Hathaway's penchant for location shooting and his admiration for Marilyn Monroe as an actress were both realized in Niagara, a thriller of sexual frustration and destruction played out against Niagara Falls. Script and cinematography serve to strip the Falls of their hokey newlywed signature and reveal an awesome power that is both real and symbolic. Joseph Cotten belatedly joins the war-shocked anti-heroes of the immediate postwar film noir as the sultry Monroe's sexually insecure new husband, just released from a veterans' mental hospital. Their mis-marriage is filtered to us through the eyes of a rather ordinary couple (Jean Peters, Casey Adams) who become caught up in the newlyweds' murderous game.