The reason I bring it up is because of something I've heard about it. Matthew Rhys plays the murderer of the piece, a rave impresario opening a new nightclub. He kills a paparazzo blackmailing him with something that would look bad to his Mafia backers.
The character was apparently written as English, but Rhys is Welsh. After hearing Rhys's English accent, Falk had suggested he use his native accent. He took that as a vote of "no confidence" in his London accent. But I tend to think Falk just wanted something different, and they'd never had a guest star with a Welsh accent before. Ray Milland, born in Neath, had appeared in two episodes, but Milland had used that Transatlantic accent that actors from all over the place had used in Old Hollywood.
2 comments:
The sound of the Welsh language is becoming more rare with time so I can see how Peter Falk found it interesting. I hope Rhys wasn't too insulted.
We really enjoyed watching the early episodes of Columbo, the first four seasons were classic, but not long after that we faded on many of the rest. The 70s were definitely Peter Falk's most prolific and enjoyable period, he was very clever and also very funny. I can well imagine him being a little world weary at 75 but overall he was a seriously underrated star. We never did see that last episode, although what you've written makes it almost tempting to return.
The movie we definitely enjoyed was made in the late 80s, the time of the Cold War, Wim Wender's Wings of Desire. It's the story of a pair of angels in West Berlin who can't be seen by just anyone but Peter Falk is sensitive enough that he can see and interact with them. He plays himself as the actor of Columbo there with a company to film one of his mysteries. I can't say much about the movie mostly because it's been a number of years since we last saw it, but I do remember it's very beautiful, deliberately filmed in black and white, with a poem that runs through the story.
ps: I saw the temperature there this morning; I hope you have a cool spot where you can lie low.
Hope my whimsical choice of header didn't create any false impressions. Rhys was speaking English throughout the whole thing. But yes, the language and the dialect are both somewhat rare, and definitely not much heard in this country.
He was always a magnetic presence and had a lot of energy and ambition. Putting him in the role of Columbo was a strike of genius. Of course good scripts are also necessary. In the 70s he had a great writing staff behind him, as well as the production staff. That wasn't as much true later on. Whether this was a one-off exception or whether it could have led to further triumphs is an interesting question which of course will never be definitively answered. There are a lot of those.
I should really see Wings of Desire one of these days. Fascinating concept, him returning to his most famous role in late Cold War Berlin, under the watch of two angels. One of the angels went on to play Hitler, weirdly enough. Seems to have been made around the same time as The Princess Bride, where he was the grandfather telling the story. Good year for him.
I've been pretty much able to get cool when I need to be. And knock on wood those cicadas they've been talking about haven't been a problem. Houseflies are another story.
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