crime and Punishment and
G. K. Chesterton's
Father
Brown mysteries), translates well into almost any
language and culture. This book provides the French perspective
on the
phénomène Columbo. In addition to
a comprehensive history of the character and series (did you know that
the character which became Columbo first appeared in a story
in Alfred Hitchcock's
Mystery Magazine in 1960, or
that Peter Falk was neither the first nor the second, but the
third actor to portray Columbo?), details specific to
l'Hexagone abound: a profile
of Serge Sauvion, the actor who does the uncanny French
doublage of Peter Falk's voice
in the series, Marc Gallier, the “French Columbo”, and
the stage adaptation in 2005 of
Une femme de trop
(based on the original stage play by Levinson and Link which became
the pilot of the television series)
starring Pascal Brunner. This being a French take on popular
culture, there is even a chapter (pp. 74–77) providing
a Marxish analysis of class conflict in Columbo!
A complete episode guide with both original English and French titles
and profiles of prominent guest villains rounds out the book.
For a hardcover, glossy paper, coffee table book, many of the colour pictures
are hideously reproduced; they look like they were blown up from thumbnail
images found on the Internet with pixel artefacts so prominent that in some
cases you can barely make out what the picture is supposed to be. Other
illustrations desperately need the hue, saturation, and contrast adjustment
you'd expect to be routine pre-press steps for a publication of this type
and price range. There are also a number of errors in transcribing English
words in the text—sadly, this is not uncommon in French publications; even
Jules Verne did it.
April 2006 