Sexpot and Waterfalls

If not especially well executed, "Niagara" isn't a bad concept, giving Marilyn Monroe and Niagara Falls undoubtedly the sexiest co-star respectively either ever had. Indeed, they're conflated, double each other here. Her the platinum blonde sex symbol as promiscuous femme fatale, parading around in form-fitting outfits cut so low "you can see her kneecaps," in Technicolor and when not lying in bed or showering. The would-be cultural icon, including a publicity still from this production becoming the basis for Andy Warhol's "Marilyn Diptych," so gorgeous she makes otherwise attractive actors look downright homely beside her (such as the shredded wheat product-placement touring normies). She's both alluring and deadly. And, there's the wet rapids of a natural marvel, source of great electric power, and tourist destination known as romantic rendezvous for honeymooners, so associated with amorous vigor that the name of erection pills was selected for rhyming with Niagara. It's also regularly one of the most popular suicide termini in the world. The waterfalls are introduced with a man emerging from within them drenched, while the sexpot is first seen in bed smoking a cigarette post-masturbation. Unbridled, a duo of, as the movie poster suggests, "a raging torrent of emotion that even nature can't control!" Joseph Cotten never stood a chance.

Hitchcockian in its noir-thriller tone, it would've surely benefited from a filmmaker of Alfred Hitchcock's command. Just reading quotations off Wikipedia, one of the writers apparently didn't even grasp why Monroe had to play the baddie (in so far as sex is equated with murder) instead of the heroine, so that's an indication of the level of incompetence we're dealing with here. But, Daryl Zanuck was in charge and made the call, and Monroe was enthusiastic for it. The studio system at work. What we do get are a couple jokes at the expense of Monroe's celebrity. One is a remark involving her dress and Yankee Stadium, a probable allusion to her real-world relationship with baseballer Joe DiMaggio, and another involves Monroe ironically interrupting the normies preparing a snapshot of a pinup girl pose. Her shadow looms large over such modeling.

The supposedly normal couple is a drag. I assume they're here to moralistically moderate or offset Monroe's allure and passion, but they hardly seem anyone's ideal representation of marriage either: utterly neutered to the point they're easily coopted into the affairs of Monroe and Cotten; already married for some time, he brings his books to the honeymoon suite and is more interested in his boss than his wife and in work than in the waterfalls (that is, sex); her hysterically panicking when either in bed or finally soaked in the Niagara mist; together a Korean War-fatigued 1950s reactionary overcorrection to feared changes in Kinsey-era sexual mores, particularly female sexuality. What a frightful if enticing prospect of honeymooning it all is.

P.S. What a contrived and callous time to kick someone out of their cabin. It's about as otherwise poorly integrated into the narrative except to advance the plot as the carillon bells of the Rainbow Tower.