The Mirror Crack'd (1980)

This is almost a 10. Highly underrated. Good plot, great atmosphere, wonderful star performances and a mystery that's hard to solve. What's not to like? No, it's not academy award material, and wasn't meant to be. MIRROR CRACK'D rates up there with EVIL UNDER THE SUN. Wish more films of this ilk were made today. Pure escapist entertainment with no special effects or gory scenes. Fine for the whole family. TAYLOR, LANSBURY, CURTIS and especially NOVAK are top notch. An actress named Maureen Bennett is also very good in her small role. Also note a young Pierce Brosnan in a bit role. This is really a well done who and why done it. Try seeing it a second time to spot some of the clues you've obviously missed the first time.

Fmovies: I have only bought 3 movies in my life, and this is one of them (the other two were: "Victor/Victoria" and "The Emerald Forest".

In another very memorable movie, "Misery", the Kathy Bates character goes into a tirade about how some of the Saturday serials she saw as a kid "didn't play fair with the audience". In contrast, "The Mirror Crack'd" respects the audience's intelligence. When you find out the reason for the murder in this movie, and who did it, the explanation makes perfect sense. Too many other mystery movies seem to revel in keeping the audience in the dark the whole time, and then "pull a fast one" when it comes time to reveal who did the murder and why. "The Mirror Crack'd" is far too cleverly written to ever be guilty of this.

Elizabeth Taylor plays an American actress desperately attempting a comeback after a personal tragedy not only devastated her career but her life as well. Rock Hudson plays her husband, who will be directing her big comeback movie.

Kim Novak is her bitter arch rival. Among other great lines of dialogue, one jab at Taylor is particularly scathing. In a rivalry reminiscent of Joan Crawford and Bette Davis, Kim Novak tries to publicly humiliate Taylor's character by saying, "Darling, not only have you kept your beautiful figure, but you've added so much to it" (I hope I'm remembering that line correctly)

Ms. Taylor gives a remarkable performance here. Her character is emotionally brittle, and just like watercolor paints blend together in odd and interesting combinations when mixed with water, her emotions seamlessly and fluidly change from one second to the next. Taylor's performance is perfectly in synch with the tone of this movie.

Chicago Tribune movie critic, Roger Ebert, once began a movie review by saying, "I hated this movie. I hated everything about this movie". I would like to end my movie review by saying, "I loved this movie. I loved everything about this movie".

Addendum, February 11, 2007 I am staying at the beautiful Hotel Marrols in Bratislava (Slovakia), and can you believe that The Mirror Crack'd is one of the 61 movies they offer? What am amazing coincidence!

The film is set in 1953 - hence the Saturday village fête being thrown in aid of the Coronation fund , referring to the Regal Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II on 2nd June that year . Beautiful and veteran film star Marina Gregg (Elizabeth Taylor , being final lead starring role in a cinema movie for this actress) is attempting to make a comeback after being off-screen for many years due to an emotional breakdown and substance abuse. She is supported by her fifth husband and director of the movie, Jason Rudd (Rock Hudson) . They rent a manor house in St. Mary Mead and host a reception for the villagers . Then, there appears another famous actress Lola Brewster (Kim Novak,though Natalie Wood was the first choice but turned the role down after disagreements over cast billing and the portrayal of the character itself) , a real contender to Marina and producer's (Tony Curtis) wife . Marina Rudd (Elizabeth Taylor) and Lola Brewster (Kim Novak) in the period costumer they are shooting within this film were Mary, Queen of Scots and Elizabeth I respectively . At the reception for the fading film star making a screen comeback , a gushing, pushy fan is poisoned by a drink apparently meant for the actress . There she met Gregg briefly before her breakdown and being poisoned by a drink apparently meant for the film star . Because of Gregg's celebrity status, Police Superintendent assigns one of his most skilled and discreet investigators, Inspector Craddock, (Edward Fox) who happens to be Miss Marple's (Angela Lansbury who was only 54 when she played the elderly Miss Marple) nephew . Together they set about investigating the murder , death threats and jealousy associated with the case .

This movie was made and released about eighteen years after Agatha Christie's source novel of the same name was first published in 1962. The film is a detective story in which you are the detective . In the picture there is mystery , emotion , suspense , actors's interpretations are acceptable and wonderful outdoors from Shoreham, St. Clere Estate, Heaverham, Kent, England, UK . The picture eventually arrived fourth in the Brabourne-Goodwin series after Murder on Orient Express , Death on the Nile and Evil under the sun . Nice acting by the great Angela Lansbury , though she stated that playing Miss Marple was 'terrific' and that she 'enjoyed' it very much but thought the film was 'dreadful'. The support cast is pretty good such as Tony Curtis , Geraldine Chaplin , Charles Gray , Nigel Stock and the last feature film of both Anthony Steel, Charles Lloyd and Dinah Sheridan. And one of the first films by Pierce Brosnan at a brief role .

The movie gets a lush costume design by Phyllis Dalton and adequate production design by Michael Stringer . Colorful and sunny cinematography by excellent cameraman Christopher Challis . Sensitive and atmospheric musical score by John Cameron . Passable performances from all-star-cast , a number of the cast had appeared in the earlier'producers Brabourne-Goodwin Agatha Christie movies . Being remade (TV) with Agatha Christie's ¨Miss Marple: The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side¨ by Norman Stone with Joan Hickson , Claire Bloom , Judy Cornwell and Barry Newman .

With this film, Angela Lansbury became the second actress to play Miss Marple on the big screen after Margaret Rutherford had made the role famous during the 1960s. Lansbury was the fourth if one counts TV where Gracie Fields and Inge Langen also played Marple. Subsequently in TV was starred

The Mirror Crack'd fmovies. How many of us have fantasies about English country villages and cottages therein? This movie will take you directly into such things and your eyes will be delighted with the settings. How cozy it all is - no wonder they call light-hearted mysteries "cozies." I was struck by Angela Lansbury's height. Either she is a tall woman or the ceilings in these adorable cottages are quite low. Angela is Miss Marple, of course, and she begins the flick by demonstrating, at a public screening of a movie murder mystery, how quickly she can solve a complicated crime. Elizabeth Taylor is queenly and is married to the scrumptious Rock Hudson who, although he dallies with a strenuously self-adoring Kim Novak, appears to love her dearly. Edward Fox, a much-enjoyed actor whom I loved in '95's "A Month by the Lake" with Vanessa Redgrave, is so fresh and youthful here! Tony Curtis as the brash producer strikes not one false note - (or else they are all somewhat false as befits his role as wheeler-dealer!) My girlfriends and I may study and duplicate Miss Marple's cottage decor in our own homes after ooh-ing and ahh-ing over the famous sleuth's movie digs! Note: Angela Lansbury proves in this film that she can chop and dice with the best chefs. And she uses a very long, sharp blade, worthy of a Maven of Murder!

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.

Being a fan of both Agatha Christie, Angela Lansbury, and Rock Hudson I watched this film with pleasure. The cast here has done a great job, everybody is convincing, even Liz Taylor, although her acting is at times overdone, as usual. The movie has a good pace, dialogues are witty and humorous, and the mystery itself engaging. I think the proportions of each character's involvement in the story are true to the original (I was afraid they'd make Miss Marple into an action figure or something, but was glad to see she stayed in the background to make her grand entrance in the finale). All in all, it's a very good and convincing adaptation of Christie's book.