Perfect cast and a good story

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

My favorite film version of "The Mirror Crack'd" is this one, from 1980, but only because of my great admiration for Angela Lansbury, who plays Jane Marple. The same story was also adapted twice for British television, with Joan Hickson in 1992 and with Julia McKenzie in 2010, and a third time in India under the title "Shubho Mahurat." I have seen, and can recommend, both English versions, particularly the 2010 film, which has terrific performances by Lindsay Duncan and Joanna Lumley, and also wisely includes an important character who is left out of the Lansbury version, a woman named Margot, played by Charlotte Riley (more on Margot below). Other reviewers have commented on the all-star (and aging-star) cast of this version: Rock Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor, Kim Novak (each of whom would make only two more movies after this), and Tony Curtis (in the final quarter of his 96-movie career, and blessed with a strong, wise-cracking character). None of the four were consistently great film actors, in my view, but they were pros by 1980 and they handle this material well, especially in the scenes they are lucky enough to share with the divine Edward Fox, who plays Dermot Craddock, a Scotland Yard inspector and also Marple's nephew.This review is less about the movie, which is an intricately constructed murder mystery, baffling and thus satisfying. Instead, I wonder about one particular aspect of the work as a whole: how the audience is meant to feel about the murderer, her motivation and her justification. (The spoiler alert is serious because I just revealed the murderer's gender, and will soon specify her name.) I suspect I'm in the minority, but if the story had continued, putting her on trial, I'd have convicted her without a second thought, in spite of all the admiration and sympathy being heaped on her by the other characters and, I think, the creators, perhaps including Agatha Christie herself (I haven't read her original book).The murderer is the central character, Marina Rudd (Elizabeth Taylor), an actress who is trying to make a comeback with the help of her director/ husband (Rock Hudson). She is presented as a fragile character, barely holding herself together as the location shoot begins. The murder happens at a party they host, where she is introduced to various people including a flibbertigibbet named Heather-- an ardent fan whom she had encountered once, several years earlier, during the war. Within minutes of politely listening to her prattle about that first brief meeting, Marina realizes that Heather was the person who had accidentally exposed her to German measles while she was pregnant, a pregnancy that had not been easy to achieve, and indeed had followed the adoption of three children (one of whom is Margo, from the McKenzie film version, a daughter Marina so neglected that she doesn't even recognize her as an adult). Because of exposure to rubella, Marina's son is born with a neurological birth defect, the severity of the which is not specified; whatever it was, however, was sufficient to overwhelm Marina, who abandons him to a mental institution, has a nervous breakdown, and tanks her career. Now, meeting the innocent vector of the virus, her immediate response is murder. Marina poisons her within minutes of meeting her.It seems, as I said, from the dialog and the treatment of Marina Rudd by other characters, that we are meant to have considerable sympathy for her. Well, count me out. I was appalled at how monumentally self-centered she was-- first, to abandon her disabled child; and then decades later to murder the woman who had, in all innocence, exposed her to the rubella virus; and finally to murder one of her staff, Ella (Geraldine Chaplin), because she *might* have witnessed the poisoning. (A precis of the original Christie novel informs me that Marina also murders the butler because he, too, *might* know too much. This Lansbury version doesn't venture into the neglect of the three adopted children.)There is no arrest, no trial. Marina either commits suicide by overdose, or she is assisted in that by her husband, or possibly, her husband kills her with an overdose in hope of sparing her the charge of multiple homicide. It is ambiguous. But I do wonder, if she had survived and there were a trial, would you want the jury to convict her? I know I would.

Following the all-star Agatha Christie extravaganzas Murder On The Orient Express and Death On The Nile, a similarly impressive cast is assembled for The Mirror Crack'd. The difference this time is that the story is not one of the many Hercule Poirot entries that Christie wrote; instead, it features her 'other' celebrated creation, Miss Marple. One of the main problems with the film is that Miss Marple doesn't really feature enough in the action. She is confined to her home for much of the film, meaning there are long stretches where she is absent from the screen (worse, this makes her ability to solve the murder by piecing together second-hand information, descriptions and accounts very hard to swallow. It's like asking us to believe Sherlock Holmes figured out the Hound of the Baskervilles mystery without going to Dartmoor, without leaving London... heck, without even setting foot outside 221b Baker Street!)A film crew descends on the small English village of St. Mary Mead. They are there to shoot a costume picture about the times of Queen Elizabeth 1st and Mary, Queen of Scots. The lead role is to be played by Marina Rudd (Elizabeth Taylor), once an international superstar and multi-Oscar-winning actress, now a forgotten face (she gave birth to a mentally retarded baby after contracting German measles during her wartime pregnancy, and subsequently suffered a severe nervous breakdown). Another key role is to be played by Lola Brewster (Kim Novak), a bitchy diva who revels in engaging in a war of words with Marina. Others present include the director, Marina's husband Jason Rudd (Rock Hudson); the producer Marty Fenn (Tony Curtis); Jason's production assistant and possible adulterous partner Ella Zielinsy (Geraldine Chaplin); and a whole entourage of actors and crew. During a pre-shoot party, a local busybody named Heather Babcock (Maureen Bennett) approaches Marina and bores her with a story about how much of a fan she is of her career. Later Heather dies after drinking a poisoned cocktail, possibly intended for Marina. Scotland Yard policeman Dermot Craddock (Edward Fox) arrives to find out whodunit. He calls upon his injured, housebound aunt, Jane Marple (Angela Lansbury), who lives locally, to seek her expertise in uncovering the killer.Lansbury is great as ever as Miss Marple, though she needed way more screen time than she is given. The verbal sparring between Taylor and Novak is enjoyably done, while Hudson plays Taylor's husband pretty well. Perhaps the best of the supporting performances comes from Fox as the Scotland Yard detective - a deceptively canny policeman who also happens to be a movie buff. Some of the actors are a little wasted, like Curtis, Chaplin and Charles Gray as a butler. The resolution to the mystery is decent enough, with sufficient red herrings thrown in to keep the killer concealed, but the closing scene is rather confused. John Cameron's score has a habit of launching off into an ill-fitting 'sexy' saxophone style which rarely fits the mood of the film, while Guy Hamilton directs it all in ploddingly efficient fashion. Not the best Christie adaptation ever made; nor the worst. A passable entry, but, given the calibre of the talent involved, it could and should have been much better.

Guy Hamilton directed this adaptation of the Agatha Christie novel that stars Angela Lansbury as Miss Jane Marple, an elderly but still spry and very smart woman who lives in a small English village that is visited by a film production company for location shooting. Elizabeth Taylor plays the star, and Rock Hudson plays her loyal husband. Tony Curtis plays her agent. When a young woman who had sought Taylor's autograph is found poisoned, she was believed to be an accidental victim, when it was the film star who was the real target, though Jane isn't so sure... Despite the good cast, this film is rather forgettable and uninspired; it certainly failed to launch a cinematic Miss Marple franchise like Peter Ustinov enjoyed with Poirot. Angela Lansbury would later find more lasting success on television as another female detective on "Murder She Wrote".

Sorry to say it, but IMHO this is a really bad production, particularly considered as a mystery film and particularly in comparison with the BBC productions (1992 and 2010) which show how this material should really be handled. Curtis and Novak play a film producer and a camera-hugging starlet as heavy-handed stereotypes straight out of a "Rocky and Bullwinkle" cartoon. Of course both can do better - clearly it's the director's fault for allowing/encouraging it. Taylor and Hudson try to provide some balance but can't overcome Hales's screenplay and Hamilton's direction. Both of the latter appear to believe that the viewers have never heard of Christie, Marple, or mysteries, and have to be forcibly guided through the game with cheats and walkthroughs. Plot points and clues which are subtly introduced, or discovered through deduction, in the novel (and in the BBC versions) are here spelled out loudly, notoriously, early, and with audiovisual effects.