Wednesday 27 December 2023

The Mirror Crack'd (1980 Guy Hamilton)

An uninteresting adaptation, not well written or directed - for example, when film star Elizabeth Taylor arrives at the fete, we see close ups of kids holding out autograph books, but in the wide shot they're not there. A starry cast doesn't really help, with Geraldine Chaplin taking the First Prize for me. With Angela Lansbury, Edward Fox, Rock Hudson, Kim Novak, Tony Curtis, Wendy Morgan, Charles Gray.

That wasn't Christopher Challis playing the DP. Filmed in Kent: Shoreham plays St Mary Meade and the big house is St Clere Estate, Heaverham (location also for The Great and Gangs of London). As they were filming in real interiors, the old school system of key lighting had to be abandoned, and Novak begun to be suspicious that she was being badly photographed, and complained to the producers. They arranged for everything they had shot to be shown to her. The next day she threw her arms around Challis and apologised, saying she looked fabulous, and from then on their relationship was great. (Source: Challis's book 'Are They Really So Awful?')



Did like the beginning though - a film being projected in the village hall breaks down before the end, and Marple reveals to the audience who the killer was!


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