1001 Ways to Die – (6) Peter Falk, American Actor

Peter Falk, one of my favorite actors, died at the age of 83 on 23rd June 2011. He  died peacefully at his home in Beverly Hills. In the last years of his life he was suffering from Alzheimer’s and dementia.

I got to know Peter Falk from the “Columbo” detective movies in the early 1980’s when I was in the US. I liked the movies very much, as Lieutenant Columbo would always catch the bad guys, the murderers who were trying to flee their inescapable fate.

Columbo in his car

Usually the murderer(s) was a very rich and/or powerful guy. Columbo would enter their impressive houses and mansions, and initially he would create more a wave of sympathy rather than fear, as he was a scruffy looking guy with a crumpled raincoat that he would wear all year long.

Columbo was always underestimated almost until the moment the murderer was caught.

In addition to his scruffy looks, he would carefully lead the suspect to believe that he (Columbo) was naive, almost thick in the mind. Add to this his absent – mindedness, and you have the recipe for a disaster in the investigation. How would Columbo ever catch anyone?

His most famous one liner was “Just one more thing”. He would say this when he was by the door, ready to leave the suspect’s home. He would turn his head, bend slightly, and say it. As I recall, the suspects were invariably irritated by the “thick, slow, absent-minded” lieutenant, but were enduring his questioning, almost sure that it would lead nowhere.

As famous as Columbo himself was his car, a Peugeot 403 convertible, released to the market in 1958. If Columbo was scruffy, his car was a moving wreck.

Peugeot 403 Cabriolet, 1958

However, he never gave it up, even though in some episodes he had a chance. In the photo above you see a well maintained model.

I would now  like to give a short example of his investigative method, or rather of his method of leading the murderer to entrapment and the inevitable confession. In the Episode “Any old port in a storm”, Columbo investigates the murder of a young Californian. The suspect is his half-brother, a wine producer and connoisseur. However, he has alibi: at the time of the death, he was attending a conference in the East Coast. Columbo knows that something is wrong and there are many contradictions in the suspect’s statements and stories, but he has no proof.  The suspect has an extensive and rare wine collection that requires the continuous operation of a temperature and humidity system all around the year. Finally, the whole question focuses on the operation of the wine maintenance system. When the victim was murdered, the temperatures where on the high side. The murderer had to keep the body of the victim in the wine cellar while he was attending the conference, but should the system be operational, this would keep the body in a condition that would change the estimated time of death. Therefore, the killer switched the system off for the critical 24 hours he was away. Columbo needed to prrof that the system was off, but he had no record of it. He therefore invites the murderer to dinner at his favourite restaurant, and at the end he offers a bottle of rare port. The killer tastes the port and immediately says that this bottle has gone bad. This was the needed proof, as the bottle was taken from the killer’s wine cellar. Vintage Columbo all the way!

Peter Falk was not just columbo. In his long career he has played in many movies. As this post is personal, I do not want to list all the movies, only the ones I have seen.

Wings of Desire Movie Poster

“Wings of Desire”, the wonderful movie of German Director Wim Wenders made in 1987, I have presented in another post. In this movie, Peter Falk played himself.

Another movie where Falk starred, was “Anzio, 1968, directed by Edward Dmytryk.

Anzio Movie Poster

Falk plays Corporal Jack Rabinoff, a “killing machine”, who is based on a real First Special Service Force soldier Jake Wallenstein, who ran an illegal brothel of Italian prostitutes in a stolen ambulance Most of the men, including Rabinoff, are killed. (Source: Wikipedia)

I confess I do not remember anything about the movie as I write.

A Woman under the Influence, Movie Poster

Closing this personal note on Peter Falk, I would like to refer his masterpiece, “A Woman under the Influence”, a John Cassavetes film made in 1974 and distributed in 1975.

Falk and Cassavetes were good friends. When Falk read the scenario and Cassavetes told him that nobody was willing to produce the movie, Falk gave him 500,000 dollars.

Peter Falk and Gena Rowlands

The movie was made, and Falk played the Italian blue collar worker who is married to Gena Rowlands, the “woman under the influence”. The movie is Cassavetes’ best.

Peter Falk and Model

Peter Falk was also a figurative artist. He loved to draw and paint.

Farewell Columbo!!!

Wings of desire – Der Himmel uber Berlin – A film by Wim Wenders (1987)

From the sea of Paros to the sky over Berlin!

Today I want to reminisce on the wonderful film “Wings of desire”, made in 1987 by Wim Wenders.

The title in German is “The sky over Berlin”, whereas for unknown reasons the title in English is the corny “Wings of Desire”.

The story is simple like a fairy tale. Two Angels, Damiel (Bruno Ganz) and Cassiel (Otto Sanders), go around Berlin listening to what people are saying, stand on high places and statues, medidate, think about the past. Ordinary humans cannot see them, nor can they hear them speak.

 This film is shot in black/white and color. The Angels cannot see color. Therefore, when the shot is from the angels’ point of view, the shot is black and white (with a blue tint), and when the shot is from a human point of view, it is in color.

Bruno Ganz

Damiel’s wanderings lead him to a small circus, where he meets Marion (Solveig Dommartin), a trapeze artist. Talented and lovely, Marion is also angst-ridden and profoundly lonely. She confines herself to her trailer after performances, dances alone to the live music of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, and drifts through the city, trying to fulfill her “desire for love, desire to love.” Yet she fails to connect with anyone.

Solweig Dommartin

Apparently, angels have similar existential problems. Being eternal, Damiel has neither a beginning nor an end, and therefore lacks definition. He wants the simple pleasures of a finite existence: to feed a cat, enjoy a meal, tell a lie.

Divinity has its purpose, but as Peter Falk, playing himself as a former angel, informs Damiel, there is nothing to compare to the sensations of the finite. Falk became famous in the US with his portrayal of Detectiv Columbo, the absent minded naive but very efficient police crime detective.

Falk’s role also connects the film to history. He’s come to Berlin to make a movie about a private detective in WWII, and extras stand around on the set wearing Nazi uniforms and clothes marked with the Star of David. The past is alive and well within the city, and old newsreel footage is cut into Wings of Desire, seen from car windows, the ghost of memory. It’s another division between realms, one of many in the movie. Wim Wenders and cinematographer Henri Alekan (Topkapi), along with assistant director Claire Denis, create a vivid visual division between the heavenly and the earthly.

The angels and what they see are shot in crisp, cool black-and-white (restored here to a more silvery hue rather than the gold of previous DVDs) while the mortal experience is shown to us in full color, rich in tone and often garish. Humanity experiences the full spectrum, whereas the angels’ vision is limited. For all of their peeping in on our brains, the angels are confined. They can’t do anything else. This is the core of existentialism: choice is what makes us free. Our imperfections define us. The brightest light burns half as long.

At another level, Wings of Desire is about a world divided, about the line between the spiritual and the physical, the fanciful and the practical. Between the poetry of words and thought and the true poetry of life.

The screen play is written by Peter Handlke, the Austrian poet and play write. I came to know his work with “The fear of the goalie before the penalty kick”, and then with “Kaspar Hauser”.

Peter Handke

In addition to the script, he wrote the poem “Song of Childhood” for the movie. Here is an excerpt:

“When the child was a child,
It was the time for these questions:
Why am I me, and why not you?
Why am I here, and why not there?
When did time begin, and where does space end?
Is life under the sun not just a dream?
Is what I see and hear and smell
not just an illusion of a world before the world?
Given the facts of evil and people.
does evil really exist?
How can it be that I, who I am,
didn’t exist before I came to be,
and that, someday, I, who I am,
will no longer be who I am?”

 

THE END