Encore Screening Added “Marilyn Monroe’s eroticism [in Niagara] is an act of violence, a distortion of the natural and expected heterosexual order so extreme as to appear destructive.” Philippa Snow, Artforum Marilyn Monroe and Joseph Cotten are a maniacally mismatched couple vacationing on the Ontario side of Niagara Falls in Henry Hathaway’s delectably tawdry thriller, a lurid Technicolor noir brimming with dark deeds and “a raging torrent of emotion,” per the tagline. Monroe, in a rare bad-girl role, is slip-clad Rose, a scheming vamp with murder on the mind. Cotten is her jealous older husband George, a shell-shocked war vet. Jean Peter and Max Showalter are the honeymooners next door. Niagara, as one contemporary review duly noted, makes full use “of both the grandeur of the Falls and the grandeur that is Marilyn Monroe!” Frequent Billy Wilder collaborator Charles Brackett co-wrote the script. The film’s runaway success helped propel Monroe, here in her first top billing for a major studio, to bonafide stardom. 2026 marks her centenary—count this as a tip of the hat to her juiciest noir performance. Tickets for the opening-night screening of Niagara (July 30) include admittance to the courtyard shindig at 6:00 pm. “Ravishingly shot by Joseph MacDonald in eye-popping Technicolor … Elevated by Hathaway’s distinctive aesthetic choices and exemplary use of the eponymous location.” Matthew Thrift, BFI “Hathaway’s hypnotic contemplation of two American monuments … He gives it his all, most famously in the Freudian rampage that climaxes the film … [The] Technicolor photography makes a key contribution to the general tone of hysteria.” Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader
