John Chard
The Belles and the Bells.
Niagara Falls, so often a place of honeymoon love is the setting for this engrossing and gripping thriller directed with tight astuteness by the brilliant Henry Hathaway. Hathaway works from a screenplay collectively written by Charles Brackett, Walter Reisch and Richard L. Breen. It stars Joseph Cotton, Marilyn Monroe, Jean Peters, Max Showalter (as Casey Adams), Denis O'Dea and Richard Allan. Music is by Sol Kaplan and cinematography by Joseph MacDonald.
Plot wise it's very simple, the core essence that of an unfaithful wife scheming against her husband - thus garnering peril ire from the jealously unstable man - but simplicity of plot does not stop this from reaching craftily high peaks. Hathaway and MacDonald breathtakingly weave the splendid location into the unfolding story, something that simultaneously brings out the sensual beauty of the two lovely leading ladies, with the sense of danger still always as a constant factor. The framing of man made structures such as staircases and the bell tower are readily given a noir vibe, again enhancing a story pungent with human fallibilities and dripping wet metaphors.
Now that the film is readily available in restored home formats, one gets to see the sublime work of MacDonald. The Technicolour photography has a lurid broody sheen to it, thus enhancing the disquiet mood pulsing away in the story and that of Monroe's sensuality within it. Peters (a true classic beauty), in what is the toughest part, doesn't let her character become secondary to Monroe's (even more impressive given Monroe's fine work and Hathaway's lingering usage of her), so much so that when the edge of the seat finale arrives we the audience are fully immersed in it. While Cotten as the tortured husband to Monroe's adulterous wife nails the duality of the character for maximum returns.
Nature's ferocious marvel and the raw power of sex and its destructive powers comes crashing together in this early 50s Hitchcockian like diamond. 8/10
CinemaSerf
Right from the outset, this has the look of an Hitchcock mystery to it. Indeed, the opening bars of Sol Kaplan’s score sound very Herrmann-esque as we open with some grand scale photography of the Falls. That’s where we meet newlyweds “Polly” (Jean Peters) and “Ray” (Max Showalter) who have arrived on the Canadian side for a few days in a cabin overlooking the spray. Thing is, the previous residents haven’t checked-out and “Rose” (Marilyn Monroe) insists her husband “George” (Joseph Cotton) is too ill to travel. It emerges fairly swiftly that she is a bit of a temptress and that “George” knows it. What he doesn’t know, though, is that she and her latest beau (Richard Allan) have laid plans to be shot of him and then to head to Chicago. Suffice to say, that doesn’t go to plan and soon “Polly” is caught up in a dangerous scheme of murder, mistaken identity and quite possibly hallucinating too - all while poor old “Ray” doesn’t know whether she is coming or going. Monroe exudes a degree of star quality here but for me, it is actually Peters who delivers the goods as the plot thickens and Cotton also contributes strongly as his character struggles to cope with the betrayal of a wife he is obviously still besotted by. The constant noise of the waterfall, the spray and the enclosed spaces in which much of this drama is set contrasts well with the vastness of the waterway, and though I struggled with Denis O’Dea as the policeman, I felt Henry Hathaway allowed this slightly claustrophobic drama to build to a solid denouement that seems sadly appropriate.
