The 'Niagara' Connection
Shady Tree
London, UKPosts: 3,152MI6 Agent
In the novel 'From Russia, with Love' (1957), the Bulgarian assassin Krilencu uses a concealed escape hatch hidden in a billboard, which happens to be advertising the movie 'Niagara' (dir. Henry Hathaway, 1953). The hatch is located in the mouth of Marilyn Monroe on the poster. Kerim Bey knows about the hideout, and he and Bond wait for Krilencu to emerge. As the villain appears he's shot by Kerim Bey. When Fleming's story was adapted for the 1963 film, FRWL, the poster was changed, promoting the far inferior 'Call Me Bwana' (also 1963), Eon Productions' own comedy, and Krilencu tries to escape through the mouth of Anita Ekberg.
I saw 'Niagara' this afternoon at BFI Southbank, as part of a Marilyn Monroe season, and it occurred to me that, Fleming's novel aside, there are also some noteworthy if fleeting points of connection with various Bond films, which came along later. Beginning with FRWL, Terence Young's exciting boat chase perhaps echoes the climactic pursuit in 'Niagara' of a stolen boat by a police vessel: not so much in terms of situation or spectacle, but in terms of moments of imagery - where shots of Sean Connery and Dianela Bianchi looking back at the SPECTRE boats channel Joseph Cotten and Jean Peters turning to look at the patrol boat pursuing them. The most obvious Bond connection is, however, between the image of Cotten's boat plunging over the Niagara Falls, with Cotten still aboard (Peters' character manages to escape in time, by clinging to a rock, as Cotten scuttles the boat) - and Jaws (Richard Kiel) plunging over the Iguazu Falls in the Amazonian sequence in MR (1979). There are also parallels with the bayou chase in LALD (1973). Cotten steals the boat from a hick who moors vessels for trade, and the ensuing police pursuit (much less spectacular than in LALD) involves a detective and ranger-style officers in cars and on walkie-talkies as well as the patrol boat. There's even a comedy middle-aged stout character caught up in it, Don Wilson as Jess C. Kettering (J. W. Pepper, anyone?), though by this stage in the action he's no longer playing it for laughs: there's real jeopardy when Cotten and Peters are caught in the drift towards the cascade. A further connection is between the coded eroticism of Peters, on deck, splashed by copious spray as the boat sequence intensifies, and Barbara Bach drenched in seawater as she and Roger Moore escape from Stromberg's Atlantis in TSWLM (1977). Like Bach - or like Denise Richards in the submarine at the climax of TWINE (1999) - Peters is soaked as the attractive heroine in peril. Structurally, 'Niagara' positions her in contrast to Monroe, who plays a scarlet woman as alluring as any femme fatale in the Bond films. When Peters is rescued from the waves-buffeted rock by a Coast Guard helicopter lowering a rope chair, we may think forward to TB (1965), in which a wetsuited Connery and Claudine Auger launch into the sky for the end credits. But I wouldn't want to overstate the similarities. 'Niagara''s action is more constrained; Peters' allure is conservative - she plays a wholesome 50s wife - and if Monroe's character is conniving in the glamorous bombshell mode which was subsequently picked up in Bond, the sequence where her vengeful husband (Cotten) murders her is darker and more harrowing than the throwaway deaths of OO7's villainous vamps.
'Niagara' is an effective romantic suspense thriller, Monroe's breakout film. It's intelligent enough to imbue the Niagara Falls with metaphorical significance - by contrast with, say, that Iguazu Falls sequence in MR, which is just another set piece in a stunt-saturated romp. Yet 'Niagara' points the way towards the kind of spectacle which the Bond films would develop and perfect, as indeed do a number of other landmark films of the 50s.
In 'Niagara' the location itself is a star of the film; the Cutlers (Peters and Casey Adams) are sightseeing on a delayed honeymoon, and the doomed, mutually abusive Loomis couple (Cotten and Monroe) are also tourists. "Trips around the cascade via boat, the Horseshoe Scenic Tunnels, and caves around the Falls have all been made integral parts of the script." ('Variety', 21 January 1953 - as cited in the BFI's programme notes.) In keeping with other travelogue Bond films, MR likewise presents its exotic locations as holiday destinations - Rio, Sugar Loaf Mountain and Venice, etc. The difference is that, in Bond, the plot gives OO7, his enemies and allies their spy-movie pretexts for touristic-style travel: they're on missions.
Comments
Fascinating post, Shady, I love those kind of observations and am guilty of writing a few myself.
As it happens I haven't seen that movie but I might get round to it now.
Thank you, @Barbel I'd recommend it...
I saw Niagara a few months ago but have to admit I didn’t really attach much significance to the similarities then but I can see them now a bit more clearly, good post @Shady Tree
@CoolHandBond Yes, Fleming obviously found 'Niagara' worthy of a nod in his novel 'From Russia With Love'. And as these parallels suggest, I'm sure that, for the filmmakers behind the first cycle or two of Eon Bond movies, familiarity with that picture would have been formative as part of the 50s cinematic landscape.