The Mirror Crack'd
Agatha Christie's The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side is a bizarre choice for an adaptation, a Miss Marple mystery that limits the amount of time you can feature the detective, and The Mirror Crack'd is an equally head-scratching film in hiding our leading lady even more than the original novel did making Marple a supporting character in her own mystery.
Making alterations to the novel, where a film couple move to the area for some peace and quiet, in the film version an entire film production inexplicably hits St. Mary Mead including director Jason Rudd (Rock Hudson) and his wife Marina (Elizabeth Taylor), a former starlet hoping to make a triumphant return following a lost pregnancy and nervous breakdown. Complicating things are the film's producer (Tony Curtis) and the rival actress (Kim Novak) he forces into the film.
When a local woman is murdered at a party celebrating the film production's arrival, Miss Marple (Angela Lansbury), still recovering from an injured foot, solves the mystery mostly through the use of a proxy (Edward Fox) but not before two more murders occur (including Geraldine Chaplin whose performance is the best thing about this film). As a precursor to Lansbury taking on the role of Jessica Fletcher the film has some limited interest, but the structure of the script keeps her off-screen for the vast majority of the film until the big solve at the end.
Before being hired, director Guy Hamilton admitted to producers he wasn't an Agatha Christie fan, and, not surprisingly, we ended up with a not very good Agatha Christie film. The casting of Taylor and Hudson is interesting in an attempt to add some star power to the proceedings, but the pair are squeezed into what feels more like a TV-movie than a feature film which earned mixed results from both critics and audiences.
- Title: The Mirror Crack'd
- IMDb: link
