Cheap River of No Return (DVD) (Robert Mitchum, Marilyn Monroe) (Jean Negulesco, Otto Preminger) Price

Related Products

Customer Reviews of River of No Return

Lesser Known Monroe Film Worth A Look
Robert Mitchum plays a practical, no-nonsense farmer recently reunited with his young son, Tommy Rettig. They rescue a young couple (Marilyn Monroe and Rory Calhoun) going on a raft down a river by their homestead, and that's where the trouble begins. Calhoun is out to make a gold claim, and he'll do anything, including stealing Mitchum's horse and gun, leaving Mitchum, Rettig, and even Monroe behind to face the Indians without any defence. So they must take to the raft to survive, and that's where the adventure begins. I liked this film a lot. Mitchum is his usual laconinc self, but it works really well with this character. Monroe gets to act in this film, and she does so very well, playing a saloon singer that wants to defend her man, despite what he has done to all of them. Young Rettig is good too, not cloying and irritating like so many child actors can be. The scenery is beautiful, the title song very effective, and although the direction of Otto Preminger isn't very fluid and sometimes the movie lumbers from one scene to another, the performances and relationships among the characters make up for it. Viewers will enjoy the trip down the River of No Return.

---

Marilyn Monroe and the Canadian Rockies!
.
While this is certainly far from Marilyn Monroe's best performance, it is nonetheless an interesting film to watch.

Amazingly, the somewhat artificial beauty of Marilyn Monroe shown floating on a raft down the "river of no return" with a backdrop of the Canadian Rockies can capture one's imagination and make you forget what a truly awful film this is.

Marilyn steals your attention in every scene, and the sheer beauty of her presence more than makes up for the ridiculousness of the plot.

MM sings a couple of numbers in her dance-hall girl phase of the film, most notably, "I'm Gonna File My Claim", about a gold-digger during the gold rush days.

Any Marilyn fan would have to see this movie just for Marilyn's sake. Anyone else can probably skip it.

MMMmmmarvelous Marilyn!

---

Sometimes it's peaceful, sometimes wild and free
Marilyn Monroe described this movie as a grade-Z cowboy movie where the acting finished third to the scenery and Cinemascope. Okay, the Canadian Rockies and the rapids were utilized to its best for 1950's film-making, and MM's second film in Cinemascope must have made quite an impression in the theatres for the new aspect ratio.

It's 1875 in the wild Northwest. Matt Calder is reunited with his young son Mark in a saloon town and rather than go the usual route of prospecting, start a new life on a farm bordering the River of No Return. Their life is instantly disrupted by two events. One, gambler Harry Weston, who's one a gold claim under dubious circumstances, is eager to file the claim in Council City to prevent the loser from beating him to it. To that end, he steals Calder's horse and rifle, a capital offense in the codes of the West. Second, a group of Native Americans on the warpath descend on the farm. Both Calders and Kay, Weston's moll who stays behind to look after the injured Calder and his son, flee in time in the raft Weston and Kay arrived in.

From then on, it's a struggle to survive the rapids without any weapons, food, and constantly being drenched by that river whenever it's "wild and free." As Calder tells Kay, "The Indians call this the River of No Return. From here on, you'll find out why." He is so dead set on getting his hands on Weston, he'll risk anything, all the time looking after his two charges.

Conflicts arrive in many forms, the primary two are Kay's torn loyalties between Harry and Matt. She doesn't want Matt to kill Harry once the two meet up, and performs acts that range from desperate to being a seductive vamp, yet she realizes in their travails that he is thoughtful and unselfish, as demonstrated in the scene where he looks after her following her collapse from exhaustion. The other involves the circumstances where Matt had to leave young Mark in the saloon town for five years, and while it's justified, there is a certain amount of stigma in it.

Marilyn gets to sing four songs here, the acoustic guitar tune "One Silver Dollar" and the piano bar tune "I'm Gonna File My Claim", "Down In The Meadow", and one of the best songs she's ever sung, the title ballad. Her costumes aren't bad either, from the garish red dress she wears for the first song, the long green dress for the second tune, and the white blouse and anachronistic Levi's jeans she wears throughout the film. And this is the longest her hair has been in films, albeit it being a blonde wig, of course.

Despite the costumes, it's not a Western in the traditional sense of the word, but River Of No Return pales to others in the genre it's purported to be because it's more drama than action. Granted, this is not one of Marilyn's best films, nor is it that of Robert Mitchum's, Rory Calhoun's, or director Otto Preminger for that matter. Monroe would have to wait until The Seven Year Itch for her next biggest hit. However, both Mitchum and Monroe come off well despite the latter's dismissal of it.