Review of Niagara, directed by Henry Hathaway

If you’re new here, and stumbled upon this blog through the mythical powers of the Internet, welcome! I know a lot of visitors to my website are people who randomly come upon this website through search engines like Google, but I also do have a lot of visitors who come back. Regardless: my name is Ashley, and I started this blog in order to keep track of everything I’m coming across in the world.

I feel like a lot of my blog introductions, especially when it comes to movies, have been lamenting on the fact I don’t have a ton of time lately. I used to work as a film critic (which, in fact, was so incredibly underpaid that I now make more off of this blog’s display ads than I ever did publishing anywhere else), and then when I was in graduate school I was writing a lot about film, so I used to watch so many movies.

But now I work an 8-5, come home, and then doom scroll my evenings away instead of watching the movies I used to love so dearly. And recently I realized I want to stop doing that, so I’ve set limits on my phone and am fully prepared to sit back and watch more movies and read more books in order to feed my brain.

I elevated this game by acquiring a Criterion subscription a few months back. Before getting my job I was a lot more tight with my money, and although I could technically afford the Criterion subscription, I put it into investments instead. But now I’m investing in my brain more along with my longterm retirement, which is a great feeling.

It was on a day I had off from work that I ended up watching Niagara. It was a part of the Murderous Melodramas curation Criterion had going on, which seemed perfect for a summer night.

Let’s get into the review!

A honeymooning American couple finds themselves tangled in the affairs of another couple while at Niagara Falls.

This movie opens with us meeting Polly and Ray Cutler. They’re an American couple who got married some time ago, but they never got to go on their honeymoon. They’ve now decided to go on a trip to Niagara Falls, but when they come to check into the cabin they requested, another couple is in it: George and Rose.

When the owner asks Rose, who got out of bed, if they’re going to check out, she tells them that her husband is asleep. She also informs them that her husband isn’t acting quite right, and he had just checked out of a mental hospital after serving in the Korean War. The Cutlers decide to take another cabin, but they start associating with the Loomis duo despite knowing that.

Turns out that George and Rose have quite the trouble marriage, but they didn’t know that at first. Rose ends up spotting Rose kissing her lover, who’s an attractive man around her age (George is older and does indeed have mental healh issues). Turns out Rose and Ted have been planning to get rid of George by running away, but Rose doesn’t know this yet.

At a party that same night, Rose rolls up and requests the song “Kiss” be played on the record player. George hears this and storms up to break the record. Turns out he suspects something already, and he cuts his hand on the record while doing this. Polly treats George’s wound, and he tells her that his life turned around for the worse when he met Rose.

The next day Rose gets George to come into a dark tunnel where Ted is. Turns out they are going to kill him, and their cue that George is dead is a request for the song “Kiss” to be played. The song plays and Rose assumes they were successful, but turns out George overpowered Ted and threw his body into the Falls.

When the police call Rose in to identify the body, she sees it’s Ted and passes out. They take this as a positive, but in the meantime, while she’s there, George comes back to the cabin to kill Rose and finds Polly sleeping. She wakes up and starts screaming, but he runs away. She tells the police what happened and the police launch a dragnet.

While visiting the falls with her husband, George befriends Polly while she’s alone. He tells her what happened and says to let him stay dead, but not before she almost slips in the water and he saves her. While meeting with the detectives she tells them she thinks he’s alive, but doesn’t confirm it, while George has the tower play the song again.

Rose flees the hospital and tries to cross the border, but a traffic jam has everyone standing there waiting. She sees George at the station and tries to run away into the bell tower, but he catches up and strangles her to death. He slips away before the body is found, but not before he tells her that he really did love her.

Polly and Ray go on a fishing trip, but when they stop the boat for supplies, George steals it. He’s unaware Polly is on board, but when the guard sees him on there, he is forced to start it and run. She tells him that he should give himself up, but then he informs her that he killed Rose, too.

The police go after the boat, but then it runs out of gas and starts drifting. Swiftly moving towards the falls, the police realize that there’s nothing they can do. George scuttles the boat and Polly jumps onto a rock with his help, but he falls to his death. She’s rescued as he goes over the falls, giving him at least some redemption points for what’s going on throughout this movie.

Overall Thoughts

Considering I knew nothing about this movie going into it, I was pleasantly surprised by the end! I find Marilyn Monroe movies to be hit or miss for my modern taste, but I thought this was a solid film noir-adjacent movie where she plays off the femme fatale aspects in a way that works quite well.

Is this an incredible movie that blew my mind? I wouldn’t say that, but I had fun with it in the end. I think that it also did solid job of showing a moral grey area with George, although Rose is merely painted in a bad picture. If I had a major critique in terms of story, I would say we needed more about Rose and here life.

All in all, I say watch this one if you’re interested. It’s one of Monroe’s good movies in her filmography, that’s for sure.

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