Niagara (1953)

Niagara falls is supposed to be a romantic place perfect for the blossoming love of honeymoons. Or that's the idea. Henry Hathaway turns these images around in his melodramatic but eerily suggestive crime flick Niagara - he makes the thunder of the waterfall into the soundtrack of a nightmare inhabited by kind-hearted folk from the country and a troubled couple. Well, I tend to like this kind of stuff. A bit corny, over-the-top action suspense scenes in the brightest technicolor you've ever seen. Like a cheaper version of North by Northwest! I guess Hitch must've stolen all his ideas from this movie. Marilyn Monroe is excellent as the dame with secret and dangerous plots on her mind and the other actors are mostly good, especially Joseph Cotten who plays her traumatized war veteran husband. - OK, the plot is utterly silly and there are many things that make this movie quite off-putting if one thought about it more (the duality of femininity on display: the sexy one and the 'moral' one) but somehow I was lured into this sleazy movie. Damn you, technicolor gloss!