Gentlemen Prefer Blondes

 

Director Howard Hawks

Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell

novelist Anita Loos

GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES           B                                                                               USA  (91 mi)  1953  d: Howard Hawks

I can be smart when it’s important, but most men don’t like it.                                               —Lorelei Lee (Marilyn Monroe)

During the conservative era of Eisenhower’s America in the 1950’s, Douglas Sirk was offering his own subversive take on the “women’s picture,” using lurid symbolism and garish color schemes to reflect what’s going on under the surface in films like Magnificent Obsession (1954), All That Heaven Allows (1955), and Written On the Wind (1956), drawing attention to the stereotypical and straight-jacketed roles of women in society, caught up in the material mindset of the American Dream while also accentuating the tragedy of believing in false ideals. Hollywood, however, was in the business of promoting those same consumerist ideals through its own overblown romanticism, where this film is the epitome of reinforcing the existing social order, where marrying a rich man was the answer to a woman’s prayers, as money, not love, was the overriding concern, without any apparent concerns that they could be viewed as a sex object or purchased as a commodity themselves.  Perpetuating the stereotype that liberation comes in the form of a pocketbook, where economic stability supersedes all matters of love, the Hollywood mythmaking machine was busy at work creating larger-than-life figures on the screen, with Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell representing the industry’s two biggest sex symbols, where the cartoonish storyline is overlooked by the Technicolor musical extravaganza that is literally an escapist cinematic spectacle, adopted as a marketing strategy to compete against television audiences, offering a glittering allure that wasn’t available on those black and white television sets, where the spread of the new home medium was part of the post-war economic boom.  As Hawks himself noted, “The girls were unreal, the story was unreal.  We were working with complete fantasy.”  Monroe’s undeniable sex appeal put glamour back into the movies on a large scale, where she epitomized the objectification of women in the 1950’s, as advertising campaigns for her movies echoed the selling of consumer goods, emphasizing the importance of appearance and obedience to male expectations, underscored by the title, where marriage was viewed as the ideal, with happiness revolving around choosing the right husband, where cinematic illusion deftly plays into the audience’s fantasies, reiterating the Cinderella fairy tale with the princess searching for the handsome prince.  And Monroe does not disappoint, never disappearing behind the character, as what we see onscreen actually “is” Marilyn Monroe playing a sex kitten in all its exaggerated femaleness, with her signature breathy voice, where nearly all her subsequent roles are reiterations of this same sexually provocative character, while Jayne Mansfield’s blonde bombshell in Frank Tashlin’s THE GIRL CAN’T HELP IT (1956) is almost a parody of Monroe in this film.  The entire film may be seen through a voyeuristic lens, as these women are continually ogled and gawked at by men throughout the entire length of the picture, no matter the setting, yet these enterprising young women have learned to take advantage of their beauty and feminine sexuality, where having a voluptuous figure has its advantages, as they are literally on display as shiny ornaments in a fish bowl, where the film showcases them as sex objects like a prurient advertising campaign selling tickets for its own product, with Monroe already known as a pinup girl, while the film may as well be a billboard advertising for Hollywood itself.  Released just a few months prior to the premiere of CinemaScope, what truly stands out is the movie’s shameless materialism, yet when these women exhibit a strong assertiveness and use their feminine guile to get what they want, acknowledging at one point, “If we aren’t able to empty his pockets between us, we aren’t worthy of the name Woman,” their sexual manipulation is equated to female enterprise leading into the postwar consumer landscape of the 50’s with its unquestioned acceptance of the full-fledged patriarchy of American capitalism.  While it has its screwball comedy moments, much like Howard Hawks’ earlier film MONKEY BUSINESS (1952), this garish, veering-towards-camp musical never really comes across as a subversive satire of the American Dream, instead it blatantly peddles the product.   

Adapted from the 1925 novel by Anita Loos, the first female staff screenwriter in Hollywood, authoring hundreds of Hollywood films in the 1910’s, it started as a series of short sketches published in serial installments by Harper’s Bazaar known as the “Lorelei stories,” written in the form of her diaries, revisiting the myth of the irresistible American blonde in the jazz age of the Roaring Twenties, who uses her “stupidity” and eroticism for her own benefit, where the magazine’s circulation quadrupled overnight, making her a millionaire and a celebrity, running as a Broadway play in 1926-27, followed by a 1928 silent comedy release under the same title directed by Malcolm St. Clair, which was something of a flop, where no copies are known to exist, so it is now considered a lost film.  It was revised in a Broadway version starring Carol Channing in 1949, accentuating the entertainment aspect through elaborate musical production numbers, while the film release, with Loos as a script consultant, was the seventh highest-grossing film of 1953, eclipsing the popularity of the novel.  The film doesn’t really stack up against the best song-and-dance musicals of the era, as the songs themselves are weak, never rising to the level of Marlene Dietrich in Josef von Sternberg’s The Blue Angel (Der Blaue Engel) (1930), for instance, who could convincingly direct each song to the individualized fantasies of every man in the room, and what passes for dancing is more like choreographed movement that is intentionally tacky, as neither Russell nor Monroe could dance, with Hawks nowhere near the set, having no interest in directing large-scale musical numbers, turning those sequences over to choreographer Jack Cole and his assistant Gwen Verdon.  The costumes designed by William Travilla are glamorously divine, working with Monroe on eight films together, best expressed in a rousing Marilyn Monroe showstopper near the end, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) -- (Movie Clip) Diamonds Are A... YouTube (4:26), where her celebrated pink evening gown, as well as gloves, jewelry, shoes, and hair were parodied by Madonna in an equally iconic music video in 1984, Madonna - Material Girl (Official Video) [HD] - YouTube (4:45), glorified again by Nicole Kidman in a more chaotic version with quick cuts in Baz Luhrman’s MOULIN ROUGE (2001), Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend (2001) HD - YouTube (2:42), both meant to evoke the sexuality of Monroe, but reinvented with a modernist sophistication.   It’s surprising how much dance movement elevates the best musicals, whether it’s Gene Kelly or Fred Astaire or a host of others, as they tend to hold up over time, while those without it seem so much more inert and statuesque, feeling dated, relying so much more upon a script that may not always provide the saving grace, where this very much appears to be a product of the times.  That said, what this film really established was the brilliance of Marilyn Monroe’s comic timing, initially perceived by the industry as just another “dumb blonde” (as initially written by Loos), which she accentuates with stereotypical exaggeration, where her archetypal Hollywood sex goddess actually helped to resuscitate the musical’s mainstream commercial and critical recovery in the 21st century, embodied by films like Moulin Rouge (2001) and Rob Marshall’s CHICAGO (2002), perhaps driven by nostalgia, but her delivery of some of the best lines may be the real surprise of the film, exemplified years later in what is arguably her best comic role in Billy Wilder’s madcap comedy Some Like It Hot (1959), followed not long afterwards by her final film and what many consider her greatest dramatic role opposite Clark Gable and Montgomery Clift in John Huston’s desperately sad The Misfits (1961).  But this musical is on the opposite spectrum, more of a zany spoof on male expectations, overtly playing to the male gaze, while countering that with something the audience is not expecting, turning into a female buddy movie, with Russell and Monroe playing best of friends without a hint of competitive rivalry, where their lack of formal education is replaced by firsthand experience, becoming a disorienting daydream of female empowerment, allowing the women to seemingly control their own destiny, so long as it fits within the safely conventional parameters of 1950 America.  The underlying sexual ambiguity is an interesting component of the film, and may help explain why this is listed by none other than Rainer Werner Fassbinder in Rainer Werner Fassbinder's 10 favourite films of all time.  It’s extremely touching to see the considerable care Russell takes in trying to protect the acutely shy young starlet from a director who had little patience for her anxieties, offering the maturity and wisdom of a big sister, often conveyed in overly protective wise cracks, but their lifelong friendship off the screen was equally genuine, though they never worked together again.     

While the script adapted by Charles Lederer veers from the norm, what’s interesting is how underwritten all the male roles are, with most little more than buffoons, and how much more detailed the female relationship becomes, which is atypical of Hollywood films of the period, something not often seen before THELMA & LOUISE (1991).  Lorelei Lee (Marilyn Monroe) and Dorothy Shaw (Jane Russell) are American showgirls (“from the wrong side of the tracks”) who appear in red sequin dresses to deliver the opening number, appearing even before the opening credits, Two Little Girls from Little Rock - Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (HD) YouTube (2:48), emulated a decade later by two sisters, Catherine Deneuve and Françoise Dorléac, in Jacques Demy’s The Young Girls of Rochefort (Les demoiselles de Rochefort) (1967).  As the two greatest sex symbols of the era, one blonde and the other a brunette, they couldn’t be more different, as the ditzy blonde Lorelei is angelic, even innocent-looking, with a restrained sexuality, while the more intellectually discerning Dorothy is bold and brash, whose sexuality is raw and sassy.  Dorothy is more pragmatic, but Lorelei insists her brunette friend is dumb because she’s always falling for some good-looking guy without any consideration of his financial standing, with Dorothy suggesting Lorelei has “Novocaine in her lipstick,” as men always swoon after being kissed, while Lorelei in turn warns Dorothy in her own affectionate, yet convoluted way, “I want you to find happiness and stop having fun.”  Rather than resist their female objectification by men, they instead accentuate all their sensual qualities to draw even more attention to themselves, actually parodying the male stereotype of a sex symbol by presenting a convincing illustration of feminine seduction as illusion, performing one artificial female stereotype after another, intentionally feeding into the audience’s own insatiable fantasy of beauty, which of course Hollywood helped invent.  Russell was the headliner, loaned out from RKO by Howard Hughes, earning ten times the salary of Monroe, but it was Monroe who was given the climactic musical number, coming out of this film a first-rate star, singing all of her own vocals except the operatic high notes introducing the signature song, which were dubbed by infamous ghost singer Marni Nixon.  The tagline for the film was “The Two M-M-Marvels Of Our Age In The Wonder Musical Of The World!”  They are opposites when it comes to marriage, with one guided by money and the other by a healthy skepticism of love, as Lorelei is only interested in a man’s wealth, like her millionaire fiancé Gus (Tommy Noonan in a role originally meant for Cary Grant), a hopelessly naïve and prudish man who can provide for all her financial needs, where lavish presents are a substitute for real love.  Dorothy, on the other hand, prefers men who are handsome and charming, and is more concerned about the sparks of attraction, showing no real interest in their wealth, which is immediately established in their backstage rapport which confirms their character and their motivations, with Lorelei acting the part of a sophisticated lady, intending to marry Gus in France, while Dorothy is a straight-shooter, where her lines feel more like sarcastic zingers.  The chink in the armor is Gus’s father, as he despises Lorelei, suspecting she’s little more than a gold digger, looking for any hint of scandal to call off the marriage, and forbids them from traveling together on the Atlantic ocean liner to Europe, with Dorothy filling in as her chaperone.  Luckily for her, the all-male U.S. Olympic team is onboard, which quickly draws her eye, fascinated by the anatomy of the male physique, which escalates into a snappy musical number as she wanders around the men on exercise apparatus and eventually a pool, with homoerotic implications in their flesh-colored attire, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) -- (Movie Clip) Anyone Here ...  YouTube (3:54), all but ignoring Dorothy as she takes a tumble into the pool, which was purely accidental, but like a trooper she remained in character, so they kept the shot.    

Unbeknownst to either woman, Gus’s father has hired a private investigator in the form of Ernie Malone (Elliott Reid) to watch Lorelei on the journey and report back anything suspicious.  As a diversion, he snoozes up to Dorothy, pretending he’s a rich playboy and that it’s all accidental, but his eye is on Lorelei, hoping to catch her in an act of indiscretion.  In one of those swanky, luxury liner cocktail hours with guests in formal attire, Lorelei happens upon the elderly owner of a diamond mine, Sir Francis “Piggy” Beekman (Charles Coburn), and her eyes light up in dollar signs, while his face turns into a giant diamond.  Despite being old enough to be her grandfather, and married to boot, traveling with his wife (Norma Varden), Lorelei grows fascinated by Lady Beekman’s diamond tiara, even trying it on for size, where her reaction is priceless, “I just love finding new places to wear diamonds.”  This gargantuan piece of jewelry becomes the object of Lorelei’s obsessive fascination, using her flirtatious charm to spend more and more time with Beekman, who’s of course flattered by her attention, telling him what he wants to believe, feeding into his own illusion about himself in order to get what she wants, eventually convincing him to actually “give” it to her, thoroughly dismissing the objections and concerns of his wife, which becomes the narrative thread for the rest of the picture, with Lorelei refusing to give it back, even after being accused of being a thief, Marilyn Monroe And Jane Russell In "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" - " I'm Going To Keep It" YouTube (3:27).  Dorothy discovers Malone peeping on her friend, discovering his real motives and sees him for the lout he is, but his persistence with her pays off, and after a surprising kiss, she can be heard uttering “I think I’m falling in love with that slob.”  Even after ending up being down and out in Paris, thrown out of their hotel without a dollar to their name, they do what they do best, return to the stage, becoming immediate star attractions, with tragedy turning optimistically to fortune, yet there’s that little matter of the diamond tiara to contend with, turning the judicial system into a theatrical farce, becoming a mockery of the presumed superiority of European values (with its rich historical and literary history), as the brash Americans aren’t what they seem, turning this into something of an economics lesson.  Exhibiting an innate talent for American entrepreneurship, coming soon after the end of The Marshall Plan and Postwar Economic Recovery, which rebuilt a war-torn Europe, this has an all’s well that ends well storyline, going through a circuitous route to get there, with a few surprising twists, eventually coming face to face with Gus’s father, who’s ready to send Lorelei to the slammer, but she has a way of twisting even the most unpersuasive of men around her little finger, and this one’s no different, as she seems to have a way with wealthy men, speaking their own language, as all she really wants is what they’ve already got.  Who could argue with that?  The double wedding bells of the finale seems overly contrived, resembling a Hollywood fairy tale, as these thoroughly bland men are simply no match for the complexities of women possessing such unique insight into the psychology of men, thoroughly outwitting and outfoxing them on every occasion, and while it fits the happy ending movie format, one might “not” view this as a happy ending, but rather a dismal one that presents a darker view of marriage where women are trapped within the sexist 50’s demands of conformity and gender expectations.  This is a dated musical fantasia that best exemplifies the talents of these two resolute women, which even took the movie studios by surprise, as they were never able to recapture this same chemistry of female camaraderie, using their looks and sexual charisma to have fun at the expense of men, exhibiting a potent form of power that is still overlooked today. 

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) - Video Dailymotion YouTube (1:31:25)

Niagara

 

Director Henry Hathaway

Hathaway with Monroe

Hathaway, Monroe, and Joseph Cotton

Marilyn Monroe

NIAGARA                 B+                                                                                                             USA  (92 mi)  1953  d: Henry Hathaway

The first film where Marilyn Monroe received top billing, and it’s one of her more mysterious performances, though not yet that screen icon she would soon become, where it’s startling to realize this was her eighteenth film, as it took Hollywood a long time to discover her distinctive vulnerability, taking that long road from bit player obscurity to major star.  It’s equally surprising that she doesn’t use that breathy voice, but speaks normally, and while she’s sexually tantalizing, she’s also treacherously deceptive playing a James M. Cain-style morally compromised femme fatale, but she’s never really what she seems to be, and nothing like Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity (1944) or Lana Turner in The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946).  Unlike them, Monroe’s danger does not lie from evil within, but from something unknowable, as she exudes an all-too visible sexuality that is like nothing America had ever seen before, giving the film a mix of film noir, like Tay Garnett’s The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946), where two lovers driven by lustful desires plot to kill her husband, creating a powerful atmosphere of sexual tension, but also Bunuel’s Él (1953) and Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958), linked by infamous bell tower sequences, symbolic of a male hysteria swept up in a dominant control and possession of women, where the jealousy and paranoia of Bunuel merges into Hitchcock’s fantasy and longing for an unattainable object, exposing underlying delusions and outright psychoses that have likely been there all along.  Using the backdrop of Niagara Falls, never showcased on such a massive scale before, this is an explosive expression of the force of nature, where the power dwarfs and overwhelms humans, who seem small and insignificant, as the film unleashes pent-up obsessions and emotions, creating a psycho-sexual thriller with lurid undertones.  It’s surprising how overlooked this film is, along with the director who made it, who is viewed as an utterly competent journeyman director, never making a truly great film, but he was intelligent and well-read, perhaps best known as the man who blacklisted actor Dennis Hopper from Hollywood during the filming of FROM HELL TO TEXAS (1958), but this packs a punch, filled with atmospheric tension and psychological intrigue, balancing the blossoming innocence of new love with a marriage on the brink of destruction, filled with murderous impulses and the dangerous realms of film noir territory, creating a shock to the senses, taking us along a somber journey with fatalistic implications.  Monroe had a difficult childhood, the daughter of a woman who had a mental breakdown, diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, and was frequently institutionalized, spending much of her time in and out of hospitals, rarely having contact with her daughter, who never knew who her father was, feeling the sting of abandonment, as she was orphaned and passed around from family to family during the Depression, repeatedly sexually abused, and married early at the age 16 just to avoid going back to an orphanage.  By her own autobiographical accounts, she was a sad child, desperate for attention, eventually getting into modeling, with aspirations of becoming an actress, dying her naturally brunette hair blonde to make herself more employable, inevitably equating her beauty and sexual allure to her self-worth.  Landing small roles in ALL ABOUT EVE (1950), ASPHALT JUNGLE (1950), DON’T BOTHER TO KNOCK (1952), and MONKEY BUSINESS (1952), she became a pin-up model and developed a fan base among American troops during the Korean War, finding herself in a highly publicized romance with legendary Yankee baseball player Joe DiMaggio, who she married in 1954, but divorced just a year later (bothered by the frenzy surrounding Monroe’s publicly flaunted sexuality), where the discovery of earlier nude photos created something of a Hollywood scandal, which the industry used to publicize their latest sex symbol.  Monroe proved to be such a visual emphasis onscreen that all eyes are drawn to her, to the point of distraction, pulling viewers out of the narrative, compelling them to literally “consume” her image.  Fox launched an advertising campaign that questioned what Miss Monroe wore when she slept, then providing the answer, Channel No. 5.

What makes this different is the stark use of color, making this a Technicolor noir, beautifully shot by Joseph MacDonald, who also shot Ford’s Monument Valley western My Darling Clementine (1946), yet this is steeped in shadows and geometrically bizarre camera angles, where gaudy color functions as a spectacle.  Most films in the early 50’s were still shot in black and white, but this was released months before the first use of CinemaScope, which would have been a huge asset on this film, as the stunning backdrop of the Falls is an everpresent image that only enhances the look of the picture, especially the way the restlessness of the water keeps moving, providing a jolt of drama in the powerful flow of the river as it tumbles over the edge, becoming symbolic as an irrepressible and unstoppable force of nature, while also signifying a primordial aspect of the inner recesses of human subconscious.  The poster tagline suggests the ferocity of the landscape’s unrestrained character is equated to hyperbolic female sexuality, “Marilyn Monroe and Niagara, a raging torrent of emotion that even nature can’t control!” Former nightclub singer and waitress Rose Loomis (Marilyn Monroe) is initially seen naked in bed (covered by a sheet) smoking a cigarette in the early hours of the morning, inhabiting a role we’ve never seen her play before, rarely getting a chance to show this kind of dramatic complexity, Niagara 1953 Marilyn Monroe Bedroom scene 1 remastered 4k YouTube (1:54), as her husband George Loomis (Joseph Cotton) is heard in the opening voiceover offering a grim outlook as he walks along the rocky base of the Horseshoe Falls, viewed as a tiny speck in the risings mists of the fog-laden landscape, setting the stage of the insignificance of man in the face of ten thousand years of the river cutting a gorge between massive cliffs, creating one of the wonders of the world.  The same could be said for Monroe, one of the most photographed women in American history, whose fame and influence have only continued to grow over time, remaining one of the most instantly recognizable female figures in history.  A bland yet happily married young couple, Ray and Polly Cutler (Casey Adams, aka Max Showalter, easily the film’s weakest link as a dopey company man, and Jean Peters, originally slated to play Rose, whose lurid next appearance would be Pickup on South Street), are on a delayed honeymoon at Niagara Falls, arriving at the Rainbow Cabins where they’ve reserved a cabin overlooking the Falls, only to discover it’s still occupied by the Loomis couple, with Rose claiming her husband was recently discharged from an Army hospital and is a psychologically damaged war veteran, claiming he’s not well, so the Cutlers try to be understanding and accept less desirable quarters, Niagara 1953 Marilyn Monroe Bedroom scene 2 remastered 4k YouTube (1:46).  Much of the film is seen through the innocent eyes of the Cutlers, as all-American girl Polly witnesses Rose kissing a much younger man at the Falls, Patrick (Richard Allan), when she claimed she was running errands, with George quickly growing suspicious as well when he finds her ticket in her coat pocket while she’s taking a shower, a scene Monroe insisted upon shooting while stark naked behind a screen, Niagara 1953 Marilyn Monroe Shower scene remastered 4k YouTube (1:46).  This leads into one of those infamous dance sequences where kids are first discovering rock ‘n’ roll, with Rose dressed in a hot pink satin dress and bleached hair, with Polly noting, “For a dress like that, you’ve got to start laying plans when you’re about thirteen.”  Rose also picks out her own dreamy choice of music, an old love standard entitled Kiss, cooing “There is no other song,” and can be heard singing along until George, in an anxiety-ridden act of jealousy, storms out of the cabin and smashes the record to bits, Niagara 1953 Marilyn Monroe Kiss me remastered 4k YouTube (2:29), taking everyone by surprise, except Rose, who seems to feed off his insecurity, knowing he is insanely jealous and obsessed with her, continually tormenting him by flaunting her sexuality, provoking the outburst before cold-bloodedly arranging for his murder the next day, hoping people will believe it’s a suicide (a regular occurrence at this location), using Patrick as her accomplice, planning to elope with him afterwards, where this song is inexorably linked to the crime.

Rose and Polly are on opposite ends of the feminine scale, as one is blatantly exposing her sexual assets in a classic art of sultry seduction, mired in unfaithfulness, deceit, and vengeance, while the other is openly sympathetic, much more faithfully discreet, and inclined to use her intellect.  Monroe was admittedly a willing participant in her own objectification, where her scenes literally sizzle with sexuality, the first signs of what would become her movie persona, as her sensuously indulgent, tightly confining close-ups clash with the deeply repressive conservatism of the 1950’s, which includes the fallout from the political hysteria and paranoid overreach of McCarthyism.  Hathaway basically allowed Monroe to direct herself in this film, making as few takes as possible without exerting that autocratic control that others were guilty of, like the endless takes and excessive rehearsals in Billy Wilder’s THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH (1955) or Laurence Olivier’s THE PRINCE AND THE SHOWGIRL (1957), while getting substantially inferior and more mechanistic results.  The stature and maturity that Joseph Cotton brings to the picture is indisputable, forever associated with Orson Welles in CITIZEN KANE (1941) and The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), as well as their work together in THE THIRD MAN (1949), but also with Hitchcock in the deliciously evil Shadow of a Doubt (1943).  Despite being drawn to Monroe’s earthy performance, with her unknown past and present, where her sexuality is attached to the chiming bells of the tower, where the playing of the Kiss song is the secret message that the murder has been successfully accomplished, it is Cotton who remains the tragic center of the picture, doomed by his war injury and his fatal attraction to Rose, where the musical theme becomes a siren’s song associated with the lure of death, with Cotton captured by the spell.  It has a similar fascination for Rose, as the bell tower music awakens something deep inside, as if calling out for her, where she hypnotically moves toward it in a memorable walk across the cobblestone street that accentuates the curves of her posterior, promoted by the publicity team as holding the record for the longest walk in cinema history (Alida Valli’s long walk at the end of THE THIRD MAN is more than twice as long), Niagara 1953 Marilyn Monroe scene remastered 4k YouTube (57 seconds), remaining haunted by that music even while under sedation in the hospital, suffering the aftereffects of shock from identifying the dead body in the morgue, Niagara 1953 Marilyn Monroe City Morgue scene remastered 4k  YouTube (2:10).  Written by a trio of writers including Charles Brackett, producer and co-writer of SUNSET BLVD. (1950), along with Walter Reisch and Richard Breen, but an early scene foreshadows everything that follows, as George cautions Polly about the river leading into the Falls, “Let me tell you something, you’re young, you’re in love.  Well, I’ll give you a warning, don’t let it get out of hand, like those falls out there.  Up above, d’you ever see the river up above the falls?  It’s calm, and easy, and you throw in a log, it just floats around.  Let it move a little further down and it gets going faster, hits some rocks, and in a minute it’s in the lower rapids, and nothing in the world, including God himself, I suppose, can keep it from going over the edge.  It just goes!”  This may as well be the outline for the escalating tension of the thrilling finale, starting with a Hitchockian Vertigo-style murder in the bell tower, taking on a more expressionist visual aesthetic, cast in giant shadows and extreme high-angle shots, with close-ups of the bells remaining eerily silent, the only film where Monroe’s character dies, becoming increasingly vulnerable through escalating terror, MARILYN in NIAGARA (1953) Dir. Henry Hathaway YouTube (2:20), with the film pausing for a moment to examine the minor details of the possessions that fell from her purse, including a stick of red lipstick, which would forever be associated with Monroe, wearing it in the shower, remaining perfect on her lips when she gets out of bed in the morning, and even while anesthetized in the hospital.  The film then abandons her for an exciting yet melodramatic finish involving the Falls, culminating in a waterlogged boat chase, with Polly in tow, that takes us to the precipice of the Falls, like those Damsel in Distress melodramas of a woman tied to railroad tracks as a steaming locomotive approaches, 1947 Bw Ws Woman Screaming While Tied To Train Tracks ... YouTube (6 seconds), where it seems inescapable that someone will get sucked over the edge.         

Watch Niagara Full Movie Online Free With English Subtitles YouTube (1:28:51)