Good part of Now You See him is at end atfer Santini burns the letter, and columbo goes "Poof" and say oh, that's not the letter, here's the letter...no here it is..no, he's got it over there,
At the end Santini destroyed the letter instantly in a huge flame. How come in the beginning after he kills Jerome he is sloppily burning the original letter in the sink?
i get your point john....and it's a good one. he could have easily have used the 'trick' that he did at the end of burning the letter instead of taking all that time to, as you say, sloppily burn it up in the sink.
good observation!
sorry,i'm not following you abe...
when santini goes to jerome's office he knew he was going to be looking for the letter...he should have had himself rigged up to flash burn it then instead of taking all that time to burn it the normal way.
when he arrives at the nightclub in the final scenes it is improbable that he would have had that flash thingy rigged on him...
i don't think i'm explaining this very well...
Cassa..the point I was trying to make was that the letter produced by Columbo would be expected by us to be made of normal paper.
Even though the flash flame may have ignited the letter, I still think that it would have burned more normally.
Your point is good that we would not necessarily have expected Santini to have the flash trigger/mechanism with him as he entered the final scene....but does Clark Kent travel without his "S" cape ??
I have used a flash flame in a little magic performance that I did once, and the little trigger igniter (which is hidden) carries a small tiny wad of flash material.
The effect is a quick flash and flame.
I just think that the paper (for columbo's letter) was rigged and made of flash material for the razzle dazzle symbolic magic counterplay of the story's ending.
Therefore the original question raised here, while being an interesting point or observation, is a moot point in my mind because the first scene burning was normal, and the second, although triggered by Santini, in a flash mode, the paper should have ignited but not gone up in a POOF.