Teresa Reviews “The Mirror Crack’d” (1980)
Teresa reviews “The Mirror Crack’d” (1980) and suggests watching it more for the stars than the story.
Read more of Teresa’s Agatha Christie movie reviews at Peschel Press.
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Fidelity to text: 2 & 1/2 poison bottles
The producers played fast and loose with Agatha.
Quality of movie: 3 poison bottles
Problems, problems, problems. So why should you bother with this version? To watch Elizabeth Taylor and Kim Novak chew up the scenery and each other, naturally. They are a hoot.
There were no subtitles which was a major drawback. The main reason to see this particular version of The Mirror Crack’d is to watch Elizabeth Taylor (as Marina Gregg) and Kim Novak (as Lola Brewster) spar. These were some of their last film roles and they had a wonderful time playing catty, aging, at-each-other’s-throat divas. Great costumes too, including in the movie within the movie when they played Mary, Queen of Scotts (Elizabeth) and Queen Elizabeth I (Kim).
As a side note, the filmmakers mysteriously changed Marina Gregg’s last name to that of her husband, Jason Rudd! There’s no reason for that decision at all because actresses don’t change their professional names when they marry. Or divorce. Or remarry. Or divorce again and take up with husband number three. It confuses the fans. At most, you’ll get a hyphenation such as Farrah Fawcett becoming Farrah Fawcett-Majors when she married Lee Majors. After the divorce, she went back to Farrah Fawcett.
Another drawback, I’m sorry to report, was Angela Lansbury as Miss Marple. This is not her fault. I just couldn’t get past my mental image of Jessica Fletcher. The Mirror Crack’d was released to theaters in 1980 and Murder, She Wrote still lay four years in the future at the time. I wouldn’t have had a problem in 1980 but today? I kept seeing Jessica Fletcher. It’s hard not to! The two sleuths have so much in common, although Jessica Fletcher was a far snappier dresser than Miss Marple.
This doesn’t always happen: In Knives Out, Chris Evans played Hugh Ransom Drysdale and after about fifteen minutes, I stopped looking for his Captain America shield. What allowed me was that role was radically different from Captain America. There’s not nearly as big a difference between Miss Marple and Jessica Fletcher, other than nationality. They’re both crime-solving older spinsters and are always the smartest people in the room.
In addition to dowdy-ing up Ms. Lansbury, the filmmakers did a bad job artificially aging her and it shows. She was fifty-five when she made this picture. They would have been better off rewriting Miss Marple as a fifty-five-year-old woman. Another questionable choice was having Miss Marple smoke cigarettes! I’ve read almost all of Agatha Christie’s oeuvre and Miss Marple never, ever smoked.
It was jarring.
You also never, ever saw Miss Marple in bed in her nightie in any of the books. You do here. She’s wearing a discreet, tasteful nightgown but even so, it felt wrong to see Miss Marple in her bedroom.
The filmmakers changed the setting of the film to 1953. There was no reason for this decision that I could see. The novel was published in 1962 and it would have been perfectly acceptable to keep the setting as it was. Agatha Christie did not write historicals. She wrote contemporaries and her characters moved with the times.
The ITV series Agatha Christie’s Marple all had their time adjusted to the 1950’s. This was a stylistic and continuity choice on the part of those producers and it permitted a more uniform tone to the series as a whole and let them keep using the same wardrobes, cars, accessories and so forth.
This film did not have that constraint.
Another area where the movie failed was in rewriting the script. A big part of Marina Gregg’s backstory is her children. A major plot point is the discovery that the attractive young photographer is actually Marina Gregg’s estranged adopted daughter. Gone. Vanished. And yet, according to Internet Movie Database, Margot Bence (played by Marella Oppenheim) gets a credit. She never speaks. We never even see her face as she’s always seen behind a camera, taking pictures. I can only assume that Marella Oppenheim filmed scenes that were all left on the cutting room floor, because if she was an extra, she wouldn’t be listed in the closing credits.
This was a major mistake.
Here’s another. Ella Zelinsky (Jason Rudd’s faithful assistant) was murdered, but it’s never revealed who did it! Miss Marple does not ignore bodies. She knows who the killer was. But in this film? Crickets. The audience is left hanging.
Then there’s the weird pacing. The camera lingers on bucolic landscapes, tours of Miss Marple’s cottage at various times of the day, birdwatching far in excess of what the plot demands and so on. I have no idea why. Those choices didn’t add one iota to the film, slowed it down, and made sure that there was no time for important plot points. It’s not like the novel didn’t provide plenty of material to work with.
Dolly Bantry got rewritten entirely. She’s no longer Jane Marple’s friend. Worse, her most important scene in the novel is assigned to Jane! This is where Dolly is an eyewitness to Marina Gregg’s blank, frozen stare at the party when she’s introduced to Heather Babcock. Dolly quotes Tennyson’s The Lady of Shallot to explain what she saw. Not in this movie.
The ending was all wrong. The novel is ambiguous as to Jason Rudd’s culpability. In the film, he’s guilty until he’s not. Wrong, wrong, wrong. The filmmakers also excised everything about Marina Gregg’s traumatic life and how her entourage excused everything about her behavior because of said trauma. Marina Gregg lost a lot of depth due to that decision.
By now you may be asking what the filmmakers did right.
This one is easy. They cast Elizabeth Taylor as Marina Gregg. She’s having fun in the role and it shows. Kim Novak plays her archrival, Lola Brewster. Kim’s having a ball. They snipe and snap at each other and the film springs to life. These ladies make the film worth watching. Too bad the DVD isn’t subtitled because you miss a lot of zingers.
You also get Tony Curtis as Martin N. Fenn, long-suffering producer of the movie-within-a-movie and Lola Brewster’s current paramour. Tony Curtis enjoys himself hugely as he plays the archetypal Hollywood producer. He chews the scenery with gusto.
You also get — a bonus today although it wasn’t in 1980 — about thirty seconds of a very young Pierce Brosnan playing an extra in the movie-within-a-movie. He’s the one Elizabeth Taylor is cuddling to her bosom when she’s being Mary, Queen of Scotts.
Overall, I was disappointed in the 1980 version of The Mirror Crack’d. It has plenty to like, particularly Elizabeth Taylor, Kim Novak, and Tony Curtis. If you’re going to watch all the Agatha Christie-based films, you’ll want to see this one too.
However, if you’re only watching the best versions, stick to the ITV television series version. It’s much better and much truer to the original novel.
