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Russian title: Повторный просмотр · Russian version
A security systems designer murders his mother-in-law and uses his own surveillance footage to prove he was somewhere else. The only episode in which Columbo fires a gun.
Editor’s rating — 8 out of 10.
- Number
- 30 of 69
- Aired
- March 2, 1975
- Running time
- 70 min
- Director
- Bernard L. Kowalski
- Writer
- Booker Bradshaw & David P. Lewis
- Music
- Bernardo Segall
The case
- The killer
- Oskar Werner as Harold van Wick
- The victim
- Martha Scott as Margaret Midas
- Guest cast
- Oskar Werner, Gena Rowlands, Herbert Jefferson Jr., Robert Brown, Martha Scott, Bart Burns
Columbo is an inverted mystery: the murder opens the film and the killer is known from the first minutes. What you are watching for is how he proves it — see how the character works.
The murder
Harold Van Wick runs an electronics company that his wife's family owns, and has just been told by his mother-in-law Margaret Midas that he is finished there. She controls the business, she has never liked him, and she intends to remove him at the board meeting.
Van Wick's house is a showroom for his own surveillance technology — cameras in every room, everything recorded. He kills Margaret in the study and then uses the system against itself: he plays back an earlier recording of the empty room to the monitors while he is elsewhere, so the tape places the murder at a time when he was demonstrably at an art gallery opening.
It is the most technologically confident murder of the fifth season, committed by a man who has spent his career persuading rich people that cameras make them safe.
Harold Van Wick's company belongs to his wife's family, and his mother-in-law Margaret Midas has decided he is finished there. The board meeting is arranged; the decision is made.
His house is a showroom for his own surveillance technology, with cameras in every room and everything recorded. He kills Margaret in the study and then uses the system against itself, feeding the monitors an earlier recording of the empty room.
The tape places the murder at an hour when he was demonstrably at a gallery opening. It is the most technologically confident killing of the fifth season, committed by a man who sells rich people the idea that cameras make them safe.
How Columbo gets him
The house is the film's pleasure. Columbo wanders through it opening doors that open themselves, being announced by machines, and treating the whole apparatus with the polite bafflement of a man whose own house has a dog and a telephone.
The footage is where the case lives. If the recording shows the study at the time of death, then either the recording is wrong or the death is. Columbo, who cannot operate the equipment, gets other people to operate it for him and watches what the machine does rather than what the man says it does.
The lieutenant's own experiment closes it, and it is the only time in seventy films that he uses a firearm: he needs to establish what a gunshot in that room does to the recording, and the only way to find out is to fire one.
The house is the film's pleasure. Columbo wanders through it opening doors that open themselves and being announced by machines, with the polite bafflement of a man whose own home has a dog and a telephone.
The footage is where the case lives. If the recording shows the study at the time of death, either the recording is wrong or the death is — and Columbo, who cannot operate any of the equipment, has other people operate it while he watches what it does.
His own experiment closes it, and it is the only time in seventy films that he fires a weapon: he needs to know what a gunshot in that room does to a recording, and the only way to find out is to make one.
Worth knowing
- Oskar Werner, a European star best known for Jules et Jim and Fahrenheit 451, plays Van Wick with a chilly precision unlike anyone else in the series.
- This is the single occasion on which Columbo discharges a weapon, and he does it as an experiment rather than in anger or defence.
- The house used for filming was a genuine modernist property in the Hollywood Hills, wired for the production.
- Oskar Werner, the European star of Jules et Jim and Fahrenheit 451, plays Van Wick with a chilly precision unlike anyone else in the series.
- The house was a genuine modernist property in the Hollywood Hills, wired for the production.
- Broadcast in March 1975.
Verdict
An underrated episode with an excellent central idea: a man undone by his own surveillance, in a story made twenty years before anyone worried about cameras in the home.
Werner is remote in a way that keeps the film cool rather than warm, which suits a murderer whose relationship with people is essentially technical.
An underrated film with an excellent central idea — a man undone by his own surveillance, twenty years before anyone worried about cameras at home.
Werner keeps it cool rather than warm, which suits a murderer whose relationship with other people is essentially technical.
Familiar faces
Actors who turn up in the series more than once — sometimes in very different parts.
- Bart Burns as Thompson 2 episodes also in Requiem for a Falling Star
Cast data from TMDB, including uncredited bit parts. All the familiar faces →