The River of No Return – Watch Full Movie | ARTE

The damaged destinies of a saloon singer (Marilyn Monroe), an ex-convict (Robert Mitchum) and his son come together on a raft… Directed in 1954 by Otto Preminger, a strange and endearing western, by the unalterable aura of the two stars and the splendor of the landscapes.

In Idaho in 1875, Matt Calder, whose wife died while he was in prison, comes to pick up his son Mark, whom he did not see grow up, in a gold prospecting camp. Abandoned by the man he had charged with escorting him, the little boy finds himself under the protection of Kay, a young saloon singer. She is traveling with her companion, a player who has just won a gold mine at poker. Matt promises his son that their misfortunes are over and takes him to the small isolated farm he owns, on the banks of a river. Shortly after, he rescues Kay and her “fiancé” from the shipwreck, who had set out to reach Council City by raft. The player knocks him out to steal his gun and his horse…

Odyssey
An adventurer tested by life, a lost woman with a big heart, a child they both love descend a river with rapids deemed impassable because on dry land, more pressing dangers threaten them (“junk Indians”, researchers bloodthirsty gold). With this seamless scenario, a duo of stars with an immortal aura and splendid natural settings, filmed in Cinemascope in the Canadian Rockies, Otto Preminger creates a shaky but endearing western. Thanks to young Tommy Rettig, who rises to the level of grown-ups, and despite a scene that looks more like an attempted rape than a first kiss, the alchemy between the three characters, against a backdrop of nature with spectacular beauty, takes us on their odyssey. And then there is, the cherry on the raft, Marilyn’s golden voice, for two of the wonderful and all too rare songs that she left us.