Patrick McGoohan is a great actor but often plays one-dimensional characters. Not this time! His character is, like almost all McGoohan's characters, arrogant and ruthless, but McGoohan also makes him funny in parts (the exchange with Columbo in the dining hall, where Columbo keeps dodging his (McGoohan's) question about why he (Columbo) was dissatisfied by Cadet Springer's account of his whereabouts the night before the murder), and even wistful and sympathetic, when he talks about retiring to his garden, and his white roses, while he and Columbo are smoking cigars together. This is a very beautiful scene: he is confessing to Columbo that he really has nothing in his life except his job running the Academy - no family, no love. Somehow, McGoohan maintains his dead-pan and monotone, but makes the scene as intimate as a monologue Othello might have spoken, or as the aria Rigoletto sings, regretting his own deformed personality: "Pari siamo ... O uomini, o natura!"
We also get plenty of the standard McGoohan greatness: his huge, penetrating shouting voice (he was also a theater-actor) and abrupt transition from a low growl to a theater-filling upper-register shout (as in "Atten-n-n-n-n-n-SHUN!!!" and "Check the vent. CHECK the VENT!!!") and, his steely menace ("I intend to find the cider, and PUNISH the CULPRITS!"); also his smooth delivery of cutting insults ("It's people like you who have turned this country into a moral junkyard.")
He also displays his special way of making his characters unsettling and unnerving, by pausing at inappropriate or surprising moments during a sentence. For example: his reply when Columbo asks what is in a blank cannon-charge: "Sodium nitrate and cotton (pause) wadding." And, "beware of a misplaced (pause) sense of justice!" And (speaking to Cadet Springer) "There is a distinct possibility that you (pause) may be charged (pause) with murder." He does the same thing in most of his movies.
He also demonstrates the art of acting while NOT speaking. Try turning off the sound and watching his expression of face change as he reacts when Columbo is speaking to him.
He can even emote with his back to the camera: when he's walking away and Columbo calls "Oh, one more thing", McGoohan stiffens his back and increases his height, kind of a reverse-wince, at being interrupted when he had thought the conversation was finished. It conveys his annoyance more effectively than an ordinary actor would be able to do in a full-screen close-up of his face.
I've watched this episode more than thirty times, and I'm still learning from it.
We also get plenty of the standard McGoohan greatness: his huge, penetrating shouting voice (he was also a theater-actor) and abrupt transition from a low growl to a theater-filling upper-register shout (as in "Atten-n-n-n-n-n-SHUN!!!" and "Check the vent. CHECK the VENT!!!") and, his steely menace ("I intend to find the cider, and PUNISH the CULPRITS!"); also his smooth delivery of cutting insults ("It's people like you who have turned this country into a moral junkyard.")
He also displays his special way of making his characters unsettling and unnerving, by pausing at inappropriate or surprising moments during a sentence. For example: his reply when Columbo asks what is in a blank cannon-charge: "Sodium nitrate and cotton (pause) wadding." And, "beware of a misplaced (pause) sense of justice!" And (speaking to Cadet Springer) "There is a distinct possibility that you (pause) may be charged (pause) with murder." He does the same thing in most of his movies.
He also demonstrates the art of acting while NOT speaking. Try turning off the sound and watching his expression of face change as he reacts when Columbo is speaking to him.
He can even emote with his back to the camera: when he's walking away and Columbo calls "Oh, one more thing", McGoohan stiffens his back and increases his height, kind of a reverse-wince, at being interrupted when he had thought the conversation was finished. It conveys his annoyance more effectively than an ordinary actor would be able to do in a full-screen close-up of his face.
I've watched this episode more than thirty times, and I'm still learning from it.