Before her 12-year run on television as Jessica Fletcher in the mystery series Murder, She Wrote, Angela Lansbury played the kindly, inquisitive, and razor sharp Miss Marple—Jessica’s obvious inspiration—in The Mirror Crack’d, adapted from the Agathie Christie novel. (Lansbury had also previously appeared in the Christie adaptation Death on the Nile.) Despite a star-studded ensemble cast—Elizabeth Taylor, Kim Novak, Rock Hudson, Tony Curtis—Lansbury is the reason to see Mirror. When a Hollywood production invades her small English hamlet and a villager is poisoned at a party on the eve of filming, Miss Marple investigates the case from the confines of her drawing room, thanks to an ankle that she sprains early on in the movie. Relying mostly on gossip—which she calls an “interest in the human condition”—and the footwork of her detective nephew (Edward Fox), Miss Marple sees through the Hollywood sleight of hand with amusing ease. The fun that Lansbury has here—busbodying about her cottage while talking of motives and poisons—is palpable and infectious. And as a sucker for Taylor’s melodramatic impulses (Cleopatara, A Little Night Music), I found her to be fairly dexterous—especially in a scene where she “performs” for the detective on a number of levels, while hitting notes of genuine pain and insecurity underneath the facade. Overall, The Mirror Crack’d isn’t much to look at—it’s shot by director Guy Hamilton like a TV episode of its era—but Taylor and Lansbury still turn it into a delightful whodunit.
(9/24/2024)
