The film is set in 1953 - hence the Saturday village fête being thrown in aid of the Coronation fund , referring to the Regal Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II on 2nd June that year . Beautiful and veteran film star Marina Gregg (Elizabeth Taylor , being final lead starring role in a cinema movie for this actress) is attempting to make a comeback after being off-screen for many years due to an emotional breakdown and substance abuse. She is supported by her fifth husband and director of the movie, Jason Rudd (Rock Hudson) . They rent a manor house in St. Mary Mead and host a reception for the villagers . Then, there appears another famous actress Lola Brewster (Kim Novak,though Natalie Wood was the first choice but turned the role down after disagreements over cast billing and the portrayal of the character itself) , a real contender to Marina and producer's (Tony Curtis) wife . Marina Rudd (Elizabeth Taylor) and Lola Brewster (Kim Novak) in the period costumer they are shooting within this film were Mary, Queen of Scots and Elizabeth I respectively . At the reception for the fading film star making a screen comeback , a gushing, pushy fan is poisoned by a drink apparently meant for the actress . There she met Gregg briefly before her breakdown and being poisoned by a drink apparently meant for the film star . Because of Gregg's celebrity status, Police Superintendent assigns one of his most skilled and discreet investigators, Inspector Craddock, (Edward Fox) who happens to be Miss Marple's (Angela Lansbury who was only 54 when she played the elderly Miss Marple) nephew . Together they set about investigating the murder , death threats and jealousy associated with the case . This movie was made and released about eighteen years after Agatha Christie's source novel of the same name was first published in 1962. The film is a detective story in which you are the detective . In the picture there is mystery , emotion , suspense , actors's interpretations are acceptable and wonderful outdoors from Shoreham, St. Clere Estate, Heaverham, Kent, England, UK . The picture eventually arrived fourth in the Brabourne-Goodwin series after Murder on Orient Express , Death on the Nile and Evil under the sun . Nice acting by the great Angela Lansbury , though she stated that playing Miss Marple was 'terrific' and that she 'enjoyed' it very much but thought the film was 'dreadful'. The support cast is pretty good such as Tony Curtis , Geraldine Chaplin , Charles Gray , Nigel Stock and the last feature film of both Anthony Steel, Charles Lloyd and Dinah Sheridan. And one of the first films by Pierce Brosnan at a brief role .The movie gets a lush costume design by Phyllis Dalton and adequate production design by Michael Stringer . Colorful and sunny cinematography by excellent cameraman Christopher Challis . Sensitive and atmospheric musical score by John Cameron . Passable performances from all-star-cast , a number of the cast had appeared in the earlier'producers Brabourne-Goodwin Agatha Christie movies . Being remade (TV) with Agatha Christie's ¨Miss Marple: The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side¨ by Norman Stone with Joan Hickson , Claire Bloom , Judy Cornwell and Barry Newman . With this film, Angela Lansbury became the second actress to play Miss Marple on the big screen after Margaret Rutherford had made the role famous during the 1960s. Lansbury was the fourth if one counts TV where Gracie Fields and Inge Langen also played Marple. Subsequently in TV was starred by Joan Hickson who played a successful series . And finally Agatha Christie's Marple series starred by Geraldine McEwan and Julia McKenzie as Miss Marple . This film was professionally directed by Guy Hamilton though contains some flaws , poor edition and sometimes results to be slow moving as well as boring . Guy Hamilton also directed ¨Live and let die¨, ¨the man with the golden gun¨ with Roger Moore and the best Bond : ¨Goldfinger¨ with Sean Connery . Being final Agatha Christie adaptation directed by Guy Hamilton , his first was Evil under the sun . The two pictures were back-to-back consecutive movies for Hamilton who prior to this movie had not been "totally enamored" by the Christie books . Rating : passable and acceptable , well worth watching . The flick will appeal to suspense lovers and Agatha Christie novels buffs .

Enjoyable as a period piece, but more like the period it was set in - a title card says 1953 - than 1980, when it was made. With some really uneven or just plain consistently bad or mediocre performances, plus some baffling directorial choices and a clichéd script. Kim Novak doesn't just show up in a car from 6 years later, but the most recognizably 1959 car possible, a white Cadillac convertible with the top down making the famous garish fins look even bigger. The only thing campier than the Cadillac is Kim Novak's performance. Her portrayal of a preening bitchy Hollywood star isn't remotely believable. Liz Taylor's version is less bad, being not very believable (but not was wildly ridiculous as Novak) when the character is in public and at least sometimes not bad when the character is in private. Angela Lansbury is sort of passable, but plays the character in as broad and clichéd a way as the nearly identical lady detective (except of course a Maine rather than British accent) she later did on TV. British actor Edward Fox is fine of course. The real surprise is Tony Curtis. He's the only American actor in the film who is natural and relaxed and motivated. He plays the producer as a somewhat comic character, as obviously they were all directed to do, but he's the only one who really seems otherwise like a real guy, Bronx accent included. And as others have mentioned....whose idea was it for Miss Marple to light up? Not even a line justifying it, like maybe "Nothing like sucking on a fag after a hard day sleuthing and deducing, I always say." Followed by blowing a couple of nice smoke rings.But its an interesting film. Probably the script writer(s) is way better than the truly terrible director. First, it's Agatha Christie and even better, a Miss Marple mystery. Second, there's this whole meta thing going on on several levels. It opens with (spoiler alert, sort of) a black and white 50's style British mystery film which we find out is being shown to the village by the vicar when the film breaks. Then the color "real" stuff starts. But it's about a film being shot in the same illage - an American film featuring American actors but about British historical monarchy subjects. The American stars of the film portrayed by Liz Taylor and Kim Novak are supposed to be sort of has-been American film stars, who of course are more known for star quality than acting chops, kind of like the actual actors cast in the roles. The very British inspector is such a fan of the films starring the character portrayed by Liz Taylor he has seen them multiple times and thinks she is a great actress. The local girl, grown up, is star struck and had an encounter back in the 40's with the character portrayed by Liz Taylor which was the greatest thing that ever happened to her in her whole life and her story of the encounter is pivotal to the plot. It's the director who screwed all this very promising stuff up. The fake black and white film at the opening seems really fake. A real period British film would feature non-method but in its own way very intelligent acting, which this does not. Liz Taylor and Kim Novak, as I mentioned above, are not very believable (Liz) or absurdly unbelievable (Kim) as stars out in public. Kim Novak is also quite unbelievably bad when shown being shot in scenes for the film they are shooting. Oh,also any film using a built set for some scenes would have been shot on a British or American sound stage anyway, not at a nonexistent sound stage in the village. Like in some earlier American films, reality is sacrificed for some idea of reality. A good director would have not violated reality for hackneyed ideas of what the script is about. Here's how to direct famous American actors portraying famous American actors: get them to act as well as they can in any scenario, not portray the meaning of the scene or how they think the character should act. Being there and listening and allowing and being vulnerable and are the only things that ever work, in something semi-satirical or whatever.

It is so elegant picnic, through elegant places, and among elegant people. You're accompanied by lovely music, serenely-colored cinematography, and sedate directing. This is my kind of "afternoon", "calm down", "have a nice time", movie. Yet it has more to it. More of what can exceed the eye enjoyment to the mind enjoyment.Talking about the eye enjoyment; Taylor, Hudson, Novak, Lansbury, Chaplin, Fox, and Curtis are all here and doing well. I believe it wasn't the tradition back then with movies based on Agatha Christie's novels, rather it was another battle in the war between cinema and TV since the late 1950s, where mobilizing many stars was always a good weapon. I love to think sometimes that the good the TV reaches, in terms of quality and popularity, the more these star-studded movies are made. Notice well that the 1970s was the golden age of the "crime solvers" shows on TV, thus gathering all star cast for a crime solver movie at the time was more like "we can fight fire with fire" from the cinema side !Lansbury was wow as Miss Marple. Maybe that what made her win the role of Jessica Fletcher, in the TV show (Murder, She Wrote) 4 years later, which was less connected to Miss Marple and more Agatha Christie-like. It lasted for 12 seasons for some reasons; one of their first is Lansbury's exceptional charm. However, pardon me all, Elizabeth Taylor stole the show this round. While being not one of my favorites, I have to admit that Taylor showed some acting muscles as the unsettled, yet deeply wounded, movie star Marina Rudd. Still the scene of interrogating her by Edward Fox's character is the top of this movie, one of the evidences why she's considered an acting icon, and an interesting intro to the movie's intellectual core; which was presented somehow in its title.Now Taylor plays an actress who acts on everybody in real life as a victim, while being the actual killer. At that specific scene, she was trying to resist the investigator by her only weapon : acting. However, he exposed every try with his movie culture and certain love for that star. The original "crack in the mirror" happened when she couldn't resist anymore, and the divider between her played character and real self collapsed; thus she could see the criminal in herself, not the victim, which pushed her to committing suicide eventually. Throughout the movie there were many other cracks, between fiction and reality, however deeper. One when you watch the stars of the 1950s, after passing their prime, making a movie – in the 1980s – where they act as stars in the 1950s, after passing their prime, trying to make a movie ! Remember the hints about Hudson as a has-been, Taylor as unstable.. these are wicked cracks in the movie's mirror for sure ! (At least while the 1950s movie within the movie didn't complete, the movie of the 1980s did!).Another cracks, not less wicked, when Hudson and Curtis, while playing film director and producer respectively, speak openly about some of the movie industry's facts, such as "the director gives the producer an ulcer", "the matter of which actress's name will be written first is defined by which one sleeps with the producer!". They're shown as rude jokes, but maybe there is a mirror crack there, where we watch not a tame image of something, but the real deal ! Surprisingly the biggest "mirror crack" this movie has is the fact that it's nearly based on real story. As I read, American film star Gene Tierney, while pregnant with her first daughter, contracted German measles after a performance she did to the American soldiers in June 1943. Because of her illness, her daughter was born disabled. Tierney met that fan later, and learned that she had sneaked out of quarantine, while sick with German measles, to meet the star after her performance for the American soldiers in June 1943. Christie inspired the incident, showing maybe the scariest revenge a star had on an importunate fan.Actually cinema, as an art and world, had enough share of satire in this movie's conscience. It is shown as a devise which doesn't tell right history but makes its own version of it; e. g. changing the historical fact of what Queen Mary's guards wore as long as it didn't please the director (!). Not only this, you can powerfully touch a darkness that the cinema's glossy world contains : e.g. 2 stars smile for a photo while insulting each other whisperingly, a seemingly nostalgic conversation between a star and her devoted fan turns into a murder, a joyful party that contains a murder done in so cold blood.. etc. It's the main smart irony here : fiction vs. reality, shapeliness vs. ugliness, or simply the image reflected in nothing but burnished yet cracked mirror.That itself is pictured brilliantly. While the image is smooth, colorful, and bright, we have – in the same time – a fan who deformed a star's baby, a star who killed her secretary, a producer who tried to kill his wife, and a star who killed her fan, then herself at the end. The serene image, a mark of director Guy Hamilton's movies, represented the catchy element that it used to be, and – also – a fine contradiction with the disturbing events, as if all of that beauty is a mask to cover the beast, which consolidated the movie's both artistic and intellectual personality.So, as you see, I enjoy this movie, and not only for its good mystery, stars, and image. It does have more to it. That's why it's one of the best Agatha Christie's adaptations. In most of the other adaptations you may find nothing else good mystery, stars, and image !

Lord Brabourne who produced The Mirror Crack'd as he did a few other films adapted from Agatha Christie's work was lucky to have produced this at all. He was the son-in-law of Lord Louis Mountbatten and when the IRA blew up the yacht they were on, Brabourne's mother and son were killed on the vessel as well as Mountbatten. Brabourne, his wife and a younger son survived. This all happened a year before The Mirror Crack'd filmed and was released.This film is right in keeping with the high standard of pictures Brabourne made of Christie stories like Murder On The Orient Express and Evil Under The Sun. As the story involves an American film crew over in Great Britain in 1953 Brabourne was able to get a quartet of top Hollywood names in support of Angela Lansbury as Jane Marple.Producer Tony Curtis and Director Rock Hudson are collaborating on a film about Mary Queen of Scots that will star Hudson's wife Elizabeth Taylor in the title role. Curtis's wife Kim Novak plays what would be billed as a cameo in the film as Queen Elizabeth. Taylor and Novak are rivals in the tradition of Bette Davis and Joan Crawford and get off some truly bitchy lines at each other. Maureen Bennett who is one of the villagers and who met Taylor years ago in passing when she was a WREN and Taylor was entertaining troops is poisoned at a gathering of the villagers and the film crew. Someone spiked Bennett's daiquiri and who could possibly want to murder this ingenuous fan. Later on Hudson's secretary and girl Friday and trenchant observer of the whole Hollywood scene Geraldine Chaplin is also poisoned when her inhaler is similarly spiked. When Lansbury figures out the who in the film it all becomes deceptively simple. The motive however is an incredibly complex and obscure one involving a trivial passing incident that brought to life a great tragedy suffered by one of the visiting Americans.The film is a reunion of sorts with Hudson and Taylor as co-stars of the classic Giant from the Fifties, a personal favorite of mine for both its stars. Also back in those days Rock Hudson and Tony Curtis were both the leading contract stars at Universal studios, but they never starred together in anything. They did appear in Winchester 73 as featured players but had no scenes together. I really liked Curtis the best in this film with him doing a wonderful satire of Darryl F. Zanuck in the producer part. I'm sure Agatha Christie must have met Zanuck sometime because she had him down great and of course Curtis knew him as well.Definitely The Mirror Crack'd is a must for Agatha Christie fans and for fans of the stars. And considering what its producer went through we are lucky to have it at all.