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