Le miroir se brisa

Surprisingly faithful adaption of the excellent Christie book adds some campy insults to the story by having Taylor and Novak square off as jealous rivals, but the outcome still carries a mild punch. Lansbury is excellent as Jane and it's nice to see Liz reunited with Hudson after their stint in the 50's on Giant. One of the better all star casts for an Agatha picture, with a nice recreation of St Mary Mead. Makes you feel like you're really in a small English village.

This is the film that launched Angela Lansbury's career as a television sleuth. The character she began playing four years later was much the same as the one she plays here - and it's not Miss Marple. Not that purists have any right to complain. Agatha Christie's Miss Marple isn't really Miss Marple, either. Miss Marple first appeared in "Murder at the Vicarage" (published 1930), and I can't help thinking of the character in that book as the REAL Miss Marple: a transparent, almost pathologically nosy woman who thoroughly enjoyed prying for its own sake, who as capable of solving mysteries because she was unable to rest so long as there was potential gossip she didn't know about. She wasn't a saint, she wasn't an inspired guesser, and she wasn't wise.

Almost immediately, though (in "The Tuesday Club Mysteries", published 1932), Miss Marple transformed into someone who WAS saintly, inspired and, worst of all, wise, and it's this latter, less agreeable Miss Marple that dominates the subsequent novels. What obligation does anyone else have to be authentic, if Agatha Christie herself wasn't? So far as I'm concerned the character is now fair game for any revisionist interpretation whatever; and if so, give me Angela Lansbury's energy over Joan Hickson's "authenticity" any day. ...Strange, then, that the film doesn't really work. The puzzle itself is a real humdinger - one of Christie's very best, in my opinion - and the denouement is handled very well. But there's something bookish and stifled about everything leading up to it. Most Christie adaptations have a similar plodding quality (notable exceptions: Billy Wilder's "Witness for the Prosecution", Sidney Gilliat's "Endless Night", and people who have seen René Clair's "And Then There Were None" think highly of that, too) - there's an AIR of excessive fidelity to the book, even when quite a few details have been changed.

One problem unique to this one is the set of laboured jokes at the expense of 1950s Hollywood - at least, the jokes WANT to be at the expense of 1950s Hollywood, but I think they come from "My Big Book of 1000 One-Liners", or some such.

Agatha Christie's plot and Angela Lansbury's casting as Miss Marple take a back seat to the Hollywood movie crew that invades the little village of St. Mary's Mead in this film adaptation of Christie's 1962 novel "The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side."

A movie about Mary, Queen of Scots is being filmed and two rival movie queens, played by Elizabeth Taylor and Kim Novak (in their only film together) are playing Mary and Elizabeth I. Catty and campy to the max, they snipe at each other as they jockey for power in making the film. Taylor is married to Rock Hudson (the director) and Novak is married to Tony Curtis (the producer). There's also an assistant (Geraldine Chaplin) who is having an affair with Hudson.

The locals are a pale lot compared to this Hollywood flash. But when a local woman (Maureen Bennett) is poisoned at a reception for the Hollywood crew, Miss Marple jumps into the fray with the help of her nephew from Scotland Yard (Edward Fox).

The murder mystery unveils amid the flying insults between Novak and Taylor as well as between Hudson and Curtis. But things turn very serious when another murder occurs.

This might be minor Christie and Lansbury strikes me as badly cast as Marple but the film is lively and fun. Others in the cast include Wendy Morgan as Cherry, Richard Pearson as the doctor, Charles Lloyd-Pack as a vicar, Carolyn Pickles as Miss Giles, Margaret Courtenay as Mrs. Bantry, and look for Pierce Brosnan as a movie extra.

There's also a film Marple goes to see called "Murder at Midnight" which features Dinah Sheridan, Nigel Stock, Ian Cuthbertson, and Anthony Steel, and which seems to serve no purpose other than to display Marple's powers of deductive reasoning.

Worth watching for Kim Novak and Elizabeth Taylor.

I liked this version of The Mirror Crack'd, and I am fond of the Joan Hickson version too. The Hickson version, it is true, is more faithful to the book, despite its liberties, but on its own merits this film is pretty good. The main merit is the performance of underrated character actress Angela Lansbury; she is terrific as Miss Marple, and Edward Fox does a great job as Inspector Craddock. The supporting cast are fine in their roles, Elizabeth Taylor overdoes Marina Gregg slightly but she plays with gusto, Rock Hudson is suitably subdued as Jason Rudd, and Kim Novak is delightful as Lola. The dialogues between Taylor and Novak are wonderfully witty, and often verging on hysterically funny. The film is beautifully shot, and the locations and costumes are lovely. The music is stunning too. However, the character of Heather Badcock is changed quite considerably here, and why she was changed to a naive village girl I still find perplexing. The film is overlong and has pacing problems, and the final solution was weak compared to how it could have been. On the whole, it is a movie worth seeing, and as I've said, see it for Angela. 7/10 Bethany Cox

They gathered an amazing celebrity cast for this, many of whom were top Hollywood draws in their younger years.

Unfortunately the performances are really inconsistent which takes the shine off things.

Liz Taylor is probably the biggest name and also the most variable. In some scenes she is fantastic, in others she is barely there, with a predilection for delivering her lines under a "beauty light" which I doubt was the director's choice.

Rock Hudson stands out and is the heart of the story. Kim Novak has the funniest lines as Taylor's siren rival. Tony Curtis is good too.

But Angela Lansbury's Jane Marple simply isn't on screen enough, with Edward Fox's wooden police officer doing far too much of the in-person investigation before Miss Marple weaves her magic.

And the reveal, although authentic to the book, is a bit too unexpected to be really satisfying.