Note: This article originally appeared in Audere Magazine in January 2023.

In Sunday’s New York Times, Natasha Lyonne, the star of the new streaming mystery series, Poker Face, and Rian Johnson, the show’s creator, picked their favorite episodes of their favorite old mystery shows. Lyonne cited a Columbo episode that guest-starred John Cassavetes, but then barely said anything about it. (“Ah, that one has two boyfriends: John and Peter. So it’s nice to see them reunited. It warms my heart.” That’s it. Then she talks about herself and her friends.)

The episode, Etude in Black, is from the second season (either episode one, if you’re reading the Times, or episode 2, if you’re streaming it), and it’s really something. 

Of course, the show’s star, Peter Falk, who plays the rumpled, eponymous detective, did his other most iconic work in Cassavetes’ art films, like Husbands, so this episode is something different. 

Etude in Black features Cassavetes as Alex Benedict, a murderous symphony conductor — that’s not a spoiler, every Columbo episode tells the viewer whodunit at the beginning — and much of the ninety minutes features Falk and Cassavetes talking, just like a Cassavetes movie, Falk circling his prey, feigning idiocy, and Cassavetes underestimating him till it’s too late. 

The episode has a tremendous pedigree at which the Times article doesn’t even hint! It was written by Steven Bochco, who would go on to create Hill Street Blues  and NYPD Blues (and the — let’s say — underrated Cop Rock), and it co-stars luminaries like Myrna Loy, Pat Morita and an adorably young Blythe Danner, as Benedict’s wife, Janice, who at one point is voyeuristically filmed in a tennis outfit that you must see to believe. (Ah, 1970s TV!)

But most astonishingly, it was co-directed by Cassavetes, so it ranks as a sort-of undiscovered Cassavetes classic, something never mentioned in his oeuvre, the auteur going quasi-commercial for the only time in the many years between A Child is Waiting and his death in 1989. (The other co-director, who received credit, was Nicholas Colasanto, who viewers of a certain age will remember as “Coach” in early seasons of Cheers. Falk himself contributed as well.)

Cassavetes and Falk deliver edgy, lose, indie/verité-style performances, especially in the lengthy and difficult scenes that feature Columbo and Benedict just talking, ramblingly, and the script focuses on various of Cassavetes’ obsessions, all of which give the production a distinctly different vibe from the usual 1970s detective program. The movie is depressing, emotionally relentless, difficult and tragic. 

Benedict finds himself unable to extricate himself from a dalliance with his symphony’s pianist, Jenifer Welles. She, both jokingly and flirtingly (but certainly unseriously) threatens to make a scandal unless he leaves his wife. He seems to joke back. With a wry grin, he remarks, “It’s a marvelous choice you’ve given me.” Smiling, she replies: “You know I’m right.”

But is there even a hint of seriousness beneath Jenifer’s coy threats? 

If so, he’d lose his Janice, but to Jenifer, he objects only that his symphony would lose the benevolence of his wealthy mother-in-law. Is that his real motive, money? 

Still, he seems to relent, and Jenifer plays Chopin for him, happy and in love, at least till he kills her with a paperweight to the head. A moment earlier, he had loved her. 

“Love is a stream,” Gena Rowlands once insisted, in Cassavetes’ great film, Love Streams. “It’s continuous. It doesn’t stop.” To which her psychiatrist replied, wearily, “No. It does stop.” 

In Etude in Black, Cassavetes shows that love stops on a dime. And the man who loved you in the morning will, by evening, drag your body to the kitchen, position it just so, turn on the gas, then put a forged suicide note in your typewriter. 

Like any Columbo episode, whodunit is not the question; instead, the central mystery of the drama is one that drives many Cassavetes movies. What motivates a man? Here, is it love or money? Does he kill to keep largesse flowing to his symphony, or to keep the love of his wife? And, as always with Cassavetes, how the generally unhinged obsessions of the women in his life drive him to tragedy.

Early in the episode, Columbo examines the initial police report, which deems Jenifer’s death a suicide, which sends him off on a lengthy Cassavetes-esque rant, weird, quiet, heartbreaking. 

“Did you read this?” he asks a colleague sadly, in a low whisper. “This is what they gave me. This is the dossier that they gave me. ‘Female Caucasian piano player, born Kenosha, Wisconsin.’ This is what they gave me. Now look what I find in the scrapbook. Miss Wells London, Miss Wells Paris. Miss Welles, Miss Welles, Miss Welles. Genius at birth, talented, magnificent, feel and taste, fabulous. Look what the department gives me. ‘Female Caucasian piano player, born Kenosha, Wisconsin.’ Look what I find in the scrapbook. Look at these pictures. Girl has a wonderful shape, don’t you think? Look at those eyes. Bedroom eyes. Look what the department gives me. ‘Female Caucasian piano player, born Kenosha, Wisconsin.’ No bleach there, regular hair. No fear there. No heavy makeup. Got a girl with a body, money and a career. Got some column items to show the crowd she went with. Best people. Dukes, earls, politicians, big people. So add that. What’s missing? Her man. The man. Her person. Somebody. Woman like that’s gotta have somebody. Eyes like that. But that’s me. I’m paranoic, every time I see a dead body, I think it’s been murdered. Can’t imagine anyone murdering themselves. Especially a young girl like that. Beautiful eyes. But that’s me. I like to see everyone die of old age.”

The “fun” of Columbo usually involves watching a comically rumpled and faux-buffoonish detective run circles around a comically pompous, hateful murderer. Etude in Black throws away the formula. There are no laughs here, no fun. It is a great movie. 

^^^

Steven S. Drachman is the author of a science fiction trilogy, The Strange and Astounding Memoirs of Watt O’Hugh the Third, which is available in paperback from your local bookstore, Amazon and Barnes & Noble; it is also available as a Kindle e-book.