From: radioacti...@gmail.com   
      
   Appreciate your response, Lenona.   
      
   WELL:  If (1) you're Canadian (as I recall you being, correct?); (2) have only   
   seen "Niagara" ONCE (and 30 years ago at that!) and (3) can't remember much of   
   it, WELL, you sure owe it to yourself to catch it again.   
      
   And this time tape it, because like most terrific cinematic efforts, it's   
   filled with nuance and thus warrants stopping here and there to review key   
   scenes.  Me, I've watched it at least eight or nine times since first seeing   
   it circa 1978, and it NEVER    
   fails to compel me.  And I USUALLY find things I've missed (or at least forgot   
   that I first noticed on my third or fourth time through sometime in the 1990s.)   
      
   As I pointed out in my "Groundhog Day" posting (complaining about it not being   
   shot where it's set in western Pennsylvania), I'm a big one for filming ON   
   ACTUAL location ANYTIME when the locale is central to the plot.  Thus, one of   
   the MANY charms of "   
   Niagara" is how you've got the planet's hands-down most spectacular* liquid   
   cataracts right behind the actors for much of the film.  (Now, there MAY have   
   been some interiors shot out in Hollywood, but I wouldn't be surprised if the   
   whole shebang was done    
   right there on the USA/Canada border by western New York.)   
      
   In any event, what's REALLY so great isn't the background, but rather its   
   ACTING:   
      
   For my money the always-credible Joseph Cotton's finest work EVER (as a   
   troubled fellow, ever-tormented by the fact that every other man he's met   
   since he got married is trying to steal his wife away);    
      
   And Monroe herself for once NOT vamping it up, but instead infusing her role   
   with verbal AND facial-expression nuance, not normally one of her attributes;   
      
   Now, Casey Adams (also later known as Max Showalter) is a bit much admittedly   
   (as he almost ALWAYS was in the scads of small parts he had here and there in   
   the '50s and '60s), but Jean Peters** as HIS wife keeps Adams's    
   xcited-overdoing it from messing    
   things up, as he might have otherwise.   
      
   Meanwhile, in a minor role you've ALSO got as Adams's boss, Jack Benny's   
   longtime radio/TV announcer Don Wilson***.   
      
   PLUS:  one of North America's few carillons--there's only about 30 of 'em on   
   our entire continent****, Lenona!--figures crucially in the plot.     
      
   All told, this is TOP-NOTCH '50s film noir, but thank G-d it's not in   
   monochrome, but rather in strikingly vibrant color.  And it's on TCM often,   
   but you won't have to wait till it rolls around every six months or so; it's   
   available on YouTube for free,    
   though not in the most pristine of copies.   
      
   Again, the Horseshoe Falls are my absolute favorite part of the earth's   
   second-largest (in area) country Canada, so you owe it to your countrymen to   
   behold the greatest cinematic tribute to arguably the planet's greatest   
   natural wonder.  (Now, hole-in-   
   the-ground partisans might argue The Grand Canyon beats it, but I was visually   
   disappointed every time I've been there; sorry Arizona boosters!  Besides,   
   there'd be ZERO POINT in rolling down in the Canyon in a barrel, agreed?)   
      
   BRYAN STYBLE/Florida   
   ===================   
   * Neither [South America's] Angel Falls nor [Africa's] Victoria Falls (nor   
   what I'm informed are several thousand small falls(es?) throughout huge   
   Yellowstone Park), rate as natural wonders in even REMOTELY in the class of   
   that Rose Bowl [i.e., "the    
   granddaddy"] of ALL waterfalls, the three cascades constituting    
   iagara--Horseshoe, American and little Bridal Veil).  AND throughout this   
   wonderful film you get to see what Niagara looked like in the early 1950s,   
   before a LOT of that plunging water was    
   channelled off for power plants, making the lingering mist MUCH less thick   
   these nowadays.   
   ** Whom, TRY AS I MIGHT, I always conflate with her similarly-named   
   lookalike/soundalike contemporary, Jean Simmons--they WERE two different   
   ladies, right?   
    *** You may recall his jolly advertising catchphrase open from the Benny TV   
   show: "Jello, again!"   
   **** But ANOTHER of those 30 or so carillons scattered around our continent   
   happens to be right down here in The Sunshine State; it's in the Tampa Bay   
   Area in Clearwater...and the fellow managing the religious instillation where   
   it's installed actually    
   let me (during a 2014 visit) climb up there, sit down at its keyboard and then   
   play a few chords for everyone in the neighborhood to hear--I kid you not!   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)