Jeanskynebu the audience applauded

ReaderKenka Let's be realistic.

Matrixiole Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

Sharkflei Your blood may run cold, but you now find yourself pinioned to the story.

Robert J. Maxwell Diane Baker, mysterious former lover of amnesiac Gregory Peck, is awfully appealing in this film. Man, she is comely, resplendent. She looks like the girl in high school that all the guys dreamed about before they went to sleep -- only she was hooked up with the captain of the football team. Those kinds of looks often fade rather quickly, but hers didn't. She was elegant in "The Silence of the Lambs." I don't want to go through the entire plot here because it's rather complicated and must have been covered elsewhere. Peck is a cost accountant at a firm in New York. Only he's not. He just thinks he is. But clues -- major and minor -- lead him to believe that something is very wrong with the fit between him and his milieu.When a gunman shows up in his apartment insisting that he, Peck, is due to take a flight to Barbadoes at the order of "the major", Peck decides he must do something about his elective ignorance, which looks like retrograde amnesia. He goes to the police but when they ask him for his DOB and place of birth, he storms out -- because he can't remember. A shrink throws him out of the office. Finally he latches on at random to Walter Matthau as a novice detective who takes Peck seriously in a comic way.Diane Baker shows up periodically to reluctantly give him tantalizing clues to his identity.. She'd give her life for him, she claims, not unconvincingly. But then why the hell doesn't she tell him what's going on, because she apparently knows all about it? Instead her answers are elliptical. Peck is complicit in the rather clumsy writing. Peck: "Who is this 'major' and why does he want to talk to me. I can't remember anything!" Baker: "But don't you understand? That's the only thing that's keeping you alive!" Neither Peck nor the viewer are standing under a Niagara of information about this puzzle. The logic behind his investigatory techniques is weak. When Peck's first shrink throws him out, why doesn't the tormented Peck go to a different, more accommodating shrink? It's the fault of the writer, Peter Stone. The general aroma of paranoia -- some terrible plot is at hand -- is characteristic of the work of Howard Fast ("Seven Days in May," etc.) The climax straightens everything out but at times it seems like it's been a long slog with too few set ups. I won't spell it all out but Peck turns out not to be a cost accountant. Peck could never be a cost accountant, anymore than he could be a short order cook.

ringfire211 Wow!! A real treat this one turned out to be! I was quite underwhelmed by Edward Dmytryk's (who's a Ukrainian by the way - like me!) THE CAINE MUTINY but Dmytryk really impressed me with this obscure gem. I already sang quite a bit of praise for Stanley Donen's mystery/spy/comedy films like CHARADE and ARABESQUE but I gotta say that Dmytryk's MIRAGE actually trumps them both! It's now one of my favorites from 1965 - only THUNDERBALL, DOCTOR ZHIVAGO, and FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE are better. Anyhoo, Gregory Peck does a great job playing an amnesiac while Walter Matthau delivers another superbly humorous performance (as he did in CHARADE) as a private investigator whose first case just happens to be Peck. Throw in a solid supporting cast consisting of Diane Baker, Kevin McCarthy, Leif Erickson, Jack Weston, and George Kennedy and a nice jazzy score by Quincy Jones and you've got one heck of a mystery thriller!!

bkoganbing Edward Dmytryk may have been poaching in Alfred Hitchcock territory in directing Mirage, but I can hardly see how Hitchcock could have done the film any better. In fact I'm convinced that Gregory Peck was cast in the lead on the strength of his performance in the Hitchcock classic Spellbound, the parts are so similar.Gregory Peck when we first meet him is making his way down the stairs of a skyscraper that has sustained a blackout. As people talk to him who seem to know him he answers with the appropriate small talk, but he doesn't remember anything other than his name. At the same time, a prominent foundation leader, Walter Abel, plunged to his death from that skyscraper and of course the Peck's amnesia and Abel's death are connected. But in this case the whole point of Mirage is remembering how. And Peck better remember soon because people like Jack Weston, George Kennedy and House Jameson keep trying to kill him.As in Spellbound, the amnesiac Peck has a woman friend trying to help him. But there was no doubt about Ingrid Bergman's loyalty to Peck in trying to unravel his situation there. Diane Baker has the same function in this film, but there is some doubt as to whose team she's actually playing on. Similarly there is Kevin McCarthy who seems a friend at first, but later on we're not so sure. McCarthy has a key role in bringing the whole affair to a climax.The ruthless villain of the piece is Leif Erickson who started in films playing the fathead rival to whomever the hero was in a film. As he got older, directors saw greater potential in him and used him in a lot of more serious parts, mostly villainous and this one is one of his best.Although I think the film is great, Gregory Peck kind of fluffed it off, my guess is also that his role is too much like the part he did in amnesia. But he did according to the Michael Freedland biography of Peck, recommend to Eddie Dmytryk that he cast Walter Matthau in the role of the private detective who Peck goes to. Peck also consults Robert H. Harris a psychiatrist and both the shrink and the gumshoe come to the same conclusion that Peck really doesn't want to remember his recent past, possibly because of some trauma. Matthau's role in Mirage was one of his best character roles prior to getting stardom with his Oscar winning performance in The Fortune Cookie. Harris is also quite good, in fact he's my favorite in the cast.Although the similarities between Spellbound and Mirage are too obvious to overlook, one should not belabor the obvious. Mirage is a fine enough suspense thriller to stand on its own. And Alfred Hitchcock would not have minded being mistakenly credited with directing it.

moonspinner55 A New York cost accountant realizes his entire existence for the past two years may be a sham, and that his "unconscious amnesia" may be connected to the apparent suicide of a World Peace advocate who fell from a window during a power blackout in the accountant's office building. Peter Stone's screenplay is fun at first, looping itself in knots and causing great consternation for our hero, appealingly played by Gregory Peck. The presentation is stylish, and there's some effective editing throughout (blending together the past with the present), but Stone doesn't play fair with the audience. As bodies (and plot-holes) begin to add up, our expectations for an exciting, satisfying wrap-up are increasingly dimmed. When we finally do get to the denouement, it plays like standard television stuff. Well-dressed and designed picture has excellent location work and a solid supporting cast (despite moments of over-acting). A near-miss. ** from ****