Tonight I watched "Niagara" (1953), a taut thriller by director Henry Hathaway that stars Marilyn Monroe, Joseph Cotten and Jean Peters. It could be considered a Noir, I suppose, though it's presented in Technicolor rather than black and white. It has the look and feel of a Hitchcock film, where location plays a role as important as that of the characters. Marilyn is Rose Loomis, wife of the much older George (Cotten). When we meet them, they are staying in a unit at the Rainbow Cabins, on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls. Another couple, the Cutlers, (Casey Adams and Jean Peters) have just arrived to spend their honeymoon, and there is a mixup about the reservations. Monroe and Cotten were supposed to be leaving, but Cotten isn't well; he's asleep in bed, so the manager asks Mr. and Mrs. Cutler if they wouldn't mind accepting a different cabin. They are newlywed and happy, so it's no big deal for them to switch.
In the Loomis cabin it's a different story. Joseph Cotten is suffering from severe depression. Expository dialogue alludes to a stay at "Letterman", an Army hospital with a Psyche Ward. Yeah, I cracked up at the name, too. Cotten met Monroe at some joint or another where she waited tables. He married her but has been jealous and suspicious ever since, because....well...she's Marilyn. She can't deal with his mood swings, so she's been stepping out. Shortly after arriving, the Cutlers are out seeing the sights, and while posing for a picture next to the Falls, Mrs. Cutler sees something she shouldn't have : Marilyn in an embrace with another man. What she doesn't know - but we do - is that Monroe and her beau are whipping up a plan to get rid of Cotten, who in the meantime has had a complete meltdown. He's busted up a dance party at the cabins because Marilyn showed up in a revealing dress and requested a certain song that seemed to drive Cotten nuts. It was probably a song that reminded him of an earlier affair, but at any rate, after his outburst, the manager and the other residents of Rainbow Cabins think he's a nut job, which is good for Monroe and her boyfriend, and their plan. Now, if they "suicide" him, using the Falls, no one will question the result.
The only problem is that Jean Peters knows about Marilyn and her man, but it isn't going to manifest in the way you expect. It's not the compromised lovers she has to worry about, but old Joe Cotten, who has outsmarted his wife and her boyfriend, and turned the tables on them. I don't think I should tell you what happens, but when Cotten appears to Jean Peters in her cabin, she screams.....because he's supposed to be dead. His wife Marilyn even identified his body. Now she's so distraught she had to be hospitalised. But there he is, standing right in front of Peters at 4am.
"Please don't tell anyone you saw me", he implores. "Please......just let me be dead".
Maybe he saw "Nora Prentiss" the other night and got the idea from Kent Smith. But as we viewers know, it's never a good idea to fake one's death. Peters takes a page from Ann Sheridan and urges Cotten to go to the police, tell them the truth, but Cotten is mentally ill. He's gonna run, instead. Because besides not wanting to be found, he's got some unfinished business to take care of.
By this time, Jean Peters (who in real life was married to Howard Hughes), is all wound up. She feels sorry for Cotten, so on the one hand she wants to keep his secret, but on the other hand, she's aware of why he's still alive, which I can't reveal. This knowledge terrifies her, so when Cotten begins to follow her around, she tells her husband that she saw him. But Hubby doesn't believe her. He thinks she was having a dream. "What time did you say this happened? 4am? Honey, you were just having a nightmare. Loomis is dead".
But he isn't. He's very much alive, and now director Hathaway will move us outside to take advantage of the landscape and some of the tourist attractions that surround the Falls. Mr.Cutler's overly jolly boss shows up and wants the dime tour. He insists that the Cutlers join him. One such jaunt involves a climb up a very high set of rickety wooden staircases, to get to a viewpoint known as Cave of the Mists, situated right next to the falling water. Jean Peters is afraid of the climb. She decides to stay back and wait. Now who do you think she's gonna encounter when she's standing there alone? If you answered "Joseph Cotten", give yourself a Gold Star. The sight of him, clad head to toe in yellow raingear, gets her running up those wooden stairs in a hurry.
But even then, her husband doesn't believe her. He does agree to accompany her to the police station, however, where a detective listens to her story and takes it seriously, thank goodness. Unfortunately for Jean Peters, it's not gonna do her much good, at least not at the present time, because Hathaway has a big Hitchcockian ending to roll out. I don't wanna tell you too much about that, either, but I'll give you two hints : the first is to remember that Marilyn Monroe had a favorite song. This will take you to a location straight out of the Hitchcock playbook. The other hint is to consider the name of the movie. There's a reason it's called "Niagara". Peters has to go through a hell of a lot in the final minutes.
"Niagara" runs a spare 93 minutes, and is a rare case of a movie that could've benefited from extra length. Though the script has no fat (as we say), and though it's a perfect film in the sense that every scene leads into the next and moves the story forward, I thought that the characters of George and Rose Loomis were a tad underwritten. It's a minor complaint, because Cotten is great as always, and Marilyn herself is surprisingly good in a dramatic role. But we only get a scene or two, of mostly expository dialogue, to understand who they are. It would've been helpful to have more backstory on Cotten's mental illness, for example, or to know why he was locked up in an Army psych ward. Ditto for Marilyn. We know she's not a tramp, even when Cotten says otherwise. She married him, after all, and certainly not for his money - he doesn't have any. So she must have really loved him at one time. But who is she, besides an ex-waitress? Just five or ten minutes more, focused on Rose and George, would've been helpful.
Still, I'm gonna give "Niagara" Two Very Big Thumbs Up. Henry Hathaway was an expert director, a craftsman who specialised in Westerns mostly, but he shows here that he can do a crime film as well as anyone, including Master Hitchcock. Every shot counts in this movie, and I think it would easily hold up to repeat viewings. Highly recommended. //////
That's all for now. I'm gonna head over to the produce market and then back to Pearl's. I've also got some Impeaching to do.
See you tonight at the Usual Time.
Tons of love. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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