Trailer of the Week - The Mirror Crack'd

The little Agatha Christie season I'm having on here continues with an attempt to bring Miss Marple back to cinemas, in a way that's a bit more faithful to Christie's characterisation of her.  Now this was made in the wake of a few other successful Christie adaptations, namely the 1974 version of Murder on the Orient Express, and the 1977 take on Death on the Nile.  Both of those were Poirot stories, so it makes sense to give her other great detective a go.  In fact, for the lead, they got one of the cast of Death on the Nile, as Angela Lansbury played one of the suspects in that (and she's fantastic in the role, devouring the scenery beautifully!).  Note, this was four years before her run as noted serial killer Jessica Fletcher in Murder She Wrote.  So then, how's the film itself?

Well, I mentioned that this was a closer adaptation than the Margaret Rutherford versions, but you can tell in the trailer that they are going for a lot of humour in this one.  Since the characters are based in the world of showbiz in this story, that's not a bad decision, the barbed dialogue does fit that world quite well.  However, the thing is the bulk of the mystery isn't on the film-set itself, most of the real drama is at the village of St. Mary Mead, so these backstabbing sessions between the big name performers (Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson, Tony Curtis, Kim Novak... damn, what a cast!) feel very detached from the main plot.  The thing about the story is that it's one of Christie's more melancholy, sadder tales.  I've often said that the mark of a great mystery story is that when the truth is uncovered, it should effectively reveal what the real story has been all along.  In this case, not spoiling anything, the revelation is one of a rather personal and tragic nature, it's not a bigger, more "showy" murder tale like those Poirot ones I mentioned.  Therefore this more comic tone for a lot of it (which probably comes a lot from director Guy Hamilton, who did a lot of the sillier early Bond films like Diamonds are Forever) is really at odds with the actual plot.  If you're wondering, the title (which for the book was the longer "The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side") is a line from a poem by Lord Tennyson, and refers to a key moment in the story, one strange look a character has which is a clue.  Well that moment is in the film... and it's not done well at all, it would take a lot of skill, actor, cinematographer, musicians, and director all in sync to get across what it needs to, and sorry to say that it doesn't quite work here.

Do you know the oddest thing about this being the choice of Miss Marple story to adapt?  There's very little of Miss Marple in the story, she's sidelined by an injury early on, so it's a nephew of her's (played by Edward Fox), who's an Inspector in Scotland Yard, who does the real legwork.  Why pick for your film introducing your take on the character one where there's so little of her?  There are others where she got more to do, why not get the rights to one of those?  The book that would have suited this style to a t would have been A Murder is Announced.  Even still, the film does change a few things from the book (including removing one murder altogether; what a weird thing to do with a murder mystery story.), so why not beef up her involvement too?  All of this means that this film is a bit of a disappointment really, which is a real shame given the amount of talent involved.  It's worth watching once, just for the barbs between Taylor and Novak, Lansbury is great as Marple (and really should have had a story with more to do!),and the original story is in here, but it's one of those films that's less than the sum of it's parts.  This wouldn't be Guy Hamilton's last attempt at Christie though, next time would be a lot more successful, and that's next Sunday's choice...