The Mirror Crack'd

Lisa from Boondock Ramblings is doing the Summer of Angela (Lansbury) on her blog which I participate in if I can.
For today she had chosen "The Mirror Crack'd" named after the shortened US title of Agatha Christie's book "The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side", but she then switched to "Death on the Nile", still Christie, but of course with Hercule Poirot.

Here's the plot (with spoilers).
St Mary Mead, 1953. 
A Hollywood production team arrives to make a film about Mary, Queen of Scots, and Queen Elizabeth I., played by two rival actresses, Marina Rudd whose husband is the director Jason Rudd, and Lola Brewster whose husband is the producer, Marty N. Fenn.
The Rudds have arranged a village fête. Miss Marple is there as well, but an unlucky incident ends up in her twisting her ankle.
Some of the fête helpers are invited to the house, among them Heather Babcock. She tells Marina the story how she had seen her on stage during the war despite being sick and that she even got to kiss Marina on the cheek. Marina offers her a cocktail which gets spilled, so Marina gives her her own drink which kills Heather. Everyone thinks Marina was the intended victim, even more so when she presents some threatening letters.

Inspector Craddock, Miss Marple's nephew, tries to find out who the murderer was, of course discussing the case with his aunt as well whose injury confines her to her house.
Then Rudd's secretary Ella is killed as well.

In the end, Miss Marple goes to the Rudds' house to find that Marina is dead. Jason confesses to having killed her with poison in the hot chocolate which has not been touched, however. So it seems Marina has committed suicide.
The reason is that she had contracted rubella through Heather's kiss, a disease that is quite harmless - except in a pregnancy. Marina had born a child with brain damage as a consequence.

You may notice that my description of the plot is shorter than usual.
I'll make the rest short as well ... I don't like the movie. I had seen it before and I didn't like it then, either. It had been a while, though, and I could change my mind, couldn't I?
No, I couldn't.

We have a star cast. Beside Liz Taylor and Kim Novak as the rivaling actresses, there are Rock Hudson as Jason, Tony Curtis as Marty, Geraldine Chaplin as Ella, and of course Angela Lansbury as Miss Marple.
I didn't feel the story was worth of them, however, even if this movie wasn't made at the peak of their careers.
There are a few funny scenes between Liz Taylor and Kim Novak. Tony Curtis seemed to have a lot of fun with his scenes, too. My first idea of a Miss Marple story is not watching it for the fun, though, even if it can be a nice extra.
Rock Hudson was quite subdued and didn't make much of an impression.

All in all, the story dragged and I kept thinking "Get on with it already!".
It was like floating through beautiful settings - around the village, in Miss Marple's huge (!) garden to the lovely rooms in the big house where the Rudds live - with the appropriate music, but wasn't there something else? Oh right, there were two murders.
There wasn't any suspense or much development. Hadn't Miss Marple injured her ankle, I'm sure she would have solved this case in three minutes instead of having to wait for her nephew to bring her up-to-date on the interviews with the people involved.
She could even have prevented the second murder, who knows? Not that that seemed to be very important because Ella's murder wasn't even mentioned anymore at the end. I guess it wasn't that interesting if you could see the dead Marina instead, beautifully draped on a chaiselongue with a yellow rose in her hand.

What really annoyed me, though, was Miss Marple herself.
According to Wikipedia (I found the article, but didn't have access), the director Guy Hamilton said that Margaret Rutherford, Miss Marple in four movies, "was a divine clown but she was no more Miss Marple than ... fly to the moon (I have absolutely no idea what's that supposed to mean). We are doing Miss Christie's Miss Marple, a more serious person, a gossip, a bit of a snob. And she doesn't fall off her bicycle into the village duckpond".
Granted, Rutherford's Marple was nothing like in the books and Christie was not a fan of the adaptations, but nevertheless she admired Rutherford's professionalism and even dedicated this particular novel to her.
I love Rutherford, maybe I'll write a post about her sometime.

The problem is that Lansbury wasn't a good Miss Marple, in my opinion.
Part of it was definitely that she wasn't even around as much because the big stars took center stage (again, without having the story for it).
Also Lansbury didn't come close to some of the other Miss Marples (I'm in the Joan Hickson team although I don't enjoy all the episodes), both in looks as in behavior.
The way they aged her was terrible. I kept looking at her wondering what they had done with her eyebrows and why.
And then there was this ... who thought this was a good idea?

I can't say anything about the differences between the movie and the book because I have never read it. I know that Marina didn't take her husband's name in the novel, her name was Gregg, and what's really funny is that the German dubbing (I couldn't watch the film in English) actually used that name.

My conclusion is that if you want to see two stars exchanging "niceties", go for those few scenes and have fun with them, but if you want to see a Miss Marple movie, I'd say just skip this one.
Excuse me now while I retreat to be annoyed a little longer 😂