Katharine Hepburn marries Robert Taylor but finds herself strangely drawn to an absent Robert Mitchem in 1946's Undercurrent. It's a fascinating gothic noir from Vincente Minnelli.
I really wonder sometimes how Robert Taylor came to be a star, I always found him kind of one dimensional. He plays Alan Garroway, famous for inventing a kind of engine crucial to winning World War II. When he meets young Ann (Hepburn) he sweeps the star-struck young woman off her feet. But her heart is almost immediately distracted by some ambiguous shadow in Alan's life. Violently jealous, he becomes enraged when Ann shows a fondness for a particular song or poem. Taylor's lack of subtlety as a performer makes it all seem even more nightmarish.
Ann is the point of view character and we follow her as she compulsively digs up clue after clue, in spite of, and largely because of, her husband's rage. When she finally meets Robert Mitchum, playing Alan's estranged brother Michael, she doesn't even know she's met her quarry. He pretends to be the caretaker of a ranch.
Mitchum's cool melancholy stands in contrast to Alan's angry grasping for Ann's loyalty. It's kind of the story of the sun versus the wind trying to get the man's coat off. Mitchum wins Hepburn's heart with the barest hints of his existence. It provides an interesting existential subtext to Alan's plight. How much is fate drawing Ann to Michael, how much is Alan's own rashness, how much is the peculiarly effective chemistry between Ann and Michael?
Undercurrent is available on The Criterion Channel until the end of the month.
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