Pinter Was There First

In reference to the movie “Memento,” Stephen Farber writes that “writer-director Christopher Nolan unraveled a mystery through overlapping flashbacks that kept pushing backward in time,” and that it thus “tried something novel.” But, at least to that technique, it did not (“The Writing Was on the Wall in the ‘60s,” April 7).

Harold Pinter’s 1978 play “Betrayal” (filmed in 1983 by director David Hugh Jones, with Jeremy Irons, Ben Kingsley and Patricia Hodge), used exactly the same device, and in exquisite service of the drama, which details a love affair in reverse. The play, though vilified in reviews at its London debut, has, through the years of successful revivals, come to be thought of as one of Pinter’s defining works.

DAVID R. GINSBURG

Santa Monica