Pluskylang Great Film overall

Micah Lloyd Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.

Neive Bellamy Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Darin One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

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.

den_quixote With this cast and Vincent Minelli directing you might reasonably expect a professional product but you are not going to get one. Hepburn is said to have accused Mitchum of getting the part solely because of his looks because he could not act. If so she was right but beware you who live in glass houses. Hepburn was equally awful and Robert Taylor was decidedly mediocre. Marjorie Main is the one highlight and she is gone after the first 15 minutes or so. The biggest problem however is the totally unbelievable plot. Edmund Gwenn is a scientist living with daughter/assistant (Hepburn) in a home, with adjoining laboratory, run by Marjorie Main. Robert Taylor plays an Elon Musk type, a 40 year old multi-millionaire bachelor, who is trying to win the rights to one of Gwenn's products. He comes to the Gwenn home and is immediately smitten with Hepburn and they marry shortly thereafter and then it gets bad, really bad. Horrible dialogue combined with a preposterous plot, miscast actors and obvious foreshadowing make for one long and tedious movie. There is a reason you have never heard of this one. It is awful.

secondtake Undercurrent (1946)Melodrama with Katherine Hepburn instead of Bette Davis or Joan Crawford?Yes. And it works, though differently. Hepburn rules the movie, for sure, and she covers some range from sweet daughter of a scientist to a rich man's wife losing her innocence to someone who rises up on her own two feet. She's still the classy (or stiff) Hepburn (depending who you ask). I like her, and I liked her in this film a lot.The plot uses a whole range of clichés but uses them well. The slight twists to what you expect are never shocking, but they keep you guessing. The second big star, seemingly, is Robert Mitchum, but if you are a fan of his, don't see the movie for his role. It's exceedingly minor. A very strange contract arrangement on that one. When he is there, it's undramatic, though he's in command, of course. The other male lead, Robert Taylor, is his usual reasonable, appropriate self--carefully chosen words to avoid saying a little starchy and ordinaire. One bit part is predictably colorful, Marjorie Main with her earthy comebacks.Director Vincente Minnelli is in good form here, actually, and if the movie seems routine, it's the story that holds it back. He has some great photography behind it all (Karl Freund), and the score is unusually effective and beautiful (Herbert Stothart). I wouldn't call it a film noir, though it has shadings of the style and it's from that post war dark period. Instead, it's a noir melodrama. Worth seeing, absolutely, if you like those kinds of films.

MartinHafer Considering that this is a glossy MGM production starring Katharine Hepburn, Robert Taylor and Robert Mitchum, it's certainly well worth watching as it can't help but be very good. However, the film, at times, seems a bit hard to believe. If you can turn off that nagging voice that questions a few directions the plot takes, then you're bound to really enjoy this film. Plus, even with a few minor plot problems, it's a good picture.The film begins with Hepburn playing her father's assistant and caretaker. She's a bit shy around men and a little insecure. So, when a rich and immensely successful man (Taylor) falls for her, she keeps doubting herself and thinks he could have chosen better. But, during all of the first half of the film, he seems like an almost perfect husband--caring and kind. However, slowly through the course of the movie, he shows hints that he isn't as sweet and good as he's appeared.The first time you see this dark side of Taylor is when his estranged brother (Mitchum) is mentioned. When Hepburn asks him innocent questions about him, Taylor oddly lashes out at her. And, the more he reacts this way, the more curious she becomes--wondering what happened between them. There is MUCH more to the story than this...and it gets very, very dark in the last moments of the film. However, I don't want to say more--it would spoil the film.The best thing about this movie is the evocative mood throughout. The combination of excellent direction, music and cinematography makes for a very brooding film--a mood that is actually better than the sum of all its parts. Plus, if you are a curious psychology major, you may enjoy seeing Taylor's character who appears to be a combination of someone dealing with Paranoid Schizophrenia and an Antisocial Personality Disorder. This means that while he may act very normal almost all the time, there is an undercurrent of insanity and persecution. And, since he has a lack of conscience, he is capable of doing anything if he thinks he can get away with it! A scary combination and a nice film--even though, occasionally, it seems a tad overdone.By the way, at one point in the film, Hepburn is supposed to be right on the Virginia coastline. However, it's obviously NOT Virginia to anyone who knows the state--as the cliffs and rocky shoreline are obviously on the West Coast.