Niagara (1953)

“Expressive colour should be something not judged according to the criteria of the painter. I can think of no better example than Niagara itself. Its colour is alive, it speaks, even if it is a shade on the vulgar side. But this shrillness is about something new, and I find it very exciting.” — Filmmaker Jacques Rivette (Celine and Julie Go Boating)

SYNOPSIS

Part Technicolor noir, part overheated melodrama, Henry Hathaway’s Niagara remains best known as the film that transformed Marilyn Monroe from rising star into full-fledged screen phenomenon. Set amid the mist, thunder, and raw elemental force of Niagara Falls, the story follows two vacationing couples whose lives become entangled in a web of adultery, jealousy, and murder. Bathed in some of the most striking Technicolor imagery of the decade, Hathaway’s thriller treats color not merely as decoration but as an expressive force unto itself, heightening the film’s atmosphere of eroticism, paranoia, and impending violence. Monroe, photographed with near-mythic intensity as the restless and seductive Rose Loomis, emerges as a force of nature equal to the Falls themselves. With its lurid palette, mounting hysteria, and spectacular location photography, Niagara occupies a fascinating space between studio thriller, erotic fever dream, and proto-neo-noir.

Niagara screens as part of our limited series, “In Glorious Technicolor.”