Niagara

6/7/2019

The Belles and the Bells. Niagara Falls, so often a place of honeymoon love is the setting for this engrossing and gripping thriller directed with tight astuteness by the brilliant Henry Hathaway. Hathaway works from a screenplay collectively written by Charles Brackett, Walter Reisch and Richard L. Breen. It stars Joseph Cotton, Marilyn Monroe, Jean Peters, Max Showalter (as Casey Adams), Denis O'Dea and Richard Allan. Music is by Sol Kaplan and cinematography by Joseph MacDonald. Plot wise it's very simple, the core essence that of an unfaithful wife scheming against her husband - thus garnering peril ire from the jealously unstable man - but simplicity of plot does not stop this from reaching craftily high peaks. Hathaway and MacDonald breathtakingly weave the splendid location i

3/1/2026

Right from the outset, this has the look of an Hitchcock mystery to it. Indeed, the opening bars of Sol Kaplan’s score sound very Herrmann-esque as we open with some grand scale photography of the Falls. That’s where we meet newlyweds “Polly” (Jean Peters) and “Ray” (Max Showalter) who have arrived on the Canadian side for a few days in a cabin overlooking the spray. Thing is, the previous residents haven’t checked-out and “Rose” (Marilyn Monroe) insists her husband “George” (Joseph Cotton) is too ill to travel. It emerges fairly swiftly that she is a bit of a temptress and that “George” knows it. What he doesn’t know, though, is that she and her latest beau (Richard Allan) have laid plans to be shot of him and then to head to Chicago. Suffice to say, that doesn’t go to plan and soon “Poll