SnoopyStyle Spinster scientist Ann Hamilton (Katharine Hepburn) is taken with famed chemical tycoon Alan Garroway (Robert Taylor). Her father sells him the rights to a chemical compound. Ann marries Alan but is concerned about fitting into his world of wealth and power. Alan tells her about his no-good hated brother Michael (Robert Mitchum) but there is more to the story.Hepburn sells the heck out of the role. She's enchanting. There is nobody like her. Veteran actor Robert Taylor is nowhere near her iconic level. He's fine but I can't help but wish for Robert Mitchum in the role. It's early in his career but he's already a sought after rising star. Mike should be a more meek character who could be pushed over by his more dominating brother Alan. Mitchum is not really that meek. It's understandable to have the bigger role given to the more experienced actor. What it could have been is epic. What it turns out is a solid noir from Vincente Minnelli who would gain more fame from musicals later on.

maurice yacowar Undercurrent is a prime example of gay director Minnelli's critique of American marriage as a stunting reduction of manhood. (As I recall, Robin Wood established this theme primarily in Minnelli's comedies — e.g., Father of the Bride, Meet Me In St Louis, The Long Long Trailer, etc. — and may or may not have examined it in this melodrama. It's decades since I read his work and my library is, alas, too long gone for me to check. So I may be reseeding Robin's field.) Katherine Hepburn's Ann is a spinsterish independent with no time for the conventional woman's compulsive search for a husband. She's content to work for her professor father in his home chemistry lab. Her father (Edmund Gwenn) is a cuddly, wise, loving man, as handy at the piano as at the test tubes, but he is utterly desexualized by his widowhood and name. She calls him Dinks! Her one suitor is a more paradoxically named prof, the boyish vapid Joseph Bangs (he doesn't). Against that backdrop of male impotence stand the powerful two Garroway brothers. Ann is instantly awed by Alan (Robert Taylor), the slick operator who made his fortune on a long- distance control device he supposedly invented in time to win WW II. But his reputation and character are both false. He killed the German scientist whose device he then stole. In another manipulation to show his power, Alan lets his new wife Ann embarrass herself in a dowdy dress at a reception for his flashy friends. That's to get their admiration for his ensuing remake. Only after marrying Alan does she hear he has a brother Michael (Robert Mitchum). Alan describes Michael as the family black sheep who robbed him to fund his wastrel life, then disappeared. The more he avoids discussing him the more Ann becomes intrigued by him. The two brothers recall the two additives Dinks dropped into the test tube to demonstrate the irreversible effects of love on a placid element. The tube (Ann) bubbleth over.Of course Taylor and Mitchum were box office and romance studs. Taylor was the pretty boy, Mitchum the seething danger. Their personae work here. This time it's the pretty boy who proves the murderous threat, the ostensible Bad Boy the hero.Ann becomes intrigued by what she hears about the mysteriously disappeared Michael. When she collects his rebound book of poems she finds a kindred spirit she initially thinks is her Alan — which ignites his anger and fear. When she visits Michael's ranch (now Alan's), she finds Michael's "home" profoundly more comforting than Alan's. To mislead her, Alan claims his mother, not Michael, played the Brahms she loves — and he hates. That music becomes the signature of Michael's return and their union. Both brothers are "undercurrents," Michael in his sensitive, creative and principled character, Alan by his willingness to kill. The film's major "undercurrent" is the irony that Ann married a fake but thereby finds her true love. She finds it by going beyond the structure — and strictures — of her marriage. The sensitive idealist and firmly individualistic man has no space in this film's institution of marriage. As the parties reveal, this world is gaudily artificial and ritualized, a glib dance of power. Michael spurned Sylvia's love because he met her through Alan and couldn't undermine him. So, too, he later suppresses his attraction to Ann. Michael disappeared because he couldn't bear the burden of bis brother's guilt — nor to betray him. He hoped the war would end his dilemma but he survived. Meeting Ann rouses him to confront him to save her. As nature overrules man's fragile and arbitrary social constructions, the wild horse stops Alan's attack on Ann and the truly civilized outsider Michael fulfills her.

trimpe-456-869588 I actually watched this movie 2 times, trying to make myself like it as well as understand it. Hepburn in love with a ghost (or unattainable)person? Taylor being upset because of this threat to him (Hepburn's love for him)? Much ado about nothing. Not believable. It seemed to me that there was a huge attempt at making this appear like a movie of great mystery, intrigue and suspense. And it just fell short. It never seemed to kick in/get itself going. I stuck with it to see if it was ever going to "get itself going", but unfortunately for me, it did not. I thought Jayne Meadows was brilliant in this. Wise gal, hardened and savvy. Too bad she didn't make more movies during her career. although I'm glad she found happiness with entertainer husband Steve Allen.

writers_reign ... after Bringing Up Baby, The Philadelphia Story, to name only two, was this piece of cheese which does no one any favors. Strangely for Minnelli the construction is all over the place, for example, after establishing the close relationship between father-daughter Edmund Gwenn and Kathering Hepburn (reprising their relationship from Sylvia Scarlett) Gwenn virtually disappears leaving Hepburn isolated which is fine in terms of the plot but unrealistic in real life. Similarly Robert Taylor is introduced as a hard-headed successful businessman, hardly the kind of person to fall for an insecure wallflower. The only one required to do any real acting is Robert Mitchum, cast against type as a thoroughly decent man who values poetry and composition - the kind of part Leslie Howerd played in The Petrified Forest. Mitchum brings it off to a fare-thee-well but that's about the best you can give it.