Off the Wall

By R.S.

THE MIRROR CRACK'D Directed by Guy Hamilton Screenplay by Jonathan Hales and Barry Sandler

The news from the Bide-A-Wee home for semiretired movie stars of the '50s is that, all things considered, most of the folks are as lively as crickets. Liz and Rock, Kim and Tony and, of course, dear Angela, all seem enthusiastic about putting their slightly thickened selves on public display so that older members of the audience can check their memories of what once was with what now is, and youngsters can peer quizzically at their parents and speculate on the basis for such odd enthusiasms.

The vehicle for this where-are-they-now exercise is an Agatha Christie mystery about a director and a star (Hudson and Taylor), who are married. They descend on Miss Marple's village, circa 1953, there to take up residence while working on a movie intended as the star's comeback after a miscarriage and a nervous breakdown. One of the locals is murdered at a reception they give, and a little later the director's secretary succumbs in unpleasant circumstances. Miss Marple, the spinster sleuth--played agreeably by Lansbury in a more subdued style than is her custom or that of her glorious predecessor in the role, Margaret Rutherford--solves the case, almost by remote control.

It is not, as it happens, a very good case. The explanation of motives and methods is rather more strained than one expects from a Christie story. In the adaptation there are, as well, a number of loose ends left flapping about. Guy Hamilton's direction is languid, and, perhaps because of budgetary reasons, both the backgrounds of scenes and the sound track have an odd emptiness about them, a deadness that suggests there was not enough money to fill them up with suitably enlivening bustle and buzz.

But one suspects that the mystery was just an excuse, an occasion for the writing team to get off a lot of good, if rather broad show-biz jokes. Taylor and Novak, who plays her co-star and longtime rival, have a bitchy catfight, full of gags about having two faces and two chins. Then there is Curtis as a relentlessly crass producer. "Get me the Coast!" he shouts into the phone at an uncomprehending English operator. Pause, and then an anguished yelp: "What do you mean, which coast?" But perhaps the high point of this nonsense comes when Taylor, who appears to be an awfully good sport, is musing before her mirror: "Bags, bags go away. Come again on Doris Day."

This sort of thing will almost certainly offend Christie purists, and it may puzzle those few remaining gentlefolk who are uninterested in the offstage carryings-on of picture people. But the film does capture, in satirically exaggerated tones, certain recognizable film types and the hyperbolic, hyperactive way they address one another during the many waiting-around hours their peculiar occupations impose upon them. This does not entirely compensate for the short weight this picture gives mystery fans or for its technical shoddiness. But the good lines make Mirror more fun to watch than it has any right to be. --R.S.

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