Verdict
Summary
Fans of Christie will enjoy this one for Lansbury’s wise and fun performance as Miss Marple, which seems to be a template performance for her future role on Murder She Wrote. Adequate, if a little lackluster on the whole, The Mirror Crack’d is for Christie fans and completists only. Kino Lorber’s string of 4K Ultra HD / Blu-ray releases from the works of Agatha Christie continues with The Mirror Crack’d, and it looks and sounds up to their usual high standards with a brand new 4K scan of the 35mm original camera negative.
Plot:
While a Hollywood movie is being produced in a small English village, a local is murdered, leading to a Scotland Yard investigation.
Review:
It’s 1953, and a three million dollar budgeted film about Mary, Queen of Scots is being shot on location in and around a small English village where the locals welcome the circus with open arms. The two lead actresses (played by Elizabeth Taylor and Kim Novak) have a bitter feud against each other, and the producer (played by Tony Curtis) does his best to keep the peace. Meanwhile, before the movie even rolls film, a big party where the locals toast the proceedings turns into a crime scene when a local woman is poisoned to death, leading the local authorities to believe that one of the actresses was the target. Luckily, Scotland Yard already has one of their own visiting the village at the time of the murder. Inspector Craddock (Edward Fox), who happens to be the nephew of celebrated sleuth and gardener extraordinaire Miss Marple (Angela Lansbury), begins investigating, uncovering motives galore for a handful of suspects, but he can’t get anywhere in the case without assistance from his sly and perceptive aunt!
From the book by Agatha Christie, The Mirror Crack’d is what we would call an “all-star cast whodunit” with glory era stars the likes of which we’ll never get again, and while it’s shot nicely by Guy Hamilton (Goldfinger, The Man With the Golden Gun), the film doesn’t quite have a compelling enough hook the way other Christie film adaptations have. Hamilton fared better with his Christie adaptation Evil Under the Sun, but fans of Christie will enjoy this one for Lansbury’s wise and fun performance as Miss Marple, which seems to be a template performance for her future role on Murder She Wrote. Adequate, if a little lackluster on the whole, The Mirror Crack’d is for Christie fans and completists only.
Kino Lorber’s string of 4K Ultra HD / Blu-ray releases from the works of Agatha Christie continues with The Mirror Crack’d, and it looks and sounds up to their usual high standards with a brand new 4K scan of the 35mm original camera negative. There’s an audio commentary by three film historians, plus a trailer, TV spots, a two-sided sleeve, and a slipcover. Let’s hope Kino Lorber releases more Christie films, namely Appointment With Death.
