A Commentary : Niagara (1953)

A Commentary : Niagara (1953)

'The two most electrifying sights in the world' : that's how the trailer for the movie 'Niagara' described Marilyn Monroe and Niagara Falls, and by golly it's right. Marilyn looks stunning, with her famous walk she struts and wiggles, pouting and posing as only she can. Her delivery is breathy, almost panting and as sexy siren Rose Loomis she has an agenda that is to shock us all. For this is a tale of murder; a sensual and erotic woman loves another and it is her husband who must die. Joseph Cotten plays her husband, an unhappy and neurotic man, who is jealous and afraid, afraid of losing her. He calls her a tramp, yet still finds time to playfully make love to her, even when she has murder in mind and has no interest in him. For this is a woman who can deceive and she does.

In contrast to this dysfunctional couple then is Ray and Polly Cutler, new arrivals at Rainbow Cabin's holiday chalets. They couldn't be more ordinary, more typically happily married examples of middle America. Polly Cutler (Jean Peters) is an innocent woman, unlike Marilyn Monroe's character Rose Loomis, yet when we see her posing in a deep blue bikini we do think she may be cheesy competition. But this is not really the case. This is Marilyn's film, make no mistake. When she appears in the very first scene, smoking in bed and then grabbing a fag in white bathing cap with poster paint red lips that are full and sensuous, we know she is the sophisticated star. She shines so bright we know we are in the presence of a legend, a non pareil. We see Marilyn at her most beautiful. Her wonderful figure and shock of bright blonde hair fills the screen. When she appears in a cerise low-cut dress with white chiffon stole, wardrobe has been at work, but it is the body, the personality, the sexual magnetism which is really on show, nothing else.

Mr. Cutler says 'get out the fire hose' on seeing this ravishing beauty and he is right, she walks across the set with a faint swagger, a chassaying of the hips and the way she uses her prop, the white stole, is quite amazing. When she sings along to the record outside she almost purrs but this is all a torment to George, her husband. He comes out of the cabin angrily and smashes the record. He does not approve of his wife. She is too much the scarlet woman. He hates it when she flirts. But who can keep Rose Loomis in check? Her sexuality is too intense, too steamy. she is too much of a passion engine. It makes us wonder just how Arthur Miller fared, her husband in real life, but that is another matter.

Joseph Cotten is derogatory about Marilyn yet he still loves her after being pressed into a confession by Polly Cutler. It is because he is a man in love that he can react so violently to her unfaithfulness and eventually kill her. She has let him down so badly. Joseph Cotten plays a man falling apart. George Loomis is unhappy and angry, disappointed with Rose, his wife. All the time she is in love with someone else and planning a murder. Rose is a duplicitous bitch. She still plays at love with George when her real lover is more handsome and much younger, and irrelevantly it seems to her but not to us, a killer.

And what of symbols in the film? They are there. A colour symbol is surely the red jacket worn when George has gone missing. This suggests danger, a threat, something gone wrong. And the rainbow, this symbol recurs in the film. It opens the film. We see a beautiful rainbow in the mist of the falls and the cabins in which they all stay are called Rainbow Cabins. This is a symbol of beauty but beauty in nature not in human personality or psyche. It may reflect Marilyn's physical beauty but certainly not her mind, for her mind is evil, set on destruction and selfish desire. Marilyn is someone breaking all the rules, torn between two lovers, one of which she can so easily ditch. She has no heart, for George isn't that bad. We always feel he is a good man wronged. And then there are the Falls themselves. Surely the most potent and central symbol of all. A raging torrent, forceful, never ending, inexorable and relentless. It speaks of passion, overwhelming but destructive, fatal and harmful to anyone coming in the way of it. Rose Loomis has that passion. It is unstoppable and torrential, just like the Falls. It can be gentle too, or so George says at some point in its course, maybe this reflects the goodness in Rose, but there is not enough of it. If there is a hiatus in its inexorability it surely only serves to make possible the raging torrent of the centrifugal force.

The bell tower is a symbol. Rose frenetically climbs the stairs with George in pursuit. She is terrified and rightly so for she is found out, but it is after the murder that the bells come straight into sharp focus. And the bells are silent. This image, just after Rose's death, is dramatic cinematography. Her dead body is splayed out stark and somehow quietly shocking in its soft brutality. But then she asked for it - this is the fate of the femme fatale. Soon after George picks up a diamond encrusted lipstick - a symbol of femininity, beauty and glamour - basically a symbol of Rose. The name itself, Rose, is beautiful too. And Rose is a full blown beauty, her summer of vibrant colour is over. She may have been beautiful but she was deadly too and her fate can only be what it is - annihilation. There is justice in this, this is a moral tale. As Ray Cutler so aptly puts it, 'all we needed here was a couple of shrouds' - it's been no holiday.

Tragedy has ensued from evil and that is all we need to know. The innocent man George gets revenge on an evil wife but does not ultimately survive to be exonerated. He makes to flee, taking a boat from the beautiful technicolour mazarind lake, only to go to his death. The omniscient Falls, the ever present spirit of the movie claims its last victim, almost taking Polly Cutler with it too. This has been an ill-starred vacation for everybody. Rose's lover was killed by Loomis, then Rose herself, and now George is finished by the Falls; in the final exegesis a great symbol of an ineluctable death, a terrible fate. The dramatic Falls have been background to murder, deception and revenge. A raging torrent of emotion has poured forth from our amazing star Marilyn Monroe, a torrent as forceful and uncontrollable as the Falls of Niagara itself.