Sadly Over-hyped

Better Late Then Never

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Mild thriller with Katharine Hepburn miscast in the lead. Story of a somewhat sheltered young woman, attractive but with no particular personal style. She's swept off her feet by the dashing Taylor who remakes her in the image of a chic sophisticate that suits his position as an important personality. Everything seems fine until she starts to notice small cracks in the persona he shows to the world until he reveals himself a psychotic nut job with brother issues.It's all a bit lurid with Minnelli, in a departure from musicals, a bit off in his pacing. The big surprise though is that Robert Taylor is better in the film than Kate. It's not that she's bad just the wrong actress for the weak sister she's playing, Joan Fontaine, Anne Baxter or Geraldine Fitzgerald would all have been better suited to the part. Taylor on the other hand, while never a great actor, handles the suave heel with the dangerous edge very well. Another glaring mismatch is Hepburn and Mitchum. He was just starting out and the two clashed off screen, with her dressing him down and he as usual not caring what she thought. They share zero chemistry on screen, you can actually sense their mutual distaste for each other in the film. A major flaw since he's supposed to be her dream man. An okay movie but a minor film for all.

A throbbing melodrama of sometimes unbearable proportions. It is pondering and drags for most of its elongated length. It is a matter of a sub-genre (Film-Noir) in the hands of talent so self-absorbed that they can't let the material be exposed without embellishment. Everything is baked and overdone and all the nutrients are gone.Separately, the talent involved here have attained high product. But working together it is a ham-fisted affair of the heart and is more warm than chilling. Hepburn is miscast and so is the Director. This type of thing needs languishing and brooding. It comes off as a parade of fashion and pomp slumming in the Netherlands of psychosis and greed.It plays slow and never fully engages as it sputters and tries to crack through the cocoon of MGM respectability and restraint. The studio forever worrying about image and superficiality.

If you can stick with the plot through a long, drawn-out first half, the second half generates at least some dramatic interest. But that first half is a trial, one that tests the endurance and bravery of even the most fortified fans of glossy, dull, dreary 1940s melodramas.The plot ordeal is made worse by the miscasting of Katharine Hepburn as a shy, demure, self-effacing young woman named Ann, who jabbers loquaciously through almost every scene of the film, and in that grating voice that Hepburn is so well known for. How torturous! Could we not at least have had an intermission?Then there's nondescript Robert Taylor, who plays Alan, a middle-age man of means and mystery, who wants Ann in marriage, but for what ulterior motive? Only the scriptwriter knows for sure, as the plot veers, meanders, and winds through assorted scenes that exist seemingly just to highlight his motivational ambiguity.Finally, in the second half, the plot picks up. And the viewer is rewarded with an interestingly strange, if not quite believable, climax. But I could have wished for a quicker, less serpentine route.The film's B&W visuals and the nondescript background music are soft and glossy, in sync with the melodramatic story. Alan's wealth propels him through a clique of haughty characters, off-putting in their vanity and self-importance, the worst being Sylvia Burton, played by icy Jayne Meadows. Not surprisingly, costumes are mostly high fashion and showy.If most of the first half had been cut out, if the script had been less talky, and if different actors had been cast in the lead roles, then "Undercurrent" might have been worth watching. As is, it's mostly an example of what can go wrong when a poor script and bad casting collide.

The casting (and direction) in Undercurrent is more insipid than inspired in this noir clunker that fails from the outset to get off the ground. Robert Taylor's wooden style poses a roadblock almost immediately for the highly affected Kate Hepburn and it's bad chemistry from the outset.Naive and innocent Ann Hamilton (Hepburn) falls for handsome airplane manufacturer Alan Garroway (Taylor) and rushes to the altar with him. She soon finds out there is a lot she does not know about him. As Alan becomes more remote she delves further into the murky past and Ann soon finds herself living a nightmare instead of the American dream.Undercurrent resembles a few Hitchcock plots but Vincent Minnelli rapidly establishes he is no master of suspense. Hepburn is no shrinking violet and she is a hard sell for a character more suited to the reticent styles of Teresa Wright or Joan Fontaine. Minnelli never really succeeds in getting Kate to defer in desperate fashion to Taylor's limited abilities as an actor. Her attempts come across as silent Gish while Taylor's wide descent into madness takes on restrained Bela Lugosi. Robert Mitchum completes the miscasting as the sensitive brother. Talk about piling on.Cinematographer Karl Freund provides some highly stylized noir interiors but Minnelli and cast utilize the atmospherics meekly and the tension remains tepid. With Minnelli far from his forte (musicals) and Hepburn's victim role fitting her like a bad suit Undercurrent drowns all involved.