Crack in the Mirror

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Crack in the Mirror - Wikipedia

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Crack in the Mirror

Directed by	Richard Fleischer
Written by	Darryl F. Zanuck
Produced by	Darryl F. Zanuck
Starring	Orson Welles Juliette Gréco Bradford Dillman
Music by	Maurice Jarre
Distributed by	Twentieth Century-Fox
Release date	May 19, 1960 (1960-05-19)
Running time	97 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Box office	$1,000,000 (US/ Canada)^[1]^[2]

Crack in the Mirror is a 1960 drama film directed by Richard Fleischer. The three principal actors, Orson Welles, Juliette Gréco, and Bradford Dillman, play dual roles in two interconnected stories as the participants in two love triangles.

The script was credited to by producer Darryl F. Zanuck (under his frequent pseudonym "Mark Canfield"), but in his 1993 autobiography Just Tell Me When to Cry, Fleischer revealed that it was ghostwritten by the blacklisted Jules Dassin.

Plot

In a run-down Paris dwelling, an angry Hagolin accuses mistress Eponine of seeing a man named Larnier behind his back. In a party at a stately home, prosperous attorney Lamerciere's guests include his longtime mistress Florence and his young law partner Claude.

Eponine attempts to murder Hagolin but fails. Larnier intervenes on her behalf and Eponine strangles the man with a scarf. The body is dismembered and dumped, then Eponine is placed under arrest.

Claude, who is secretly Florence's lover, feels that he deserves credit for much of Lamerciere's courtroom success. He leaps at the opportunity when Eponine asks him to defend her. Lamerciere remarks that Claude and Florence could do to him exactly what the accused woman and lover Larnier did to Hagolin.

In court, Lamerciere persuades Claude to allow him to deliver the closing argument. He paints such a lurid picture of Eponine's crime that results in her conviction. His gaze at Florence makes it clear that he knows that she has been unfaithful.

Cast

Orson Welles as Hagolin/Lamerciere
Juliette Gréco as Eponine/Florence
Bradford Dillman as Larnier/Claude
Alexander Knox as President
Catherine Lacey as Mother Superior
William Lucas as Kerstner
Maurice Teynac as Doctor
Austin Willis as Hurtelaut
Cec Linder as Murzeau
Eugene Deckers as Magre

Reception

In a contemporary review for The New York Times, critic Howard Thompson wrote: "A determined try for something different—three performers playing six roles, as two adulterous triangles explode in a murder trial—misfires coldly and rather hollowly ... There is certainly no cause to evaluate this extremely devious, visual charade by such a brilliant courtroom yardstick as 'Compulsion,' also involving director Fleischer, Messrs. Welles and Dillman and the Zanuck production banner. ... [T]he picture is a peculiarly bloodless affair (for all the lovingly detailed gore of the murder), archly juggling some arid dialogue and even the characterizations."^[3]

In a letter to the editors of Playboy magazine in April 1967, Darryl F. Zanuck, president of 20th Century-Fox Film Corporation, observed that "when I won three prizes for a very second-rate film called Crack in the Mirror," at the Cannes Film Festival, "[t]his dubious victory was achieved by the political activities of a group of friends who accompanied me to the festival (Orson Welles, Juliette Gréco and Françoise Sagan)."^[4]

References

^ "Rental Potentials of 1960", Variety, 4 January 1961 p 47. Figures are rentals as opposed to total gross.
^ Solomon, Aubrey. Twentieth Century Fox: A Corporate and Financial History (The Scarecrow Filmmakers Series). Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press, 1989. ISBN 978-0-8108-4244-1. p228
^ Thompson, Howard (1960-05-20). "'Crack in the Mirror,' Courtroom Drama". The New York Times. p. 26.
^ Zanuck, Darryl F., "Festival Faux Pas", "Dear Playboy", Playboy Magazine, Chicago, Illinois, April 1967, Volume 14, Number 4, page 12.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Crack in the Mirror.

Crack in the Mirror at IMDb
Crack in the Mirror at the TCM Movie Database
Crack in the Mirror at AllMovie

Films directed by Richard Fleischer

Child of Divorce (1946)
Banjo (1947)
Design for Death (1947)
So This Is New York (1948)
Bodyguard (1948)
The Clay Pigeon (1949)
Follow Me Quietly (1949)
Make Mine Laughs (1949)
Trapped (1949)
Armored Car Robbery (1950)
The Narrow Margin (1952)
The Happy Time (1952)
Arena (1953)
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954)
Violent Saturday (1955)
The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing (1955)
Bandido (1956)
Between Heaven and Hell (1956)
The Vikings (1958)
Compulsion (1959)
These Thousand Hills (1959)
Crack in the Mirror (1960)
The Big Gamble (1961)
Barabbas (1961)
Fantastic Voyage (1966)
Doctor Dolittle (1967)
The Boston Strangler (1968)
Che! (1969)
Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970)
10 Rillington Place (1971)
The Last Run (1971)
See No Evil (1971)
The New Centurions (1972)
Soylent Green (1973)
The Don Is Dead (1973)
The Spikes Gang (1974)
Mr. Majestyk (1974)
Mandingo (1975)
The Incredible Sarah (1976)
The Prince and the Pauper (1977)
Ashanti (1979)
The Jazz Singer (1980)
Tough Enough (1983)
Amityville 3-D (1983)
Conan the Destroyer (1984)
Red Sonja (1985)
Million Dollar Mystery (1987)

Darryl F. Zanuck

Producer

Old San Francisco (1927)
The First Auto (1927)
The Jazz Singer (1927)
Tenderloin (1928)
The Show of Shows (1929)
Three Faces East (1930)
The Doorway to Hell (1931)
Little Caesar (1931)
Illicit (1931)
The Public Enemy (1931)
The Man Who Played God (1932)
The Rich Are Always with Us (1932)
Doctor X (1932)
Life Begins (1932)
The Cabin in the Cotton (1932)
Three on a Match (1932)
20,000 Years in Sing Sing (1932)
Parachute Jumper (1933)
42nd Street (1933)
The Working Man (1933)
Ex-Lady (1933)
The Bowery (1933)
Blood Money (1933)
Moulin Rouge (1934)
Looking for Trouble (1934)
Born to Be Bad (1934)
Bulldog Drummond Strikes Back (1934)
The Mighty Barnum (1934)
Folies Bergère de Paris (1935)
Les Misérables (1935)
Cardinal Richelieu (1935)
Call of the Wild (1935)
Metropolitan (1935)
Thanks a Million (1935)
The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo (1935)
Professional Soldier (1935)
The Prisoner of Shark Island (1936)
It Had to Happen (1936)
A Message to Garcia (1936)
Under Two Flags (1936)
The Road to Glory (1936)
Poor Little Rich Girl (1936)
Sing, Baby, Sing (1936)
Pigskin Parade (1936)
Seventh Heaven (1937)
Slave Ship (1937)
Wee Willie Winkie (1937)
Wake Up and Live (1937)
Thin Ice (1937)
Lancer Spy (1937)
In Old Chicago (1938)
Happy Landing (1938)
International Settlement (1938)
Kentucky Moonshine
Always Goodbye (1938)
Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1938)
Just Around the Corner (1938)
Little Miss Broadway (1938)
My Lucky Star (1938)
Submarine Patrol (1938)
Jesse James (1939)
Tail Spin (1939)
Wife, Husband and Friend (1939)
The Story of Alexander Graham Bell (1939)
Rose of Washington Square (1939)
Stanley and Livingstone (1939)
The Rains Came (1939)
Hollywood Cavalcade (1939)
Swanee River (1939)
The Little Princess (1939)
The Grapes of Wrath (1940)
Little Old New York (1940)
The Man I Married (1940)
The Return of Frank James (1940)
The Great Profile (1940)
Brigham Young (1940)
Down Argentine Way (1940)
The Mark of Zorro (1940)
Hudson's Bay (1941)
Tobacco Road (1941)
The Great American Broadcast (1941)
Blood and Sand (1941)
A Yank in the R.A.F. (1941)
How Green Was My Valley (1942)
Son of Fury: The Story of Benjamin Blake (1942)
Sex Hygiene (Short) (1942)
To the Shores of Tripoli (1942)
This Above All (1942)
Thunder Birds (1942)
The Purple Heart (1944)
Wilson (1944)
Winged Victory (1944)
The Razor's Edge (1946)
Gentleman's Agreement (1947)
Fury at Furnace Creek (1948)
The Snake Pit (1948)
Pinky (1949)
Twelve O'Clock High (1949)
No Way Out (1950)
All About Eve (1950)
David and Bathsheba (1951)
People Will Talk (1951)
Viva Zapata! (1952)
The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1952)
The Egyptian (1954)
The View from Pompey's Head (1955)
The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (1956)
Island in the Sun (1957)
The Sun Also Rises (1957)
The Roots of Heaven (1958)
Crack in the Mirror (1960)
Sanctuary (1961)
The Big Gamble (1961)
The Longest Day (1962)
The Chapman Report (1962)
The Visit (1964)

Writer

as Mark Canfield	The Desired Woman (1927) (story) Maybe It's Love (1930) Baby Face (1933) (story) Crack in the Mirror (1960)
as Melville Crossman	Tenderloin (story) (1928) State Street Sadie (story) (1928) Thanks a Million (story) (1935) A Yank in the R.A.F. (story) (1941) Thunder Birds (original story) (1942) China Girl (story) (1942) The Purple Heart (story) (1944)
as Gregory Rogers	Find Your Man (Rin Tin Tin story) (1924) The Lighthouse by the Sea (Rin Tin Tin story) (1924) Three Weeks in Paris (story, screenplay as Darryl Zanuck) (1925) The Midnight Taxi (story) (1928)
as self	A Broadway Butterfly (1925) Red Hot Tires (1925) Hogan's Alley (1925) The Caveman (scenario) (1926) The Little Irish Girl (adaptation) (1926) The Social Highwayman (1926) Footloose Widows (1926) Across the Pacific (adaptation) (1926) The Better 'Ole (screenplay) (1926) Tracked by the Police (Rin Tin Tin story) (1927) Old San Francisco (1927) The First Auto (story) (1927) Good Time Charley (story) (1927) Noah's Ark (story) (1928) My Man (story) (1928) Hardboiled Rose (story) (1929) Madonna of Avenue A (story) (1929) Say It with Songs (story) (1929) The Life of the Party (1930) Little Caesar (story – uncredited) (1931) The Dark Horse (story) (1932) Lady Killer (story – uncredited) (1933) Folies Bergère de Paris (contributing writer – uncredited) (1935) G Men (story) (1935) This Is My Affair (story – uncredited) (1937) Alexander's Ragtime Band (contributing writer – uncredited) (1938) The Great Profile (story – uncredited) (1940) Ten Gentlemen from West Point (1942)

People

Virginia Fox (wife)
Richard D. Zanuck (son)
Dean Zanuck (grandson)

Categories:

Hidden categories:

Plot

Cast

Reception

See also

References

External links