La rivière sans retour

Love is a rider on the rider on the river of no return.

This was an interesting film, a western that covers a very short period of time about a man released from prison to pick up his son and start a farm in gold mining country. Marilyn Monroe, who is gorgeous as ever in this film, is a saloon singer in the closest town. Her and her gambler boyfriend are headed to a larger city to make a claim on some land that he won gambling. On the way down the river on a raft they get themselves in trouble and our farmer along with his son save them...only to have their kindness repaid by the gambler stealing their only horse and only gun...leaving them at the mercy of the natives who seem to be on a war path of destruction. This leaves the farmer, played by Robert Mitchum, Marilyn and the farmer's son defenseless and on the run from the natives. Down the river they head...

This film was filled with action...including a mountain lion attack! There is also a moral story about leaving people, especially children defenseless.

The end is pretty fun and makes this film worth it. If you are a western fan or a fan of either Marilyn Monroe or Robert Mitchum, I recommend giving it a watch.

I just love this movie, except for that one scene (everybody knows which one). It's a very good venue for Mitchum and perhaps the best Monroe ever had. Really great actors make you forget that they are either actors or stars. These two do that quite well in spite of a loosely written script and a bit too much sweetness in the person of the boy. I think I love this movie as much for the fact that someone finally let Monroe act as I do for the fun of watching it. She did a good job of bringing her character, rather than Marilyn, to the screen. I enjoyed the scenes between her and the boy. She was very believable as a nurturing, protective figure. She would have done well as an actress. This movie is just a small sample.. Lonestar

An unexceptional story beautifully directed by Otto Premiger, whose handling of this routine material makes it work as well in its way as the best of Anthony Mann. A stolen rifle figures prominently in this western, as does an Indian attack, the budding romance between a puritanical homesteader with a past and a saloon singer in trouble, and of course the eponymous and oftentimes violent river they raft down. The northwest scenery is breathtaking. Preminger gives a nice drive to his narrative without stressing any one element for too long. For a while it's a farmer-son story, then a badman story, then there's a journey down the river, then a romance, then an Indian attack. Scenes play out dramatically rather than melodramatically despite the genre limitations of the script, and this shows Preminger's steady hand. He doesn't mind making his movie a bit of a travelogue or nature film if the mood strikes him, and therefore the picture has a nice diversity, and many lovely things to look at. Chief among its many scenic attractions is Marilyn Monroe in the female lead. I can't say that this is her best performance but it's one of her best non-musical or comedy roles that isn't too serious, which is to say it's not at all like How To Marry a Millionaire, Bus Stop, The Prince and the Showgirl or The Seven Year Itch in that there's no air of a heavyweight property with lots of money and talent behind it, which works in the movie's favor, as it is a pleasant surprise. This is perhaps Miss Monroe's only 'throwaway' role of her starring career, and she makes the best of it by playing her part naturally and with none of the ironic, self-referential self-deprecation one often finds in her major starring vehicles. Robert Mitchum is excellent in the male lead, as is Tommy Rettig as his son, who more than holds his own with these two adult heavyweights. The songs Monroe sings are all pretty good and well-delivered and add to the story in each case, which is unusual. One cares for these people, who behave credibly despite the mechanical plot devices, and the movie ends on a touching visually and musically orchestrated grace note, as if something of profound importance had just transpired.

Of all of Marilyn Monroe's leading men, Robert Mitchum was the only one who knew her back when. In 1941 before he made his screen debut in a Hopalong Cassidy film, Mitchum was among other things an aircraft factory worker and one of his friends was one James Daugherty. Of course Jim had a wife Norma Jean at the time and Bob and Dorothy occasionally socialized.

He knew all about her psychological problems and when it came time to do a film with her when both became screen legends, Mitchum was not about to get himself involved. That probably helped because during the shooting Marilyn and director Otto Preminger stopped speaking and would only communicate through Mitchum.

Marilyn's a saloon gal involved with a no good gambler/drifter in Rory Calhoun. Calhoun and Monroe nearly drown on a river when Mitchum rescues them and their raft. No good deed goes unpunished so Calhoun takes Mitchum's horse and Mitchum, Monroe, and Mitchum's son Tommy Rettig use the raft to go after him. They're kind of forced to because the Indians are on the warpath.

She's certainly quite a distraction for a man on a mission and at one point Mitchum does give into lust ever so briefly. Which does make River of No Return one of the more realistic westerns ever done.

Twentieth Century Fox decided to go whole hog on this one, shooting the film up in Banff. But with Marilyn and Otto feuding it was not a happy set. Otto walked off the picture and Jean Negulesco finished it out. Joe DiMaggio flew up to the set because of rumors of Mitchum and Marilyn, that were completely unfounded, but Joe was the jealous type. As for Mitchum legend has it that he and another legendary drinker, Murvyn Vye, killed many a bottle during the long evenings.

Done in cinemascope and 3-D, River of No Return should be seen on the big screen. Not even a letterbox DVD does it justice. And 3-D was definitely the medium for Monroe. Marilyn even has some nice songs to sing in this one.

It's not a great western, still it's entertaining enough especially in those rafting sequences. But it was a film Otto Preminger shuddered about when recalling.

Nine-year old boy is reunited with his estranged father in a northwest boom town in the midst of Gold Fever; they take off for a life of fishing and hunting but are soon railroaded by a crooked gambler and his gal, a saloon singer who gets a pang of conscience and stays with dad and the kid. Soon, all three are on the run from Injuns, on a raft down a treacherous river. Lackadaisical western puts action on the back-burner to focus on character interaction, which in this case isn't such a bad thing. Robert Mitchum never puts on a big show: tough and steely, but paternal towards the kid and easy with the lady, he's gruffly polite--and unapologetic about his behavior. Marilyn Monroe is such a drama queen, she can't deliver a simple monologue without twitching something (her eyes, her lips, her nostrils); she is lovely (and, in a singing scene outdoors with the boy, very natural), but one warms to her because she's Marilyn (her legend exceeds the worn material and her over-emphatic delivery). Otto Preminger directed, but this doesn't feel like a Preminger movie. There are no tart or prodding scenes, and the dangerous rapids excursions--and Indian rampages--are not staged for maximum impact. The Indians, armed with arrows, simply seem like bad shots, and the close-up sequences on the raft were obviously achieved in the studio. Still, the occasional on-location photography is breath-taking, and the three principles grow steadily on the audience as well as towards each other. Beautiful theme song is sung in versions by both Mitchum and Monroe. **1/2 from ****