Miss Marple: They Do It with Mirrors

source: Miss Marple: They Do It with Mirrors

Moviecut—Miss Marple: They Do It with Mirrors

Despite thinking that I had seen the vast majority of the BBC Marple films, my second random one in as many days turned out to be yet another one I had never seen before. Sleeping Murder had been the first and had been surprising accessible and lively and the opening of Mirrors made me think it would be more of the same, with the American voices and the tone of the opening scenes. I was also familiar with the story as I had seen the ITV Marple films adapt it as well. Sadly They Do It with Mirrors turned out to be a real summary of what I tend to dislike about the Marple series. Running long (particularly with adverts lasting 4 minutes every 10-15 minutes) the film really takes its time with everything but not in a way that hooks me. Ironically I felt that Sleeping Murder was almost too accessible and easy to follow, but yet at the same time I appreciated it for this. They Do it with Mirrors goes the other direction by quite some measure as it does almost nothing to assist the viewer in keeping up with Marple or indeed even CI Slack. Instead of clues or red-herrings what we are given are characters and details – but none of which really are much used until we enter that final room for the traditional reveal. Like tedg said in his review, the viewer here is never allowed to be taken along with the case – we are sitting in the final room with the rest of them, knowing who people are but learning stuff we didn't know before and couldn't have figured out. The problem I have with this is that I feel excluded and just expected to wait rather than be involved in the mystery. The longer this goes on the less inclined I was to care and by the end I was really not paying much attention to it. There never appears to be much in the delivery to intrigue the viewer or make them think – I watched this knowing the story but yet still didn't really know where it was going and while I'm open to the idea of me being dumb, I think part of it was that the film wasn't actually going anywhere until it got to the final reveal. I'd like to say the pieces all fell into place at this point, but they don't because we hadn't been given pieces – only characters, no clues, no nuggets etc. The cast are solid throughout despite this; I do like Hickson as Marple and enjoy her way of playing it as all observation and gossip – the downside is that she does live in her head as a character so she needs the script to help her in terms of what the viewer can "see", she gets no such help with this one. I'm not sure if it is deliberate or by design but this film was incredibly uninvolving – it offered me nothing throughout and then suddenly pulls the solution out of nowhere. It is difficult to care and before the reveal scene I had really stopped being interested since the film itself seemed so uninterested in me.

IMHO, this is a very odd script. We're introduced to a wealthy, mentally-twisted family that is supposedly helping abused boys recover from their childhood traumas. Then, out of left field, the filmmakers throw in a subplot involving a theatre and some actors. Which really didn't coalesce with the main plot. Later on, there is the spectre of the lead female protagonist being slowly poisoned. However (inexplicably) the people who believe this is happening to the woman remained mum. Thank God Miss Marple spilled the beans. Why anyone would knowingly allow a woman to be poisoned without warning her is an antisocial paradigm that was never credibly explained. This slow, ponderous episode was unnecessarily convoluted and dramatically disjointed. Perhaps there was a mystery in there somewhere . . . Nevertheless I didn't see one. Based upon other reviews, I sought out and watched the Helen Hayes version. IMHO, it's more fun to watch. Leo McKern was particularly effective as the inspector who served as a foil to Miss Marple. Sadly, Bette Davis was poorly cast. She was ill at the time of filming and it showed. I enjoyed everything Helen Hayes did, with the exception of a gratuitous monologue by Miss Marple reciting Shakespearean passages. That scene was totally unrelated to the main plot and served no purpose other than to reassure Ms Hayes that she could still deliver the bard's lines with a flourish. The takeaway is: both versions are poor mysteries. Which indicates the fundamental problem with this story was the plot written by Agatha Christie. Reviewers may fault the actors or the filmmakers but the real culprit was Dame Christie herself.

I bought the whole series on DVD. But this closing instalment left me unimpressed. There are so many characters, some of them American, even Miss Marple struggles to keep track of who's who, who's whose ex-husband's son etc. None of them are particularly likeable or attractive, or interesting enough to make you care about them. A lot of speechifying goes on about "the youth are our future", nature vs. nurture, battling bureaucy... Yawn; and hardly the stuff Agatha Christie mysteries are made of. The direction looks inexperienced. The actors are either trying to get it over with or too keen to steal the show. Worst of all, Miss Marple becomes just an extra in this mess.

The background music for this series is the worst in the world. Other than that this is a great series. Best scenery, great plots, great actors. You've seen it before but not this well, except for the awful music. They do better plotting and better scripts so you know the background and the setting, but the awful music. Find a way to edit out that awful music and I would watch these every day.

I watched this after watching the Julia McKenzie adaptation and to be honest was disappointed with both adaptations. I read the book about 40 years ago so couldn't remember much of the plot. The McKenzie version altered a lot of the characters and situations. Walter for example was portrayed as a bit of a wimp in the McKenzie version, but a more believable pragmatic man in the Hickson version. No explanation was given as to why Rasterick arrived late and went straight to his room in the Hickson version on the night of the first murder.. My main complaint however was that in both versions, Edgar and a middle aged Lewis can outrun presumably fairly fit policemen to the lake and end up drowning. Obviously, nowadays the police would have to do a health and safety assessment before entering the water, but would this have been the case in the 1950s????

Miss Marple visits old friends. Ruth van Rydock and her sister Carrie-Louise Serrocold. Ruth is worried about her sister' health. Carrie-Louise is married to Lewis Serrocold who uses part of the estate as an institute for young offenders. Christian Gulbranson is an trustee who arrives for some urgent business and who is later found dead. Joan Hickson is excellent as Miss Marple. However this is not one of the better BBC adaptations and I can understand why they held it back. It takes a while for the murder to happen, until then we are introduced to all sorts of odd characters such as a young man who thinks he is the son of Winston Churchill. Two brothers who inexplicably flirt with a married woman. It all seemed too padded. There should be more tension as there should had been an assortment of suspects. After all it is set in an institution where young men have criminal records or mental health problems. However the reveal was rushed and did not exactly make sense. I think this could had been done and dusted in a hour. Look out for a young Jake Wood as one of the reform school boys.

Joan Hickson as Agatha Christie's intrepid Ms. Jane Marple gets invited by an old friend Faith Brook who is concerned about her sister Jean Simmons. Jane as a solver of murder mysteries has a reputation which is why Brook seeks her out. And as Simmons is also a friend of Ms. Marple she's only happy to help. It's only too true, but the attempts at homicide toward Jean Simmons come later. While the lights are out, another guest is murdered, one who had something to tell Simmons, but never got to do it. Between Simmons and Brook they've got quite an assortment of relations and Simmons's husband Joss Ackland has turned the estate into some kind of experimental school for young juvenile offenders in post World War II Great Britain. So you've got some lovely delinquents having a run of the place as well. The suspect is pretty obvious in the fact that he's giving all kinds of disinformation to the police. But how he did it is the real mystery here. And there is an accomplice who has a key role. Remember at the very end Hickson asks the question just how does a woman get sawed in half by a magician? That answer tells everyone including the audience who the killer is. Nice quality Agatha Christie mystery with Joan Hickson as a doggedly determined Ms. Marple.

Miss Marple in this story goes down to the bottom of the sinister pit of ugly greed. A father is using his own son to cover up his own crime and the son is accepting to do that in order to finally get out of his bastard status and be recognized as a legitimate son. And the end is even more pitiful than this plan would sound to normal minds. This film is directed in such a way that the setting, which is sinister in many ways, appears so at least one hundred times more than it actually is. A certain Agatha Christie had apparently read some of her classics like "Women in Love" and the death of two lovers at the end of the book. She also had managed to integrated "Romeo and Juliet" in her tale. But what is essential is the fact that a rich heiress is trying to use the money she got from her husband in a fund to help young criminals be rehabilitated but she does not see the greed that surrounds her in all possible ways and makes her attempt at being a good lady in a harsh society so vain and definitely dangerous for her own health. Too naïve she is and endangering her own life by bringing around her the people who have multiple reasons to get rid of her. Dr Jacques COULARDEAU