Niagara (1953)

maybe, not the best noir film. but , for me, a revelation. because it gives a different Marylin Monroe. and because it gives a seductive story about love, hate, cold blood and the ideal location. it is its virtue - to propose a different perspective/genre for an actress who seems reduced at an easy series of roles, exploring her femininity, her vulnerable charm, her voice or her presence. sure, if you compare "Niagara" with the classics of genre, the competition seems far to be fair. but it is the motif for define this film as special. maybe, only in the filmography of Monroe.

Henry Hathaway has directed a melodrama involving a perfectly normal honeymooning couple (Peters and Showalter) trying to help a troubled couple (Cotton and Monroe) of the kind that marriage counselors call unstable and unsatisfactory.Cotton has just been released from some kind of booby hatch and we take his obsessive paranoia about his wife's fidelity as symptomatic, but in fact he's quite right. Monroe has a lover. They plan to murder Cotton and take off for Chicago.Monroe and her paramour use a vapid pop song that they arrange to have played by the bells in the campanile as a signal for them to meet and fornicate like two aardvarks in heat. The insipid love song may have been meant for public release, maybe sung by Patti Page or someone, but it never leaves the ground. "It's the ONLY song," breathes Monroe. If that were the case the end of civilization would be at hand.But if the song flops, Monroe does not. Hathaway and the studio have lavished as much attention on her as her lover has. She's dressed in startling vermilion dresses, she's festooned with diamonds, and her lips are a glistening scarlet that might blind a companion in a dark room. When she delivers a line her upper lip droops for a second over her lower, as if getting ready to do something entirely on its own.She wears spaghetti shoes. She wears false eyelashes, make up, and that polished lipstick. She wears it in the shower. She wears it while lying unconscious on a hospital bed. And when she walks away from the camera, the shot lingers forever on her undulating rear.Peters and Showalter are anxious to help the tortured couple but Peters discovers some shadowy nooks in the others' marriage and when she tries to tell her husband she dissolves into hysterical gibberish so that an irritated Max tells her to "Stop it now; it was all just a bad dream!" The last third of the picture is more kinetic. There are lots of pursuits, always upward. Frightened people climb rickety wooden staircases that seem to meander through the dripping rocks. People are trapped in stone grottoes, left hanging to small rocks in the St. Lawrence River. And way high up in the campanile, the bells provide silent witness to murder.It's Marilyn Monroe's picture all the way.

Like - WOW!!... Marilyn Monroe has never looked hotter than she does in Niagara. Man, Monroe just sizzles in this flick, especially in her hot-pink dress.This 1953 Thriller offers great fun for the viewer on a variety of levels.(1) Film Noir themes abound (albeit in Technicolor).(2) Oodles of location shooting around Niagara Falls.(3) And, best of all, Freudian Symbolism runs amok.Monroe plays Rose Loomis, an unbelievably ripe femme fatale.Niagara's twisted tale of greed and infidelity has the tantalizing Rose devilishly plotting (with her handsome toy-boy) the murder of her emotionally unstable husband, George. And, what better way to do him in, then a quick, hard push over, into the roaring Falls.Adding to Niagara's thrills - Director Henry Hathaway does an excellent job of squeezing the most out of the spectacular scenery around Niagara Falls.If you're a Marilyn Monroe fan, then you're sure to enjoy this seductively wicked flick.

This is the role for which Marilyn Monroe won the Photoplay Gold Medal Award for Best Actress of the year, an award which doubtless helped to secure the 20th Century Fox movie's top-grossing domestic income for 1952-53 of over $6 million. But actually, MM is not in the movie all that much. Not that it matters, because, if anything, her frequent absences give added zest to the scenes in which she does appear. Nor does it matter that her co-star is Joseph Cotten, an actor's actor certainly, but a man with little charisma. Hathaway and the studio wanted James Mason, but he was unavailable. As a second banana lead male, Casey Adams was reasonably but not overly personable and this suited his role as a go-getting but somewhat lackluster company man who didn't seem to deserve a spicy wife like Jean Peters. And as for Jean Peters himself – helped no end by director Henry Hathaway who took no nonsense from his cast and actually placed her in real danger – she gave the performance of her life as the imperiled heroine. Yes, although he could work equally well in the confines of the studio, director Henry Hathaway preferred location work and was renowned for his ability to get the best effects from moody natural locations. He really excelled himself with Niagara. No matter how any times you see this movie, and how familiar you become with its plot, it always comes across with enormous power and charisma.