Autumn in August reflects upon The Mirror Crack’d

 Thank you once again for attending the LRG midsummer matinee known as Autumn in August . We had just left Hercule Poirot and now paying a call on Agatha Christie’s Miss Jane Marple in the 1980 feature film version of The Mirror Crack’d.

Angela Lansbury plays the friendly yet formidable sleuth whose knowledge of humanity and it’s negative tendencies comes from her seemingly quiet life in the village of St. Mary Mead. 

We get a nice sample of that English small life right from the start as Miss Marple handily gives her friends and neighbors the solution to the murder mystery movie that was interrupted by camera malfunction. Given that this story has a former Hollywood diva set to arrive soon, the meta effect is smoothly done indeed:

The diva in question is Marina Gregg(Elizabeth Taylor) who is planning her big cinematic comeback by starring in a Mary, Queen of Scots film. The local celebration of her arrival is going well for the most part, despite the presence of her co-star Lola Brewster(Kim Novak, to whom bitchiness seems to come naturally), until one of the locals, a woman named Heather Babcock, up and dies on the spot.

With Heather being a young and rather healthy person, clearly her death is due to foul play. Of course up

to that point, the only lethal weapons in the room were the razor sharp barbs that Marina and Lola were deliciously trading like Pokémon cards with each other:

As it turns out, Heather was poisoned but the glass she drank from was not her own; after her guest’s drink was spilled, Marina offered her own beverage as replacement. Now the question is, who wants to kill Marina Gregg?

Unfortunately, Jane has sprained her ankle during the festivities and has to do most of her detective work remotely with the help of her  young housekeeper Cherry(Wendy Morgan) and her nephew(Edward Fox) who just happens to be a Scotland Yard Inspector Detective.

Plenty of suspects abound, including Lola and Ella(Geraldine Chaplin), the personal secretary to Marina’s director husband Jason Rudd(Rock Hudson). As time goes on, however, the sinister spotlight soon focuses on the true killer but not without some pity.

This movie was the first and sadly only time Angela Lansbury played Miss Marple on screen and while this role did lead to her beloved TV series Murder She Wrote, it is a shame that she didn’t get the chance to play this character a couple of more times.

When it comes to Agatha Christie adaptations, the preference for major Hollywood versions tend towards standalone material (like And Then There Were None, for example) or Poirot tales; the latest one from Kenneth Branagh, A Haunting in Venice,is due out this fall. 

Granted, The Mirror Crack’d wasn’t a big hit but that never stops filmmakers from trying again and again. True, Miss Marple has been well represented on the small screen but still, Lansbury was delicately dazzling here and it’s too bad another onscreen opportunity was not given to her. 

Perhaps when both of the artist’s strikes are properly settled in Hollywood, someone might consider taking a chance on bringing Miss Marple back to the silver screen , we shall see there:

For our final Autumn in August presentation, we will be going further back than Agatha Christie although I wouldn’t be surprised if that author didn’t get a little inspiration from Jane Austen’s satirical salute to the Gothic novel craze in Northanger Abbey.

While the 1987 adaptation has it’s bizarre charms, it’s a bit too much like Halloween for this series (yes, I do know that some folks enjoy “Summerween” these days but that’s too soon for my taste). 

The 2007 version is grand fun with such up and coming stars as Felicity Jones and Carey Mulligan getting their Regency romp on that it shouldn’t be missed!: