Niagara (film)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Niagara |
| Original title | Niagara |
| Country of production | United States |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1953 |
| length | 92 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 16 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Henry Hathaway |
| script |
Charles Brackett Walter Reisch Richard L. Breen |
| production | Charles Brackett for 20th Century Fox |
| music | Sol Kaplan |
| camera | Joseph MacDonald |
| cut | Barbara McLean |
| occupation | |
| |
Niagara is an American melodramatic thriller in the style of film noir from the year 1953. It was directed by Henry Hathaway in the lead roles are Marilyn Monroe , Joseph Cotten and Jean Peters to see. The film premiered in the United States on January 22, 1953. The film shows Monroe in the role of a nefarious wife as a femme fatale . Her erotic charisma is impressively staged in front of the grandiose backdrop of Niagara Falls. The character role was Monroe's breakthrough as a movie star.
action
Polly and Ray Cutler make up their honeymoon on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls , where they stay in the fictional motel "Rainbow Cabins". Here they get to know the attractive Rose Loomis and her husband George. George was in a military mental hospital after the Korean War and is still suffering from the war. Rose pretends to be very worried about her husband. On a tour of Niagara Falls, however, Polly sees her hugging a man named Ted Patrick.
Rose and Ted have come up with a perfidious plan. To get rid of her husband, Ted is supposed to ambush him on one of his lonely walks to Niagara Falls and kill him in an unobserved moment. Then let him throw him into the falls so that it looks like an accident. In fact, George went missing shortly afterwards. A little later, a male corpse is fished out of the water. When Rose is called to the morgue to identify her husband, she collapses. Not her husband is dead before her, but her lover Ted.
Polly discovers George a short time later at Niagara Falls. She tries to run away, but George holds her and confesses to having killed Ted in self-defense. He asks Polly not to tell anyone about his survival and that he wants to start a new life elsewhere without Rose. When the police show up at the Cutlers' premises and ask questions, Polly confesses to having seen George Loomis alive. But neither Ray nor the police believe her.
George learned from Polly that Rose was in the hospital after a nervous breakdown. From there, Rose flees for fear of her husband's revenge. But George discovers her when she wants to take the bus from Canada to Chicago. Rose takes refuge in Rainbow Tower , the bell tower near the falls. George follows her to the top floor and strangles her. He confesses to his dead wife that he loved her above all else.
George steals one of the tour boats to flee to the United States . The Cutlers wanted to go fishing with Mr and Mrs Kettering in this very boat. As he tries to start the boat, Polly comes on board. She wants to dissuade him from his plan and asks him to face the police. But George pushes her away. She falls and passes out. When the police approach, he casts off. After a short while the gasoline runs out, the boat is hit by the rapids of the Niagara and approaches the waterfalls. The desperate attempts to put the boat on the ground fail. At the last second, George can help Polly save himself on a rock. The boat crashes with George. Polly is rescued by a helicopter.
background
Niagara was shot in Technicolor . The driving force behind the project was the producer and screenwriter Charles Brackett , who is best known today for his longstanding collaboration with Billy Wilder . Brackett lived in the vicinity of Niagara Falls for many years and wanted to have a visually impressive film there. Walter Reisch , his co-screenwriter, gave him the idea of making a thriller out of it: “Everyone who hears the name Niagara thinks of newlyweds and some sentimental story of a young woman who argues with her husband on her wedding night, only to be reconciled with him shortly afterwards. It would be stupid to make the film with Sonja Henie tricks or Esther Williams- like swimming extravagances. I would make a crime story out of it, with a real murder in it ... ”, Reisch later recalled his argument.
During the filming of Marilyn Monroe, Joseph Cotten and Jean Peters lived in the Hotel Crowne Plaza Niagara Falls in Niagara Falls in the province of Ontario . The motel with the bungalows was built as a film set especially for the film for over 25,000 US dollars, directly opposite the famous waterfalls in Queen Victoria Park . Monroe does not play a naive blonde - as in most of her roles - but a femme fatale . The idea of giving Monroe the unusual role came from Darryl F. Zanuck , the studio boss of 20th Century Fox , and initially met with incomprehension from the scriptwriters - Monroe was happy about this change from her usual role scheme. Reisch remembered another conflict with Zanuck and director Hathaway, who cut some scenes with the police against their will. A scene in which Monroe is walking down the street in fear shortly before her character is murdered was shot extra long to show her famous walk. As a result, it was speculated that a shoe heel was deliberately shortened to create this passage. The scene is also said to hold the record for being the longest single-cut walk in a feature film in all of film history. A press photo of Marilyn Monroe made for Niagara was the starting point for Andy Warhol's Marilyn Diptych .
The song Kiss , which is important for the film and is heard several times , was composed by Lionel Newman and Haven Gillespie .
At the box office, Niagara was a success: With a budget of around 1.25 million US dollars, it took over 2.3 million US dollars in the USA alone and was one of the hits of the 1953 cinema year. Niagara was the first film , which featured Monroe first in the opening credits, and fueled her rise from starlet to one of Hollywood's greatest legends.
German version
The German dubbing was created in 1953 in the studio of Ultra Film Synchron GmbH in Berlin .
| role | actor | Voice actor |
|---|---|---|
| Rose Loomis | Marilyn Monroe | Margot Leonard |
| George Loomis | Joseph Cotten | Wolfgang Lukschy |
| Polly Cutler | Jean Peters | Edith Schneider |
| Ray Cutler | Max Showalter | Harald Juhnke |
| Inspector Starkey | Denis O'Dea | Siegfried Schürenberg |
| Mr. Kettering, Ray's CEO | Don Wilson | Erich Fiedler |
| Mrs. Kettering | Lurene Tuttle | Alice Treff |
The film was launched in the Federal Republic of Germany on October 9, 1953, and the German TV first broadcast on May 18, 1970 at 8:15 p.m. on ARD .
Reviews
AH Weiler was full of praise for Marilyn Monroe in The New York Times : “20th Century Fox doesn't seem to care that there are only seven wonders of the world, because she discovered two more and introduces them in Technicolor in the film Niagara. The producers make optimal use of the splendor of the waterfalls and the surrounding landscape as well as the splendor of the name Marilyn Monroe. The view is breathtaking in both cases. And if anyone wanted to complain that the melodrama in which the waterfalls and Miss Monroe are entangled isn't exactly the most spectacular kind, then he would be absolutely right. Whichever angle you look at them from - the waterfalls and Miss Monroe leave nothing to be desired for a reasonably attentive viewer ... Perhaps Miss Monroe is not perfect enough as an actress for this point. But neither the director nor the cameramen seem to have bothered. Whether nightgown or no less daring tight dress - no curve escaped them. And they made it very clear how seductive it can be - even when walking. "
In German reviews, Niagara received mostly positive ratings. The Catholic Film Critics ( 6000 films ) wrote in 1963: “'American marriage drama with skilful use of natural beauty.' Classification: For adults, with reservations. "The also Catholic film service later judged:" Married drama with thriller elements and a skilful inclusion of the spectacular locations. Sometimes exciting, but psychologically completely implausible and, thanks to the thickly applied clichés, sometimes on the verge of involuntary comedy. "
Prisma Online is in a positive mood: Henry Hathaway staged his famous film noir against the impressive backdrop of the roaring Niagara Falls. In the style of Hitchcock, Hathaway continues to increase the tension, just think of the breathtaking scene in the bell tower. Devilishly good: Monroe in the role of man-murdering vamp, who had worked with Hathaway in the previous year in the episode film 'Five Pearls'. Adolf Heinzlmeier and Berndt Schulz gave the film a 3-star rating (= very good) in their encyclopedia “Films on TV” : It was a “(...) evil film about the cryptic with a pesky Marilyn Monroe; an outstanding cameraman (Joe MacDonald) puts the star's erotic charisma into the picture just as impressively as the scenery of the US honeymoon destination Niagara Falls. "
DVD release
- Niagara. "Great film classics" series . Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment 2003
Web links
- Niagara on the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Niagara on Cinema.de (with film images)
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Niagara. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed September 16, 2017 .
- ↑ Backstory 2. Accessed April 16, 2019 .
- ^ Niagara (1953) - IMDb. Retrieved April 16, 2019 .
- ↑ Backstory 2. Accessed April 16, 2019 .
- ^ Niagara (1953) - IMDb. Retrieved April 16, 2019 .
- ↑ 'The Top Box Office Hits of 1953', from the Variety of January 13, 1954
- ↑ Thomas Bräutigam: Lexicon of film and television synchronization. More than 2000 films and series with their German voice actors etc. Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-89602-289-X , p. 275
- ^ Filmdienst.de, (Credits), and Spiegel.de .
- ^ A. W: Niagara Falls Vies With Marilyn Monroe . In: The New York Times . January 22, 1953, ISSN 0362-4331 ( nytimes.com [accessed April 16, 2019]).
- ↑ 6000 films. Critical notes from the cinema years 1945 to 1958 . Handbook V of the Catholic film criticism, 3rd edition, Verlag Haus Altenberg, Düsseldorf 1963, p. 322.
- ↑ Niagara - trailer, review, pictures and information about the film. Retrieved April 16, 2019 .
- ^ Adolf Heinzlmeier, Berndt Schulz in Lexicon "Films on TV" (extended new edition). Rasch and Röhring, Hamburg 1990, ISBN 3-89136-392-3 , pp. 607-608.