NIAGARA

This film from 1953 has nice Technicolor photography of both Niagara Falls and of Marilyn Monroe, which may explain why it was a box office hit.

But it is so deficient in basics, such as well-drawn characters or a decent story, that I was surprised to read that contemporary reviews were mostly positive.

Monroe is badly miscast as Rose, the scheming wife of Joseph Cotten’s moody and jealous husband, George, who may be suffering from PTSD due to seeing action in the Korean War.

They are reliving their honeymoon at Niagara and it’s not going at all well.  Not that Rose cares because she has a lover, Ted, who is going to kill George.  How long she has known Ted and why he should be willing to commit murder is not explained.  In fact we barely see him, and he has no lines in the film, so the only reason I know that his name is Ted is from the cast list in Wikipedia.

The other significant characters are a young couple who arrive at Niagara for a delayed honeymoon.  

The husband is an irritating all-American dork who treats his wife, Polly, with scant respect.  She on the other hand is an empathetic and grounded person who is therefore the most relatable character on view (admittedly a low bar).    

She is played very well by Jean Peters who had already impressed me in ‘Broken Lance’ and ‘Pickup on South Street’.   Originally hers was going to be the lead role in this film until the studio realised that the public couldn't get enough of Monroe, and maybe this explains why the film can’t make up its mind which of Rose and Polly to focus on.

Cotten does his best with a character whose behaviour is erratic to say the least. He kills Ted in self-defence (in a scene which might have been dramatic but which we don't get to see) but instead of going to the police he has the crazy idea of assuming Ted's identity, before killing Rose (in the film's most effective sequence, again a low bar).

The director Henry Hathaway wanted James Mason for the role of George, but Mason turned it down on the grounds that his daughter was tired of seeing him die in films.  Mason probably would have been better casting but I doubt that his presence in itself would have rescued this farrago.

Apparently large sections of the filmed footage were removed at the behest of the studio head, which helps explain its short running time of 88 minutes.  But given that these sequences sound rather tedious (they involve the Canadian police) I doubt that their inclusion would have been much of a plus.  

The most interesting relationship in the story (potentially at least) is that between George and Polly.  She has some sympathy for him and urges him to give himself up to the police (before he goes and kills Rose).  But here again the film is muddled because at one point she seems to have decided not to tell the police about her accidentally meeting George, and then she does a sudden about turn and does tell them.

One accidental meeting between George and Polly is allowable but unfortunately there are two, the second as part of an extremely contrived climax in which they end up in a boat, which of course then runs out of petrol, putting them both in peril.  No prizes for guessing which of them survives and which doesn't.

All in all, a mess.