Niagara (1953)

Niagara Falls has been a destination for daredevils and thrill seekers, both physical and matrimonial, for nearly a century and a half.

Jean Francois Gravelet (“The Great Blondin”) first began a series of tightrope walks across the Niagara gorge in 1859, going so far as to carry his manager across the river on his back. He drew estimated crowds of over 25,000 for his acts.

In 1901, Annie Edson Taylor became the first person to go over the falls in a barrel. The sixty-three-year old “Heroine of Horseshoe Falls” survived the stunt but her heroics failed to generate the financial goldmine she was sure awaited her. She died broke, as a street vendor in Niagara, twenty years later.

Harold and Francine Nussbaum, married in July 1974 after a whirlwind three-week romance, honeymooned in Niagara Falls. They divorced in 1977, citing irreconcilable differences, and always regretted not going to Vegas instead.

Most notably, however, is the 1953 film production Niagara in which a young starlet named Marilyn Monroe acted through an entire film with her dignity intact.

Monroe’s career had been primarily relegated to playing ingénues, ditzes, whores, and lovable doofs with big tits. With the exception of the previous year’s Don’t Bother to Knock, no one had effectively used her in a dramatic role. She was bounced around in various fluff for MGM and 20^th Century Fox for most of the late ‘40s and early ‘50s, stumbling here, effective there. Certainly, no one had cast her in the role she was born to play- the sultry, conniving femme fatale. Daryl F. Zanuck had a knack for such foresight and as her publicity machine gained momentum (the famous nude photos had been released) the Fox Studio Head looked to make her a superstar.

Niagara was the vehicle. She was known, yes, but the clingy pink silk dress makes its first appearance here. She slithers naked beneath bed sheets (no actress ever projected a sense of nudity like her), wiggles in long shots walking away from the camera, sings an impromptu breathy love song (not a designed number), captivates everyone within her visual reach, and most importantly, plans to have her husband murdered. The want of that curvaceous figure had finally been paired with dangerous consequences.

Niagara is one of the first examples of Technicolor noir (Crime Couleur, as I have coined it) which had initial success in Fox’s Leave Her to Heaven in 1945. Later in the ‘50s, the style found increased popularity with Hitchcock’s Rear Window, Vertigo, and North by Northwest and reached its pinnacle with Roman Polanski’s 1974 masterpiece Chinatown. While not stylistically definitive as the black and white photographed crime drama, Crime Couleur, through its use of radiant, bursting colors and muted pastels, possesses a unique eeriness and sense of lost innocence. Shadows, environment, narrative, and camera angles more than adequately reflect the creepy hues of irony and doom essential to the genre. Bright can be dark. Think of the California orange groves (where Gittes finds trouble) in Chinatown, soon to be plowed under for the drab aqueducts and highways of Los Angeles. Or that garish clown, mocking the plotting Ned Racine (William Hurt) as he drives by in Body Heat. And, of course, there is the blood, vitally crimson red, not passively ink black.

The film opens with a solitary figure being dwarfed in long shot by the torrent and majesty of the falls roaring above him. A rainbow arches over him as he maneuvers amidst the wet rocks. The beleaguered voice-over of George Loomis (Joseph Cotten) intones:

                 Why should the Falls drag me down here at 5 o’clock in the morning?

                 To show me how big they are and how small I am?

                 To remind me they can get along without any help?

                 All right, so they’ve proved it. But why not?

                They’ve had ten thousand years to get independent.

                What’s so wonderful about that?

                I suppose I could too, only it might take a little more time.

He walks back to the “Rainbow Cabins” (rainbows are a continuous theme) where his wife Rose Loomis (Marilyn Monroe) feigns sleep as he enters their room. We know soon enough that something ain’t right with the relationship.

Ray and Polly Cutler (Max Showalter and Jean Peters) arrive, a recently married couple taking a belated honeymoon at the cabins. There room is not ready as the Loomis’s are late in vacating it. Rose pleads with Polly and the management to allow them a little more time as George is, you see, (whispered tone) a bit high strung. It is the first of many passive-aggressive tactics that Rose will use to entangle the Cutlers and further her nefarious plan to rid herself of George forever.

Director Henry Hathaway had long been a fancier of the action/adventure picture since cutting his teeth as an A.D. on two reel oaters in the ‘20s and directing feature length westerns in the ‘30s. His career is uneven and too often he traded panache for safety. His workman-like approach served the studios well but did little to promote himself as a visionary director. There are the occasional gems in his oeuvre however (he blossomed at Fox in the late ‘40s and early ‘50s), and most in the unlikely realm of the crime drama with 1945’s The House on 92^nd Street, The Dark Corner (1946), Kiss of Death (1947), and Call Northside 777 (1948). Niagara represents his finest work.

Hathaway keeps a sticky air of sexuality throughout. Polly’s sexually unfulfilling marriage is one of the reasons she becomes so immersed in the Loomis’ shenanigans. Her dorky husband is more content to think about career (the shredded wheat company he works for is just across the Falls) or Churchill’s memoirs (he’s brought volumes of reading material) than satisfying his wife on their honeymoon. He constantly leads her by the arm, poses her for cheap photo-ops, and leaves her by herself too often. The bizarre machinations and passionate outbursts of the Loomis’ relationship are like catnip to her. It may be jealousy, rage, regret or shame, but hell, at least somebody is feeling or doing something.

Film noir staples abound. The environment of the falls is a constant focus. Its surging, churning waters provide enough symbolism to addle Carl Jung. Shadows from characters and window blinds obscure faces. Sharp camera angles put people at odds with their surroundings. The moral ambiguity of Rose and George will have you demanding their doom or vengeance alternately by scene. George’s stark narrative spots the story with a bleak sense of fatalism. Visual and aural motifs flow through the film seamlessly.

Hathaway also uses color effectively. The rainbow spectrum (in ironic metaphor) radiates out to Monroe’s clingy pink dress and wet, red lipstick. When at the Falls, the women are dressed in bright yellow slickers to wisely distinguish the characters as the continual thrashing of blues and whites in the foam, mist and rush of water gives an obscuring effect to the people and proceedings. Peters, dulled to highlight Monroe, is the equivalent beauty in blue.

The film comes in at a thrifty 88 minutes thanks mostly to the tight script by Charles Brackett. A master of screenplay efficiency, Brackett had penned a few other winners before Niagara. Namely, 1939’s Ninotchka, Ball of Fire (1941), The Lost Weekend (1945) and one of the finest film scripts of all time with Sunset Blvd. in 1950. By focusing little on back-story or winded exposition (we can guess where these people came from), Brackett concentrates the action on where these characters are now. This approach frees the story from the trappings of most modern day thrillers- the enormous amount of red herrings used to divert attention to inconsequential people or actions, the withheld “secret” of a character’s past that storms in out of nowhere to blindside an audience, or that most guilty (and trite) of all screenplay trickeries- a character’s dance of illusion between reality and fantasy, otherwise known as the “Was it a dream?” convenience.

The performances are mostly admirable. Monroe has never been better. It is so fun to see her play a wicked woman. She jiggles around, aloof to the stares that follow her and plays people like it was all a boring game of gin on a Tuesday night. Her Rose is a woman who can get anything she wants but has no real clue or desire to find out what that may be. She will go so far as murder to bunk up with an empty gigolo. She is a “going through the motions” kind of girl and Monroe nails it with a sexy nonchalance unseen in her other movies.

Joseph Cotten brings back his strangely menacing presence from the Uncle Charlie role in Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt (1943). His frail, frazzled and cuckolded George is an edgy, ex-Vet done in with jealousy over his much younger wife. He understands the situation well and resigns himself to accept most of the humiliation, but can’t help from stewing over it. Cotten gives him a peculiar balance of brimming violence and sour defeatism, which makes him both threatening and pitiable.

The story continually turns on Jean Peters’ Polly. It is her interest in the Loomis’ turbulent relationship that pushes the suspense forward. She is continually in the wrong place at the wrong time (sometimes by Rose’s design) and the more she learns of the Loomis’s, the more danger she finds herself in. Peters is a stunning beauty and if you don’t go in for the busty blonde type she is every bit as sexy as Monroe. She plays Polly with a mannered practicality that is perfect for the role, the bedrock of the story.

Max Showalter (billed as Casey Adams) is not so enjoyable as Polly’s husband, Ray. His hokey, downright goofy style is remarkably out of place for this picture. It is not so much that his acting is bad, he’s simply in the wrong movie. He’s a cloying personality, a sincere dork, continually has a shit eating grin on his face and possesses the laugh of an actuary. Fortunately, his screen time is not enough to affect the film adversely.

Niagara is a lean, succinct thriller, a model of efficiency, and a truly enjoyable Technicolor noir (or Crime Couleur, if you will). Remember, if you start seeing that phrase bandied about in film journals or hitting the international festival circuit, you heard it here first.