Top 10 Mirror Sequences
By Rob Stevens
6th September 2009

10 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
Mirror, Mirror on the wall…well you know the rest.

9 The Shining
If you write it on paper it just sounds silly: A child is saying “red rum” in a silly voice while holding up his finger, and is holding a big knife having written red rum on the door, which when Shirley Duvall looks in the mirror, of course, spells Murder. Its’ all so expertly done, however, that you mostly push such thoughts to the back of you mind, and enjoy the chilling sight of a child going absolutely bananas.

8 The Man With The Golden Gun
The Roger Moore Bonds were often accused of diving a little too readily into the silly but as this serious sequence shows…oh. Christopher Lee’s mad bad Scaramanga has, for some reason, a fun house in his basement, where he challenges Bond to a duel, which inevitably involves a sequence with mirrors. The ending is a bit predictable, but any scene in that film with Lee and Moore is worth its weight in, erm, Gold.

7 Evil Dead II: Dead by Dawn
Horror films like to use mirrors as a motif, which is rifted upon expertly by Sam Raimi in his masterpiece, Evil Dead II. After going toe to toe with the Evil Dead and having to cut up his girlfriend, a wired Ash looks into the mirror and tries to reassure himself that he’s fine. His reflection then reaches out of the mirror to shake him up and remind him of what’s happened, before trying to choke him(self) to death.

6 The Circus
Charlie Chaplin goes crazy with the hall of mirrors motif, causing a riot in his funniest film, The Circus. Chaplin is being chased (as always) by a policeman, and leads him into the Mirror Maze, as unaware as his antagonist as to the way out. It’s filmed with as much intricate chaos as you would expect, and the scene is absolutely genius.

Welles and Hayworth get to grips in the iconic hall of mirrors sequence.

5 The Lady From Shanghai
The iconic hall-of-mirrors contains 2,912 square feet of glass. Intricately filmed, and the perfect finalé to Welles labyrinth Film Noir. It’s typical of Welles’ wonderful show-offery, and it works better than any other moment in the film. As the three leads point guns at each other – unaware of whether they are aiming true or at one of the many reflections, it is impossible not to be on the edge of your seat, figuring who’s going to win. Really, Welles has already won.

4 Taxi Driver
Travis Bickle wonders if you are talking to him. Who else could you be talking to, he asks, as he stares into a mirror which gives him a chance to practise drawing a gun and shooting a guy in the face. Rifted by De Niro, it has become iconic in pop culture, primarily because it acutely sums up the entire film. Not only is it a turning point as Bickle becomes more psychotic, but sums up the lonely emptiness of his character.

3 Face/Off
John Woo’s brilliantly over the top action thriller stars John Travolta as a cop who is trying to track bad guy Nic Cage’s bomb. As the latter is in a coma, he swaps faces with him, thus becoming him so that he can find out where the explosive is. Then Cage wakes up, grabs Travolta’s face, and all hell breaks loose. It’s absolutely bonkers, but the real highlight is a moment where the two are stood either side of a mirror and - as they point their guns at the glass - can see their own reflection and the face of their enemy.

2 Enter The Dragon
The climatic sequence to Bruce Lee’s most iconic film takes the hall of mirrors motif, and sticks Bruce Lee in there against a man with a wolverine claw for a hand. It adds a poignant sense of paranoia to proceedings and if it sounds a little bit James Bond, it is. 007 ripped it off just a year later, for number 8 on the list.

1 Duck Soup
Cheating really, because in actual fact there is no mirror at all. Groucho Marx runs into a mirror, smashes it, and leaves Harpo on the otherside, mimicking his brother’s every move. It starts off a bit shakey, but gradually gets more brilliant, and becomes the funniest bit of their funniest film. Marvel as the inventiveness of the pair strings out the simple joke for minutes, and constantly find ways to make it funnier, including bizarrely swapping places.