"Niagara" does not hold up very well as a movie, plot wise. What starts off as a promising film noir thriller (In Technicolor) soon descends into implausibility and silliness. However you cannot deny the cinematic power that Marilyn Monroe possesses. She is mesmerizing if not a top rate actress. She plays Rose Loomis an unhappily married woman who decides to dispose of her husband (played by a very gloomy Joseph Cotton) with the aid of her lover. Jean Peters and Casey Adams play a couple on their honeymoon whose lives get intertwined with the Loomis'. This all takes place within the breathtaking view of Niagara Falls. Monroe is a natural as a film actress. The camera loves her and she knows instinctively how to play to it. Jean Peters who is a good movie actress in her own right doesn't stand a chance against la Monroe. I am a Marilyn Monroe fan and even in this second rate movie she is worth watching. Tune in for her, Niagara falls and the beautiful cinematography but as for the story line, it's pure second rate

I saw this first when it was released. I was just a kid, and it was quite scary to me. I've remembered many of the details over the years, just having watched it again to refresh my memory on some details. First, it's visually spectacular, with many shots of the falls in the background in Technicolor. CinemaScope was just about ready to be introduced, obviating the long used awkward and expensive three strip Technicolor filming process. It has a very memorable suspenseful screenplay. In these attributes combined, it stands out among the film noire type of screenplays of this period.The plot is fairly simple, although the details are quite convoluted.Slutty wife is dissatisfied with psychologically-damaged hubby, who is 20 years older than wify. She has found a handsome young sport she hopes will replace hubby by knocking him into the lower part of the falls as an apparent suicide, compatible with his psychological problems. Unfortunately, hubby wins the tussle, as wify finds out when she gazes upon the corpse fished out of the river below the falls. She faints and is hospitalized, as she remains incoherent. Meanwhile, hubby has gone to their cabin, hoping wify is there, so that he can stab her with a kitchen knife. Unfortunately, she's still in the hospital, and he finds their neighbor, who has been moved into their cabin. Nobody believes her when she claims she saw hubby alive. Eventually, wify recovers enough to escape from the hospital(poor security). She hopes to escape from this area before hubby can find her, but there is a search of all vehicles leaving the Canadian side. So, she wants to try walking across the bridge, but hubby blocks her way, and gives chase. I leave the rest of the story for you to discover.There some details I wonder about: 1) Presumably, George(hubby) requested that the bell tower play the song("Kiss") that Rose's(wify) boyfriend was supposed to request to signal his success in sending George to his watery grave. How did George know about this arrangement? Presumably, he just guessed it might be so, knowing that that song seemed to have special meaning to Rose. This was an essential part of fooling the audience into thinking that George was the one who died, this in combination with the discovery of George's shoes left on the shoe racket at the falls(exchanged for boots).(George had put on boyfriend's shoes to add to the charade that he had died.) Later, he is seen submitting a paper to the song suggestion box, after which the same song is played again, to taunt Rose. 2) Why did George get in the elevator(with Rose's boyfriend, it turned out) for another close encounter with the falls? Did he guess they were planning to knock him into the falls and he wanted to duel with the boyfriend now, if possible. It would have been nice to have seen the fight. I think it could have been staged away from the falls. Obviously, you wouldn't want to do it at the falls.I think all the actors did an excellent job. Joseph Cotton probably had the most important role. He looked mighty sinister with his fedora on.1953 was a breakout year for Marilyn. She costarred in 3 of the most popular films that year, changing from a husband killer into a gold digger for "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes", and "How to Marry a Millionaire"

. . . John Wayne told NIAGARA's Cabbie, Harry Carey, Jr., on the set of BIG JAKE. Co-starring in a Wayne vehicle was NOT like driving around with Jerry Seinfeld, or even NIAGARA's Marilyn Monroe. Movie buff Leonard Maltin elicits this anecdote from the gray-bearded actor during an eight-minute-long 2005 interview entitled, THE JOHN WAYNE STOCK COMPANY: HARRY CAREY, JR. Of course, the problem with Wayne's comment is fairly obvious. He and Carey were NOT co-starring in a summer stock revival of THE WIZARD OF OZ. Instead, Carey had let his hair grow out all scraggly to play the doomed bad guy in BIG JAKE, Junior's first villainous movie part (after a career of playing Cabbies--as in NIAGARA--or other minor functions). That makes Wayne's dig tantamount to Dennis Rodman yelling out "Airball!" as his teammate Michael Jordan is about to release a free throw that could clinch Game Seven of the NBA Finals for their Chicago Bulls squad. Or Jordan Spieth shouting "Mashed Potatoes!" as Tiger Woods addresses the ceremonial first tee shot at the Masters. Or Condominium Rice screaming "You lie!" as George W. Bush spins a web around Yellow Uranium during an Address to a Joint Session of Congress. Or Butch Cassidy commanding "Jump!" as the Sundance Kid nears the edge of a cliff. The point that Matlin's highlighting in his editing of this interview is that normally a movie cast views themselves as teammates--NOT hecklers, trying to goad their cast mates over NIAGARA Falls without a barrel!

This nifty thriller represented one of Hathaway's few forays into noir (he was largely known for Westerns). It was unusual for noir in being filmed in shimmering Technicolor rather than the pallet of grays, blacks, and whites more commonly associated with the genre, but then, given the resort setting, this was almost inescapable.The storyline is straightforward: an amiable Midwestern couple, the Cutlers, Polly and Ray (Jean Peters and Max Showalter, billed as Casey Adams) arrive at the Falls to find the cabin they've reserved is occupied by another, more fractious couple: the Loomises. George (Joseph Cotten), the husband of the latter couple, could be nicknamed "Gloomy Loomy" given his downcast and cynical demeanor; we learn that he spent time in a psychiatric hospital for war veterans. His ravishing and none-too-faithful wife, Rose (Marilyn Monroe) provides ample reason for his suspicions. Turns out she's been two-timing George with a man who looks like the textbook illustration of a smooth gigolo (Richard Allan) and she and loverboy are planning something most foul for George.But Polly, the distaff half of the Cutler twosome, has witnessed some of the hanky- panky, and when Rose and her lover's nefarious plans run into trouble, Polly finds herself caught between a vengeful husband and a scared-out-of-her-wits wife. The suspense arises from Polly-in-peril and her efforts to extricate herself from another couple's troubles.Monroe is excellent in one of her few villainous roles in a non-comedy, and Cotten is riveting as the troubled, betrayed husband bent on revenge. His voice-over during an insomniac late-night/early-morning walk by the Falls at the start of the film is almost worth the price of admission alone. And the Falls? They never looked more beautiful- or deadly.