The mirror crack'd from side to side

Having been made a present of the Hickson-Marple-Christie collection some years ago, we have probably watched the whole lot of them – perhaps a dozen stories – several times over. Maybe more than five times but less than ten times. They wear pretty well.

Sometimes I read the original stories.

On this occasion, the viewing of ‘The mirror crack’d from side to side’ was followed by a reading. A few thoughts follow.

A title taken from a once famous poem of Tennyson’s, that is to say reference 4. A viewing which reminded us that reading poetry, particularly the likes of Tennyson, was part of the furniture in Christie’s day, largely before the days of television. FIL learned chunks of Tennyson at his school. BH learned very small chunks at hers. Now mostly banished to obscure parts of the syllabus in what have become (on Past Master Blair’s famous report) our bog standard schools. Not that I can complain, only rarely reading poetry myself, let alone Tennyson. But I have probably seen the picture snapped above, in the course of one of my visits to Tate Britain.

The sense of the film is of statis. Of the unchanging, quaint and charming English village. Complete with the milkman’s horse and cart, antique tractors and pretty cottages. But that of the book is of change, all the necessary changes that came after the second world war. Including the new housing estates in old villages. Not to mention the servant problem - with Miss Marple being sensible and taking on a cheerful but plebeian couple from the estate to replace the genteel fusspot she had been lumbered with by a well meaning nephew.

Similarly, the house in the film is tweeds, country estate and home farm, several hundred years old. While that in the book is an uncomfortable and ugly Victorian pile which will probably be pulled down in the not too distant future. And not the natal or family home of either master or mistress, that is to say the Bantry’s.

Christie probably has some real understanding of the need for celebrities – in this case an aging but famous lady film star – to keep up a cheerful and pleasant demeanour in public, which must be very tiring. With one’s sympathy for them being tempered by their need to be adored, their need for the sound of clapping hands.

The book goes into all the various possibilities rather more thoroughly than the film. All the suspects, all the possible motives and opportunities. There is also rather more on all the minor indignities of getting old – with the author perhaps getting to feel a bit old herself (around 70) at the time of writing.

Interesting snippet when the photographer, the one-time adopted daughter of the aging film star, says that she did not like to use a particularly striking photograph of the star because it was too revealing. Not fair or proper to put it in a newspaper. That is to say, the photograph capturing the look which gave the story its title, as in the snippet of the poem above. How many real photographers today would take the same line is another matter.

Got a bit bored by around page 150 of 250. Starting skimming a bit, which probably accounts for my being a bit confused by the end. By which time, the tally had reached three murders, with one of the dead people being a wannabee blackmailer and another a more successful one. The first of whom seemed a bit improbable to me.

And making the meek husband of the first victim the first husband (out of four or five) of the star seemed an unnecessary and improbable complication. In any event, we only get to know about it the closing pages, with the net closing round the star and her suiciding herself out of the jam she had got herself into to.

But all in all, the verdict of this read is that the film was well cast and well made, and strikes a reasonable balance between the desire to be true to the book and the need to make watchable television. A film which has worn better in its thirty years than the book has in its seventy. Plus I am reminded that I like Simenon better than I like Christie, another very successful write of popular fiction from much the same era.

PS: on a quick read of the poem this morning, my thought was that the line used as a title to the story is striking, but that there is little proper connection that I could see between the allegorical poem, between the crystal mirror, and the story. One could make a connection, but it was all a bit fanciful.

References

Reference 1: The mirror crack’d from side to side – Agatha Christie – 1962. From our not quite complete Heron edition.

Reference 2a: The mirror crack’d from side to side – Joan Hickson and others – 1992.  

Reference 2b: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104882/.  

Reference 3a: The mirror crack’d from side to side – Julia McKenzie and others – 2011.  Near twenty years later and no doubt a rather different take on things. Seen and still owned, but I can’t presently remember too much about it.

Reference 3b: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1488580/. 

Reference 4: The Lady of Shalott – Alfred Lord Tennyson – 1881. 

Reference 5: The Lady of Shalott – John William Waterhouse – 1888. One of a number of renderings by this artist. This one from Tate Britain. He also offers a little light pornography in the form of the martyrdom of St. Eulalia.