Crack in the Mirror *** (1960, Orson Welles, Bradford Dillman, Juliette Greco) – Classic Movie Review 11,781

Director Richard Fleischer’s 1960 black and white CinemaScope crime drama film Crack in the Mirror is based on Marcel Haedrich’s novel Drama in the Mirror, and stars Orson Welles, Bradford Dillman and Juliette Greco, playing dual roles in two interconnected stories as the participants in two love triangles.

The film’s producer Darryl F Zanuck, the powerful president of 20th Century-Fox Film Corporation, was credited as writing the script of this smart, gimmicky courtroom drama himself (under his frequent pseudonym as Mark Canfield) about two cases at different levels of Paris society with the same theme – a young associate kills an older man with a mistress. However, Fleischer revealed in his 1993 autobiography Just Tell Me When to Cry that the script was actually ghost-written by the blacklisted Jules Dassin.

The theme is that justice is different for rich and poor. For clear purposes of comparison, the star trio all play two parts in the high and low society tales. Firstly, Welles plays Hagalin, who is killed by his mistress and her lover, and secondly he plays attorney Lamorciere, who discovers his woman would like to elope with his assistant.

Crack in the Mirror is a contrived, but insightful, entertaining and flavourful picture, shot on location in Paris, and at Studios de Boulogne-Billancourt/SFP, 2 Rue de Silly, Boulogne-Billancourt, Hauts-de-Seine, France.

In April 1967, Zanuck wrote to Playboy magazine: ‘When I won three prizes for a very second-rate film called Crack in the Mirror at the Cannes Film Festival, this dubious victory was achieved by the political activities of a group of friends (Orson Welles, Juliette Gréco and Françoise Sagan) who accompanied me to the festival.’

Fleischer, Welles, Dillman and Zanuck were also involved in the 1959 Compulsion.

The cast are 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, and Eugene Deckers as Magre, Yves Brainville, Vivian Matalon, Jacques Marin, and Martine Alexis.

Typically Welles was bored and, aware of the inadequacies of the screenplay, cut a number of his own speeches.

© Derek Winnert 2021 Classic Movie Review 11,781

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