On November 25th, 1989, Columbo wandered into the glamorous,
vaguely ridiculous, and very sun-drenched world of celebrated artist Max
Barsini in Murder: A Self-Portrait.
📺Watch it for free, here on Tubi
Patrick Bauchau plays Barsini, a famous painter with a beachfront
house, a beach-adjacent ego, and a domestic arrangement that would make even
the more permissive corners of 1970s Columbo raise an eyebrow. He lives with
Vanessa, his current wife; Julie, his young model/muse/lover; and Louise, his
first wife, who lives next door and remains emotionally tethered to him in ways
that are unhealthy, sad, and eventually fatal.
When Louise decides she is finally leaving Max for good, he
responds the way Columbo murderers often do: with a clever alibi, a very
calm performance, and just enough overconfidence.
Meet Max
The episode wastes very little time letting us know what
kind of man Max Barsini is. He’s talented, cultivated, seductive, controlling,
and almost certainly exhausting to be around for more than ten minutes. He has
the sort of artistic temperament that television writers love because it lets
everybody talk about genius while the genius himself behaves like a spoiled
child.
Bauchau gives Max a smooth European polish, and that helps a
lot. The part could easily have been played as a shouting, paint-smeared
cartoon. Sometimes the episode does ask him to shout and fling things around,
but Bauchau is at his best when he goes still: smiling faintly at Columbo, and
assuming that ordinary rules simply do not apply to him. The more I watch this
episode the more I admire Bauchau’s performance and I wonder if he gets
overlooked because the episode itself is a bit muddled and not often considered
a favorite.
His “artistic passion” is mostly possession. He doesn’t love
Louise, Vanessa, or Julie so much as he collects them, arranges them, and
expects them to stay in the composition where he placed them.
Patrick Bauchau
Dog gets an opening number
Before the murder plot really gets moving, we spend time at
a dog show. This is one of those later-Columbo choices that can either charm
you or test your patience depending on your mood. Dog is always welcome, of
course, but the scene feels as if the episode is announcing that this will be a
two-hour movie and needs to fill time. In this case, a bit over 3 minutes of
time.
The off-camera bite
A small sub-bit to the dog show is when Dog bites Columbo.
Except, of course, he doesn’t really. We don’t actually see the bite, we just
see Falk react to it. No surprise – it’s easier, and safer, to mime the bite
(and have the sound guys add some “bark/bite sound effect”) than it is to try
and train a basset to safely bite Falk on cue.
The very Barsini household
The early domestic scenes are important because they
establish what Louise is trying to escape. Vanessa is jealous. Julie is needy.
Louise is weary and still trapped by the gravitational pull of Max. Meanwhile
Max floats above it all.
Louise deserved better
Fionnula Flanagan gives the episode its strongest emotional
center. Louise is not on screen long enough, but she suggests years of
compromise, fear, resignation, and finally a little hope.
That makes her death one of the sadder murders of the ABC
era. Louise isn’t killed because she is greedy or cruel or trying to blackmail
the killer in the grand Columbo tradition. She is killed because she is
leaving. Max senses that his control over her is ending, and that makes him
dangerous.
Shera Danese and Isabel García Lorca
Shera Danese gets one of her largest Columbo roles here as
Vanessa, and Isabel García Lorca plays Julie. Their scenes can be uneven, but I
do think the broadness is partly built into the writing. Vanessa and Julie are
not given much inner life beyond jealousy, competition, and eventual rebellion.
I have my usual criticism of Shera – she’s basically the
same character in every episode. Would this role have been much different if it
was Geraldine Ferguson or Trish Fairbanks married to Barsini?
Ultimately, and slightly disappointingly, Vanessa and Julie
are almost irrelevant to the story. Aside from establishing that Barsini is a
man with non-traditional morals and giving Bauchau a few interesting moments as
the family patriarch (and having Julie for some eye-candy) they didn’t really
matter to the murder.
They aren’t part of his alibi, they aren’t accomplices. They
don’t really give any useful clues to Columbo.
The long scene of the them walking on the beach with Columbo was conceptually interesting, but really just felt like filler.
Edit out all of the Vanessa and Julie stuff and it’s the
same story about a controlling artist who murders his ex-wife when he fears she’s
going to reveal his past.
The murder
The murder plan is a good one in broad outline. Max
establishes himself in Vito’s old apartment, supposedly painting the bar scene.
He has already prepared the painting in advance, hidden the finished canvas
under a blank one, and arranged the day so witnesses will assume he has been
working steadily. Then he slips out by the fire escape, heads for the beach,
attacks Louise with a solvent-soaked rag, and leaves her to drown.
That is classic Columbo construction: a respectable public
alibi. The fun is in watching the Lieutenant figure out where the trick must
be, then finding the one detail that makes the trick possible.
Paint thinner: not subtle
I do wonder about the paint thinner. Max is an artist, so it
is thematically tidy, but it is not exactly the cleanest murder weapon. It
leaves a smell, it can leave traces, and it is the kind of detail a medical
examiner might find interesting even if everyone initially calls the death an
accident. It’s possible, of course, that any traces of the paint thinner would
be washed away by the ocean.
Then again, Columbo murderers often gamble that the first
explanation will become the permanent explanation. Max doesn’t need the death
to withstand infinite scrutiny. He just needs it to look enough like drowning
for everyone to nod, sign the papers, and move on.
The contact lens
Columbo’s first real hook is beautifully small: Louise was
found wearing only one contact lens, while the other lens was in its case. Why
would a strong swimmer go into the ocean like that?
This is the kind of clue the show does best. It’s not a
giant neon arrow saying MURDER. It’s just an untidy fact that refuses to lie
flat. Columbo keeps returning to it because it suggests Louise’s final actions
were not natural. Somebody interrupted her routine.
No footprints?
It always struck me that Max would have left footprints in
the sand being there with Louise. Maybe the sand was too disturbed for them to
stick out, but it seems like a careful examination of the scene might have
suggested somebody else was there with Louise while she was swimming.
Vito Scotti returns
Vito Scotti appears as Vito, and any time Vito Scotti turns
up in Columbo, the episode immediately gets a little better.
Here, Vito is tied directly into the alibi. His bar and old
upstairs apartment are not just colorful locations; they are the stage Max uses
for his performance. The painting has to convince Vito, and through Vito, it
has to convince the world.
Scotti is always good, but his “Vito” feels quite natural.
He’s a guy you’d want to go have a drink with in his bar.
Paradise Cove
The beach scenes are among the episode’s best assets. There
is a chilly beauty to Louise’s death even in all that Malibu sunlight. The
setting feels open and exposed, which makes the murder more unsettling. Max is
not dragging someone down a dark alley. He is committing murder in a place that
looks like a postcard.
Paradise Cove also has a nice bit of Columbo history. It
turns up in multiple episodes, including the famous jog in An Exercise inFatality and Abigail Mitchell’s confrontation with Edmund in Try and Catch Me.
Dr. Hammer and the tapes
George Coe plays Dr. Sydney Hammer, Louise’s psychologist
and new partner. He’s useful to the plot because he has the tapes Louise made
describing her dreams. He is also useful because he gives the episode
permission to get very, very Freudian.
Whether a therapist would hand those tapes to the police
quite so freely is another question. Whether Columbo would play them in the
presence of Louise’s ex-husband, who is also a potential suspect, is another
question. But Columbo has always had a flexible relationship with procedure
when a good clue is in reach.
The dream sequences
The dream material is the episode’s signature flourish.
Louise’s memories come back in stylized black-and-white sequences, with surreal
details, word association, and Max’s old crime buried under layers of
symbolism.
Mon oncle, monocle
The “mon oncle” to “monocle” chain is either delightfully
Columbo or absolutely absurd, depending on how generous you are feeling. The
same goes for the berries/buried idea. It is clever in the sense that somebody
had to sit at a desk and make the words connect. It is less convincing as the
subconscious trail that solves a murder.
To be honest I found the dream analysis a bit tedious, and
ultimately Columbo never really pursues if Max actually killed Harry. That
always struck me a bit odd, especially as Columbo seemed to be circling around
the truth, that he wouldn’t ask Vito if he could check out the cellar. I like
that the episode tries something strange. And the sequences are a little cinemagraphically
interesting (for example, the way Columbo and Barsini are set pieces in the
dreams) but it feels like a lot of work for not much gain.
Harry Chudnow
The older murder is one of the more interesting parts of the
story, and I wish the episode had leaned into it sooner. Harry Chudnow, Max’s
unscrupulous agent, vanished years earlier, and Louise’s dreams suggest she saw
more than she wants to remember.
This gives Max a more substantial motive. Louise is not
merely leaving him. She may be carrying the last piece of a murder he has kept
hidden for years. If she starts talking freely with Dr. Hammer, the old body in
the basement could finally stop being old history.
A better version?
There is probably a tighter, darker 75-minute version of
Murder: A Self-Portrait that focuses almost entirely on Max, Louise, the old
murder, and the portrait sessions with Columbo. The Vanessa-and-Julie material
could be trimmed down to background texture. The dog show could be a brief gag.
The dream sequences could be fewer and sharper.
That version might have been terrific. The version we have
is more uneven, but also more eccentric. And it doesn’t always work.
Columbo sits for a portrait
The portrait sessions are the episode’s best recurring idea.
Max assumes that painting Columbo will let him dominate the detective: make him
sit still, study him, categorize him, turn him into an object. It is a very
Barsini move.
But Columbo is at his most dangerous when a murderer
mistakes his politeness for passivity.
The women walk out
Vanessa and Julie finally leaving Max is particularly satisfying. Suitcases fly, and Max shouts some more, but the ladies are calm and determined.
Max loses Louise because he murders her. He loses Vanessa and Julie because, for once, they see him clearly. Columbo doesn’t just solve the case; his investigation seems to drain the glamour from Max’s life. By the end, the great man is alone with his canvas and his panic.
And did you notice that every time Max has a spat with his women that Columbo is there immediately afterwards to make his day just a little bit worse?
The final reveal
And then there is the painting itself. The final portrait of
Columbo is terrific. It doesn’t flatter him, exactly, but it understands him.
The raincoat, the posture, the slightly haunted eyes — it feels less like Max
painted the shabby little policeman he thought he saw and more like he
accidentally painted the man who was going to catch him.
Columbo in the ABC era
Murder: A Self-Portrait is very much a “new Columbo”
episode. It is longer, glossier, a little more indulgent, and more willing to
lean into concept than the leanest NBC stories. Sometimes that hurts it.
Sometimes it gives it room to be weird.
James Frawley directs with an eye for the locations and the
dream imagery, and Patrick Williams’ music gives the episode a moodier flavor
than some of the surrounding entries. Even when the writing stretches, the
episode often looks and sounds like it is trying to be about something: art,
memory, possession, and the way a murderer turns people into props.
Love it or hate it, Falk and the crew spared no effort
making this one.
A Small Goof
Just a few more things...
- I don’t think Columbo knows instantly that Max did it. He is suspicious, yes, because he is Columbo and because suspicious rich people at the beach are basically his natural habitat.
- Barsini is depicted as a painter (he says “artist”) but I notice that his studio includes several sculptures. There’s never any mention of him being a sculptor though.
- I kinda like the moment with the lifeguard on the beach when he confirms that Louise was a strong swimmer.
- I wonder if naming the bar (and the character) "Vito's") was a subtle tribute to Columbo favorite Vito Scotti.
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