Disappearance at Clifton Hill - 2019 film review

I have vivid memories of my one and only trip to Niagara Falls. It was on a coach trip from the Toronto Bouchercon a few years back and although the weather was a bit iffy, the company was splendid and the Falls were magnificent. Since then I've enjoyed watching the old film Niagara and now I've also taken a look at a recent movie set around the Falls - Disappearance at Clifton Hill. 

The story begins with a family outing in rural Canada. A young girl is shocked to see a boy with a patch over one eye, who is clearly terrified. Then she witnesses his abduction. She tells the story, but nobody believes her. We then fast forward to the present. The girl is Abby, played by none other than Tuppence Middleton. Her sister is Laure (Hannah Gross). Their parents have died and a rather slimy lawyer has brokered a deal under which they sell their failing motel to a family called Lake, who own most of the little town.

Abby has gained a reputation, not least with her sister, for being a compulsive liar, so when she starts to reinvestigate the mysterious abduction, she gets little sympathy from anyone. A local conspiracy theorist called David Bell (David Cronenberg, perhaps better known as a director), seems more helpful. He is deeply suspicious of the Lakes and soon Abby discovers a connection between the boy she saw and a pair of stage magicians called the Magnificent Moulins.

The plot thickens nicely from then on. This is a well-made film and it boasts a final twist that came as a genuine surprise to me. Often these days, movie twists of that kind are rather meretricious but on the whole I think this one works well. This isn't as renowned a film as, say, Shutter Island, but I enjoyed it at least as much.

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....