Mirage Reviews

MIRAGE is a mystery in the truest sense because it is just as baffling at the end as at the beginning. During an unexplained blackout at a major Gotham skyscraper, Charles Calvin (Abel), a prominent man of peace, falls out of a 27th-story window to his death. His associate David Stillwell (Peck) races to the street below, sees Sheila (Baker) and several other people who know him, and promptly discovers that everything inside the building has changed when he re-enters. This is going to be a bad hair day. Though the picture flits around like a tsetse fly in Upper Volta, it is still fun to watch--most of the time. Screenwriter Stone may have bitten off more than he could chew with this adaptation from Ericson's original material. There are no questions answered and no cogent arguments to propel this mixture of secret physiochemistry research, menacing gunmen, skeptical cops and well-meaning psychiatrists from scene to scene. Peck is fairly good as the enigmatic protagonist who is seldom actually threatened except by his own self-doubt. Matthau steals scenes in his bit as the detective, and so does Baker, even though she's forced to walk into and out of the film without rhyme or reason. Prissy Jack Weston, though, takes some swallowing as a hired thug. Dmytryk, an underrated if uneven director, discarded the usual oil dissolves for the flashback scenes, going instead went to straight cuts touched off with a short lead-in line. Despite his skill and Peck's likability, however, this mishmash of NORTH BY NORTHWEST, TOPAZ, KISS ME DEADLY and LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD doesn't quite cut the mustard. Remade three years later as JIGSAW, it was still a muddle.