Niagara - movie review

Niagara is a 1953 movie, directed by Henry Hathaway, which I found tucked away on the tv schedules. It was described as "Hitchcockian" and starred Marilyn Monroe, and these twin temptations proved irresistible. And I'm glad I watched it, although it doesn't rank as a classic crime film by a long stretch. The most memorable aspect of the film is not even Marilyn, but the vivid photography of Niagara Falls, which play a key part in the story-line.

Casey Adams and Jean Peters play a honeymooning couple whose cabin at the Falls is taken by another pair, George and Rose Loomis, played by Monroe and Joseph Cotten. Monroe is young and sexy, but her husband is jealous and depressive. It soon emerges that he has plenty to be jealous and depressed about, since his wife is encouraging her lover to kill him.

There are a few pleasing plot developments, but on the whole the story is commonplace. In a sense, the story-line is that of a film noir - but Niagara is shot in glorious Technicolor. The contradiction is by no means utterly fatal to the mood of unhealthy emotional tension, but it does contribute to the slightly unrealistic "feel" of the film. You can have a "noir" film shot in sunlight and colour- the brilliant Body Heat is an example - but Niagara  isn't in the same league as Lawrence Kasdan's masterpiece.

Niagara is, perhaps, an attempt to focus more on the characters' emotional lives than the typical Hitchcock thriller. Again, though, this was much better done years later in Body Heat. When a film is described as "Hitchcockian", one expects edge-of-the-chair suspense, of the kind delivered in some of the best thrillers by Chabrol and Truffaut. Niagara is a lesser work, but still worth watching. And it does make me want to visit those Falls....

The Third Man

Watching Carol Reed’s superb 1949 film The Third Man again, not long after reading Eric Ambler’s novel of ten years earlier, The Mask of  Dimitrios, I was struck by the similarities between the novel and Graham Greene’s screenplay. Both feature an apparently dead villain whose story is sought after by a rather naive popular novelist, and the two story-lines develop (despite many differences) in a broadly comparable way.

There can be little doubting Ambler’s influence on Greene, yet The Third Man remains a distinctive and enjoyable piece of work, and it is, I think, a very good example of how one story-teller can properly borrow from another, and yet still make his work very much his own. 

The setting in post-war Vienna is highly atmospheric, and of course the famous sewer sequence, as well as the scenes shot near to the Wiener Reisenrad, which long pre-dates The Millennium Wheel, are intensely memorable. The cinematography is complemented by Anton Karas’ zither music, and “The Harry Lime Theme” became an international hit.

Greene’s narrative has plenty of pleasing twists and turns, as well as a downbeat ending, and he and director Carol Reed are extremely well served by the cast. This includes those British stalwarts Trevor Howard, Bernard Lee and Wilfred Hyde-White, as well as Joseph Cotten and, best of all, Orson Welles. It is, at heart, a story about friendship and betrayal, and is a first rate example of how a tale that is very much of its time can nevertheless stand the test of time.