"Columbo" Murder Under Glass (1978)

Director:

Jonathan Demme

Writers:

Robert Van Scoyk (written by)
Richard Levinson (creator) ...

TV Series:

"Columbo" (1971)

Original Air Date:

30 January 1978 (Season 7, Episode 2)

Genre:

Crime | Drama | Mystery | Thriller

Plot:

Paul Gerard is a famous gourmet and his books about restaurants can decide the fate of a chef. In his way...

Plot Keywords:

Book | Gourmet | Police | Murderer | Detective Series

Awards:

1 win

Cast

Peter Falk	...	Columbo
Louis Jourdan	...	Paul Gerard
Shera Danese	...	Eve Plummer
Richard Dysart	...	Max Duval
Mako	...	Kanji Ousu
Michael V. Gazzo	...	Vittorio Rossi
Larry D. Mann	...	Albert
France Nuyen	...	Miss Choy
Antony Alda	...	Mario
Todd Martin	...	Sgt. Burke
Fred Holliday	...	Crawford
Alberto Morin	...	Chef Louis
Jim Murphy	...	Charlie
Carolyn Martin	...	Lady Cashier
Miyako Kurata	...	1st Geisha

Runtime:

Germany:70 min | Italy:74 min | USA:73 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English | Italian

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.33 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Norway:11 (2007) (DVD) | Denmark:15 (2007) (DVD) | Sweden:15 (2007) (DVD) | Finland:K-18 (2007) (DVD) (self applied)

Company:

Universal TV

Trivia:

This is the final "Columbo" episode in which the actor playing the murderer, Louis Jourdan, is older than Peter Falk.

Goofs:

Continuity: Mr. Gerard first refers to Mary Choy's restaurant as "The House of Choy" when Columbo asks him about her name appearing in Vittorio's date-book. But later, Columbo meets with bankers over coffee cake, and Mary Choy's restaurant is referred to as "The House of Shanghai".

Quotes:

Kenji Ozu: Do you have a hot suspect?
Lt. Columbo: Well, I've got my eyes on one.
[Turns to look at Paul Gerard]

A Columbo story that is disappointingly starved of the familiar qualities

Louis Jordan plays a food critic who is blackmailing local restaurateurs into giving him a percentage of their profits in return for favourable television reviews. When one owner tires of the arrangement and threatens to expose him, he is killed off with poisoned wine...

On reflection, this is a rather slowly developed and humourless tale which suffers from a stilted performance from Louis Jordan as the conniving food critic. His best efforts to conjure up the fiendishly plotting villain characterised in the script fail and his scenes with Columbo are consequently indifferent; lacking the typical distinctive charm and vigour.

Additionally, Falk's portrayal of Columbo shows continuing signs of a certain arrogance at the root of the character (evident since "The Last Salute to the Commodore") which grossly conflicts with the strongly-established traits of his seeming absent-mindedness and unassumingness.

There are other more minor quibbles about this story - the pre-murder and actual murder sequences are a little rushed and generally the whole thing could have been done in 70 minutes: the majority of the additional, superfluous sequences which have often contained sufficient comedy and/or revealed detail about the life and personality of Columbo are uncharacteristically moderate.

Two other things to note in the context of the history of the series - this is a rare occasion when Columbo explicitly states that he dislikes the murderer; also, the villain tries to murder Columbo....

A patchy addition to the hugely successful TV series, whose basic premise has significant merits; however, the overlong script and the antagonising performance from Columbo's antagonist are sufficiently off-putting.