REFLECTIONS OF MURDER

US, 1974, 100 minutes, Colour.
Tuesday Weld, Joan Hackett, Sam Waterston, Lucille Bennett, R.G. Armstrong.
Directed by John Badham.

Reflections of Murder is a satisfying telemovie thriller with good performances by the stars and direction by John Badham who was later to make Saturday Night Fever. The film is an American re-working of the classic French film Les Diaboliques. It has the basic ingredients of complicity and murder as well an deceit and the film deceives the audience even in suspecting its double plot. A superior telemovie.

1. The appeal of the thriller, the murder mystery: situations, characters, motivations? Detection? The puzzle and a solution? Identification with victims?

2. The quality of this thriller as a telemovie, the techniques for the home audience, suspense, eeriness? Colour photography, the score? Special effects and shocks?

3. Audience interest in and response to the basic plot: private schools, crises and difficulties, the world of the children, education, adults? Emotional clashes. murder, fear? Audience interest in these basic ingredients?

4. The presentation of the school, information about the basic situation especially for Claire, her marriage to Elliot? The way of life at the school, sports, classes, dormitories, meals? Discipline? The ownership of the school? Developers taking over?

5. The portrait of Michael Elliot? His marriage to Claire and the break-up, his liaison with Vickie? His continual humiliation of Claire and arguing with her? Moods? Wandering from bedroom to bedroom? His abuse of Claire at the meal table? His being lured to Seattle? The murder sequence and his participation in it? Audience sympathies with the two women and the meriting of such death? (And the later ironies of what really happened?)

6. The young boy, his watching, sympathy towards Claire, his music lessons? A device for detaching audience sympathies and puzzling over what was to happen, motivations?

7. Claire as a person, her financial situation, marriage? Vickie as the enemy? Her nervousness? The reasons for doing the murder? How was she persuaded especially by Michael’s treatment of Vickie? Her reaction to the trip, the basket, the killing, getting the stone dwarf? Her fears?

8. The contrast with Vickie and her cold-blooded planning, execution? The credibility of her committing murder?

9. The build-up of the alibi, the old couple, the basket, its coming undone, the police stopping the car, the pool, the draining of the pool and the finding of the keys?

10. The impact of the pool sequence and its suspense, the long sequence of Claire going to the morgue to identify Michael, the taking of the photo with Michael in the window?

11. How inevitable were the clashes with Vickie? Vickie’s cold manner, Claire's growing tension?

12. The support of the boy? Claire's confession to him? The irony of his statements at the end?

13. The revelation of the death to Claire? Michael’s reappearance? When did audiences suspect what happened? Claire's fear and death?

14. How satisfying was the eerie ending? The boy with the shooter and his comment about the bird not being dead but stunned only?

15. Themes of marriage, love and hatred, violence and murder, deceit, fear and terror?