Customer Reviews

Undercurrent [VHS]

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Robert Taylor is the one who stole the show. Katharine was at her lovely and believable best while Robert Mitchum gave such a fine performance that I thought it had been Spencer Tracy who played his part.

Taylor, to me, exceeded my expectations in his role of mean husband and cruel master to one of the most beautiful, big, black horses I have ever seen.

Director Minnelli used shadows and effects in a professional manner. It must have been his direction that carried this movie to the height I think I remember from so many years ago.

I may decide to purchase the video so that I may view the movie on a rainy day. I am happy to have the opportunity to review this great film.

I thoroughly enjoyed this film. While it was a departure for Ms. Hepburn, it was intriguing to see her go through the ups and downs as a damsel in distress, if for no other reason than to see her do something against type. Since I'm used to seeing her in strong female roles, it was interesting to see her play someone who was a victim. The whole cast did a great job. Of course, I wasn't looking for the film to be flawed, I was expecting to enjoy it. Maybe that's the difference between me and those who didn't like the film.

This movie starts out slowly but builds as things just don't seem right in the Garroway family. The movie will hold your attention as the story builds to a climax with "the truth" finally revealed at the end. Robert Taylor plays the brother of Mitchum and the husband of Hepburn. He is hiding a secret and is not what he seems. One of my favorite thrillers.

With its star-studded cast and director Vincente Minnelli, "Undercurrent" doesn't lack for talent. Based on the novel "You Were There" by Thelma Strabel, this thriller features a psychologically deviant villain that could have been in the best psychoanalytical tradition of 1940s cinema, if the story had some compelling driver behind it. Ann Hamilton (Katherine Hepburn) is a quirky, forthright woman from a family of chemists. She is swept off her feet by Alan Garroway (Robert Taylor), a suave inventor and wealthy business associate of her father. The couple set up house in Washington, DC, where Alan hobnobs with the political and social elite. Out of place at first, Ann adapts admirably to her new lifestyle but soon discovers her husband's obsession. Alan is consumed by hatred for his brother Mike (Robert Mitchum), who disappeared years ago amid some nasty rumors.

"Undercurrent" is a suspense in the wife-in-peril mold. Ann digs into her husband's past, trying to solve the mystery of Alan's present behavior. There's nothing wrong with the plot; it just never takes off. Alan sounds like an interesting character, but he isn't interesting to watch. He may genuinely love Ann, but he's unprincipled and pathologically insecure. It is his insecurity more than his lack of scruple that undermines his life and marriage. It's strange to see Robert Mitchum playing the brother described as "not handsome", but his earthy masculinity is right for the part of Mike. Robert Taylor and Katherine Hepburn are well-suited to their roles also. But there isn't enough tension. We never fear for Ann or feel her changing perceptions of Alan on an emotional level. It's not a bad film, but it's rather flat.

The DVD (Warner Brothers 2007): This is disc 3 in Warner's Katherine Hepburn Collection. Bonus features are 2 short films. "Traffic with the Devil" (20 min) was made in 1946 for the "Theatre of Life" "fact-films from real-life" series. It's a documentary narrated by a Los Angeles traffic cop, Sgt. Charles Reineke, about America's growing automobile culture and the benefits and perils that go with it, ultimately focusing on traffic fatalities. "Lonesome Lenny" (8 min), also from 1946, is a Screwball Squirrel cartoon about a dopey dog named Lenny whose owner gives him a squirrel for a playmate. But the squirrel has other ideas, and Lenny will have to catch him first. Subtitles for the main feature are available in English and French. The film was also released on VHS (Warner 1998, 2000) but is out of print in that format.

The first thing that came to my mind as I was watching this movie was "How in the world did Katharine Hepburn get this role?" She did a great job, as usual, but this was definitely a Joan Fontaine role. Joan Fontaine shines in this type of movie. Katharine Hepburn just fits so much better in her roles as a strong, independent woman, than a scared (supposedly) and timid young woman.
Katharine Hepburn plays Ann Sheridan, the smart daughter of a scientist (this part actually reminded me of some of her other roles), who falls in love with Robert Taylor. The two of them get married, and she realizes he is not the man she thought he was. He has an extreme hatred for his brother (Robert Mitchum), whom she has never met. Surprising climax.

Take a few dark and stormy nights, fog coming in from the coast, obsession and doubt, two brothers who have a mysterious connection based on hatred, a suspicious disappearance, a shoe in the night silently grinding out a glowing cigarette butt, and, finally, a tremulous heroine who finds herself threatened as much by her own doubts as by one -- but which one? -- of the men around her. Sounds like we might have a good 80 minute noir. Instead, under the direction of Vincente Minnelli and with two A-list leads, Katharine Hepburn and Robert Taylor, Undercurrent becomes a nearly two-hour matinee melodrama, a long slog of threatening angst amidst the perfectly groomed, coifed and dressed cast. When you glance at your watch half-way through a movie and with a sinking heart see that you have another hour to go, both you and the movie probably have problems.

Minnelli, in one of his earliest non-musical movies, doesn't lay on the rococo hothouse approach as heavily as he later was known to do. Still, what is basically a simple story of greed, murder and obsession is turned into an endless Katharine Hepburn vehicle. Hepburn shows us in carefully lit close-ups how to demonstrate fear, love, anxiety, giddiness, happiness, doubt, suspicion and terror. Robert Taylor is more or less along for the ride.

Hepburn starts the movie as the tomboyish Ann Hamilton, an energetic young woman in slacks who helps her father with his inventions. Their housekeeper is determined to get her married. When Dr. Hamilton decides to sell an important formula to Alan Garroway (Robert Taylor), it's love at first sight. Garroway is the smooth, handsome, dynamic inventor of the Garroway Distance Controller, which was vital in the war, and which has turned him into a hard-charging millionaire manufacturer. He's a captain of industry, as one of his many Washington friends says. Ann Hamilton, now Ann Garroway, may still be a bit of the tomboy, but her husband shows her how to dress and how to be a successful social hostess for all those Congressmen and judges her husband knows. She learns fast and eagerly. They both are obviously and blissfully in love.

But wait. The canker is about to gnaw. Ann realizes she knows nothing about her husband's family. None of his employees or friends seem inclined to talk about them to her. When she learns bit by bit that Alan's mother died in the old family home in Middleburg while seated at the piano, or that he has a brother, Michael, who has disappeared, Alan becomes very quiet...and sometimes goes into a rage. He always apologizes. But wait once more. Did his mother really play the piano? Didn't she really die in bed? Wasn't Michael caught taking money from the family firm and Alan sent him away? All this plays out against the exquisite hotel suites, the manicured country home in Middleburg with the horse stable and the tasteful ranch house by the sea. Everyone in the movie except employees are dressed to the nines. There are exclusive cocktail parties and intimate dinners for twenty. Even in a black-and-white movie, Minnelli can't help but give us dining tables filled with crystal and china, tasteful and elegant furniture and lots of gowns.

By the end of the movie, when all is finally known, when Ann on horseback is chased along a high, extremely well-designed mountain trail by the bad guy on another horse, when she is threatened with death by boulder and her pursuer finally meets death by horse, it's a relief. Even Robert Mitchum, who plays Michael, is unable to bring much tension to the movie. What might have been in lesser hands a taut little B-movie, instead with the A list is just an overwrought melodrama, too big for its bones.

Undercurrent is part of the DVD package, The Katharine Hepburn Collection. It can also be tracked down separately on VHS. It's worth watching once as a lesson in how a small, good idea can be ruined by too much of just about everything.

For his first melodrama,Minnelli sure picked a dandy. Similar to George Cukor's much more celebrated 1944 film, Minnelli displays his magic touch with an effortless feeling throughout.Beautifully menacing cinematography from Freund is to blame for the shameless cinematographic orgy that this became, unlike anything Kate Hepburn EVER made.She has a perfect blend of naivite and self consciousness and sweetness that makes us her and her us,accompanying one another hand in hand on our journet to THE END. Roberts Taylor and Mitchum are used spectacularly as brothers, two sides of the same coin, leaving an unwashed ambiguity over the exactness of the completed product.At no time does Minnelli lose his grip on us.

Length:: 4:53 Mins

This is an OK B film, but if you like film noir, the classics from this same period are better. I suggest

* Rebecca 1940 - young woman marries rich widower who is haunted by the memory of his 1st wife.
* Secret Behind the Door 1947 Michael Redgrave worries Joan Bennett
* Shadow of a Doubt 1943 - Joseph Cotten is a serial wife killer
* Sorry Wrong Number 1948 Barbara Stanwyck overhears a plot to kill her by her husband Burt Lancaster
* The Two Mrs. Carrols 1947 Bogart attempts to kill Barbara Stanwyck
* Sudden Fear 1952 Jack Palance plots to kill Joan Crawford
* Dial M For Murder 1954 Ray Milland plots to kill Grace Kelley
* Gaslight 1944 Charles Boyer tries to drive wife Ingrid Bergman mad

No question I am a film noir, especially a crime film noir, aficionado. Recently I have been on a tear reviewing various crime noir efforts and drawing comparisons between the ones that "speak" to me and those that, perhaps, should have been better left on the cutting room floor. The classics are easy and need no additional comment from me as their plot lines stand on their own merits. Others, because they have a fetching, or wicked, for that matter, femme fatale to muddy the waters also get a pass. Some, such as the film under review from 1946, Undercurrent, frankly baffles me. A pyscho-drama, no question, a famous director, no question, but also a very non-femme fatale in Kate Hepburn, and a very non-tough guy (street or detective) role for classic 1940s tough guy and a good guy to have at your back, Robert Mitchum.

A little plot look will help explain my bafflement. Robert Taylor, a ruthless, driven high-tech capitalist who made big dough during World War II is also a little mad, well, a lot mad. However he is able to cover that little problem up while courting, well not beautiful, but let's call her handsome, Kate Hepburn. Seems he needs a trophy wife and Kate fills the bill. And that is where the problems begin because Brother Taylor has a brother whom he is insanely jealous of for the usual Freudian, or pseudo-Freudian, reasons that drive the plot lines of these pycho-dramas. Kate, however, loves the big lug Taylor until he starts going over the edge about his brother (and some other things like a little murder of an employee that goes a long way to allowing him to be that ruthless high-tech capitalist). Of course, as in all such dramas old Robert will get his comeuppance, have no fear.

But where is the noir in this noir? No femme fatale, no tough guy throwing his weight around or tilting at windmills to right the world's wrongs, no problem that requires quick thinking to right those wrongs. Well when you go on a tear on a subject as I am on <em>crime noir</em> not everything will come up Out Of The Past or The Big Sleep. Not this one anyway.

It had all of the right people; the right story if it had been developed a bit more; and it didn't live quite up to it's potential. Nonetheless, being on an old film kick, I thoroughly enjoyed it as a suspense movie I had never seen before.

Robert Taylor, devastatingly handsome in a slippery sort of way, plays the part of Alan Garraway, a sophisticated businessman/inventor who presents on business to the house of a famous scientist one evening because their talents compliment each other in aerospace advancement. The older scientist has a daughter; bright and vivacious but hardly the type that might be expected to attract an Alan Garraway: Ann Hamilton played by Katherine Hepburn.

But there is an "undercurrent" about him that is hard to dispel, despite his charm and even-tempered personality, which is carefully cultivated and controlled. The rejected suitor of Ann's who has done business with him before doesn't like him (which may be expected to be without cause considering the circumstances) but neither does the dog. Any dog. However, Ann is smitten to the toes, and under the smoky, sultry spell of Alan Garraway, she agrees to marry him.

From the moment the viewer feels the intensity of his focus on Ann, we are given the sensation somehow that he is choosing her in a calculating way; a plain, unsophisticated person who will be so in love with him that he can remake her into anything he wishes; and who will allow him to retain complete control of her in matters of the heart - she will be "his." That this doesn't quite happen the way he thought it would is what makes the "undercurrent" of the story what it is - there's a reason for this.

Ann starts finding out right away that things are not what they seem in her new home; her husband's snooty social circle is quite a departure from her simple, hard working one, but she is up to the task and overnight evolves into the beautiful Katherine Hepburn we know is under there. That is part of where it doesn't quite cut the mustard as far as continuity goes, but let it slide, we know more and better is coming. She also discovers that he has a mysteriously absent brother whom he obviously doesn't want to talk about and as her scientists inquisitive instinct is aroused by any unsolved mystery, she sets out to find out why; but no one seems to know if he simply abandoned his family or if he was murdered. In the process of investigation, the mystery overwhelms her and she falls in love with a phantom; a someone she does not know, has never seen, but seems more a part of who she is than her new husband is.

This is a good movie that could have been a lot better with just a little more aforethought taken in smoothing the script. Robert Michum, by the way, is very interesting in his role and is the focus of two of the best scenes in the entire movie, in my view.