Shot of Niagara, anyone? As a film it’s famous for all sorts of reasons – a film noir in Technicolor, Marilyn Monroe’s first star billing, the use of Niagara Falls as a set backdrop. On the other hand it isn’t famous for being a good film. Even its stoutest supporters struggle to defend it, largely because it starts off as one thing and then fails to follow through on what looks like a delicious promise.
Two couples at Niagara Falls, famous for its honeymooners. First we meet the Loomises. George (Joseph Cotten) the husband who we first glimpse moping about at the edge of the Falls at 5am. Rose (Marilyn Monroe) back at the holiday chalet naked under a sheet wearing nothing (except possibly Chanel No 5, to repurpose the quip Monroe once made to reporters about what she wore in bed). In fact Rose is wearing something – a warning-light slash of Technicolor-red lipstick. When George returns to his holiday rental Rose rolls off her back and onto her side, pretending to be asleep. He wants her but she doesn’t want him.
Newly arriving at the Falls: the Cutlers, there on a delayed honeymoon some years after they married. Why delayed? It’s never explained but it rings the first of several warning bells in their camp, the second one being struck when Ray (Max Showalter) declares to the official checking them in that he’s going to get a hell of a lot of reading done while he’s here on his honeymoon. “Reading,” deapans the official. Wife Polly Cutler (Jean Peters) gives Ray an exasperated look. It looks like a case of she wants him but he doesn’t want her. A suspicion reinforced when Ray fails to marvel at the pounding, forceful wetness of the majestic Falls and instead starts babbling about the Shredded Wheat factory over the way. Ray is more interested in breakfast cereal – kiddie food – than grown-up stuff.
Two couples and a thwarted sexual chemistry in each. But what could and should be interesting all gets thrown away. This idea is junked in favour of going all-in on Marilyn Monroe’s figure, and in a clear case of short-term gain leading to long-term pain, every wiggle and flounce is followed in one flattering and Technicolor-friendly outfit after another.
Polly’s desires, and a button-bright, battling-against-decisions-upstairs Jean Peters, are largely sidelined. Perma-cheerful Ray’s inadequacies as a husband are never overtly mentioned again, though there’s a constant undertow of what might have been in scenes with Ray’s boss (Don Wilson), another infantilised man, and his smiling-through-gritted-teeth wife, played by Lurene Tuttle (not in it much but a standout).
Following the logic of Movie A, when it’s Movie B we’re watching, one man eventually ends up dead, then a woman, then two other people look like they’re heading for certain doom over the top of the Falls in a boat before the end credits roll. It never really adds up to a full dinner.
Director Henry Hathaway tried to blame Joseph Cotten for the film’s failure, calling his performance “flat”. He’d wanted James Mason, but even Mason wouldn’t have been able to save the movie, though on the other hand his presence might have stayed the hand that decided to “improve” the screenplay and turn this into the Marilyn Monroe Show. That hand would have belonged to Fox boss Darryl F Zanuck, who also excised a chunk of material towards the end, which can’t have helped.
There are compensations. Monroe’s Rose is a rare example of a wife gaslighting her husband (it’s usually the other way around). DP Joseph MacDonald does some great things with shadows in an unusual case of film noir in Technicolor. And Henry Hathaway appears to have borrowed from Hitchcock (the blonde, the desperate man, the spectacular setting), then added in the slick and slightly sick colour schemes Hitchcock would later re-appropriate in North by Northwest (which did feature James Mason) and Vertigo.
It would be interesting to see the film as originally imagined by Walter Reisch, who wrote his idea up into the movie we see with Charles Brackett and co-writer Richard Breen, before Zanuck added in his “improvements”.
No one really comes out of it well. But, hey, don’t the Falls look great!
Niagara – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2024
