Mum's Monday: Niagara (1953)

When you think up a film where you would like a honeymoon couple, Polly (Jean Peters) and Ray Cutler (Casey Adams AKA Max Showalter) to get involved or interact with someone else’s life, you need a setting, and where better than the honeymoon capital of the world, Niagara Falls? The scenery is spectacular and you can use the many ready-made attractions there as film sets.  Many have changed or disappeared over the years, but the falls remain as scenic as ever.

Without the scenery, it would just be a normal film with Rose Loomis (Marilyn Monroe) and George Loomis (Joseph Cotten) on holiday, having problems, with Rose having an affair and intending to leave George. You wouldn’t have a film without the scenery. Both the film and Niagara Falls complement each other. If you didn’t have the falls, the film would just be a normal honeymoon film, but without the film the falls would just be the falls, albeit, beautiful.

Polly and Ray are enjoying their honeymoon and all that Niagara Falls has to offer, but quickly, due to Polly’s caring nature get caught up in Rose and George’s problems. Ray spots Rose with her affair and Polly helps George with an injury he has sustained. This film shows that just because you are on your honeymoon, if you are a caring person then you will stay true to yourself and help where you can.

As quickly as the couples are drawn together the film splits them again. Rose leads her life and the love triangle ends in tragedy, and Polly and Ray meet another couple they know from Ray’s work and go off for the day for it only to end in the boat being stolen and going over the falls. The story lines inter-weave, run parallel, collide and separate throughout the film, showing very different lives along the way.

Although this is a dramatic ending and makes use of the falls, there was no mention of suicidal intentions so we don’t know if the boat was taken knowing it will drift in the wrong direction or deliberately taken towards the falls. Whichever it was, I felt sorry for the innocent party.

If you are planning a honeymoon you couldn’t go far wrong with Niagara Falls. It is an amazing place and hopefully you will have a less dramatic one. I hope it lives up to expectations. The scenery certainly will.