Visiting Film Noir: Undercurrent

1946 Film Noir

From MGM

Directed by Vincente Minnelli

Starring

Katharine Hepburn

Robert Taylor

Robert Mitchum

Edmund Gwenn

Marjorie Main

Jayne Meadows

Leigh Whipper

I'm giving in to the seemingly popular opinion that this is a film noir.  I see it in the splendid, dark photography of Karl Freund, the fog machines had their moments and it had a certain moodiness.  Okay.  But where were the wet, nighttime streets, those lovely venetian blinds, the bad girl, the cops?  Not here I assure you.  I take my noirs seriously (oh?) and can only give it a certain minor noir status.  I won't argue about it but that's partly because I'm digging in my heels on most everything else.

The story concerns a small-town young woman (Hepburn), insecure and lacking in style, who impulsively marries a rich industrialist (Taylor) and moves with him to the big city.  He takes her to a dressmaker where he is the decider.  He teaches her how to be more confident and comfortable among his business associates and the city's snobby upper crust.

All might have gone well had someone not innocently mentioned his brother.  She wants to know why Taylor has not mentioned his brother and why he becomes enraged when she asks questions.  Through various developments she finds out she and the brother have/had a lot in common... they seem to speak the same language and they like reading and poetry, music and playing the piano, painting and art.  None of these things, of course, does she have in common with her husband.  She seems sentimental about the brother and Taylor tells her he dislikes sentimentality.

Hepburn is taken aback when she sees how much a family dog and a horse are afraid of or dislike Taylor.  What does it all mean?

Though she knows she shouldn't, she seeks information about the brother (Mitchum).  She asks her husband's employees about him.  They confirm something Taylor has said... that he was stealing from the family business.  She checks with an ex-girlfriend (Meadows) of Mitchum's who alarms Hepburn when she tells her she believes brother killed brother.  

Hepburn first meets Mitchum at a ranch house he owns but he never says who he is and she assumes he's a handyman.  We can tell he's taken with her.  As Taylor comes to find out how involved she's remained in her quest to find out about the brother, he clearly doesn't take it well and and the two men's impromptu meeting in a barn on the property sends us all over the edge.

Please don't tell the terrific ending, the above poster pleads, and I must agree.  There are several other things not explained or revealed because they shouldn't be said either.  

Major whiners and naysayers have said Minnelli was the wrong director for such a dramatic movie.  It is true that MGM's favorite musical director had done only one drama... The Clock, the year before with his then-wife Judy Garland.  But Minnelli was also a good director of actresses and Undercurrent is a woman's picture.  Minnelli would also go on to do other dramas so he had the gene.

Hepburn directing the director

There was also this notion that all three leads were miscast but particularly Hepburn and Mitchum.  I think both were cast against type which is not the same thing.  People had a difficult time accepting this actress with her indomitable spirit, strength and sure-footedness playing a scaredy-cat.  She's too tough to play someone so fragile, a weakling, they carped.  First and foremost, I say, she's an actress, isn't she?  She's also a good one so I guess I jump to the conclusion that the confusion lies with the observer.  Hepburn isn't doing anything she isn't completely capable of doing.

Secondly, this character is strong and there's quite a sense of spirit in her behavior.   She may say one thing to her husband about his brother but she is absolutely determined to investigate and, by and large, she fesses up to what she's done.  What's weak about that?

Now what about Mitchum?  They said the character was sensitive and, I guess... what?... Mitchum wasn't?  Gee, everyone knows big, barrel-chested he-men can't be sensitive.  I said in the posting on my 4 favorite Golden Age actors that he loved poetry.  That sounds pretty sensitive to me.  Why did not one say he was miscast in Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison (1957)?  He was pretty sensitive in that one, too.

They brought their different styles of acting to the production

All those things that Mitchum and Hepburn have in common are, in fact, integral to the story and set a tragedy in motion.  Mitchum was not miscast.  Even then, however,  audiences were used to seeing him in different roles from this one.  The year before he'd been nominated for an Oscar for The Story of G.I. Joe and that's likely why he was signed for this role.

Some thought Taylor was miscast, too, but I suspect other demons are at issue here.  He had just returned to the movies from several years in the Navy.  There can be no doubt that his female followers were in mourning.  And they were pissed that he came back as a villain, a psychotic husband, no less.  Some said he'd not played a role like this before.  Without my combing through his filmography, I can say he made Johnny Eager earlier in the decade and he wasn't exactly a choirboy.

Furthermore, acting-wise, I say Taylor is the best thing about the film.  Minnelli thought so, too.  Hepburn is certainly fine but nothing she did caused her to stretch her acting muscles.  Mitchum is fine as well but he is in only three or four scenes.  In his last one with Hepburn I think he tensed up.  He said he knew he was acting with one of the greats.

Conflict in the barn

In one of the pivotal scenes, when Taylor and Mitchum meet in the barn, Minnelli wanted Taylor's hatred for his brother to be obvious.  The director, who wanted Taylor to look deranged, asked the actor to not blink in the scene which made his eyes tear up, look wider and caused a frantic look.  It was a wonderful (and scary) moment.

In the several books I have on all three actors and the director, I looked for comments on how Taylor and Hepburn got along.  I thought there would be fireworks for he was one of Hollywood's most famous Republicans and she was a fairly noisy Democrat.  But I found nary a word.  He, too, was in awe of her talent, and she went from originally calling him a lightweight to saying he's one of the most underrated actors.

A few years later, in the throes of the commie witch hunt, The Red Scare, perhaps Hepburn and her pal Tracy had more negative things to say about Taylor considering he named names.

She had something negative to say about Mitchum at the time.  She found him very common, taking an instant dislike of him doing impersonations of her.  In front of the company she reportedly said to him you know you can't act.  If you hadn't been good-looking, you would never have gotten a picture.  I'm tired of playing with people who have nothing to offer.  

The uppity New Englander with the common one

Hepburn was always a terror on a movie set with her strong sense of perfectionism, her great knowledge of filmmaking and her equally strong sense of entitlement.  She had been a longtime friend and colleague of MGM and former RKO producer Pandro Berman.  (She didn't show up at the Oscars to accept any of her four wins but she showed up to present Berman with a special Oscar.)  He asked her to come aboard Undercurrent and gave her her choice of director and leading man.  

When she formally met Minnelli (they had seen one another around the studio many times), she told him I'm sure we'll get along.  He was a bit uneasy, taking the comment both as a threat and an order.  So their relationship began tentatively but forged into a nice working arrangement.

It's the curiosity of seeing these three actors in these particular roles that needs to move one into wanting to see the film.  As I see it, if you're not interested in seeing the work of at least two of them, take a pass on the movie.  I've always been interested in all three so we know where I stand.

Taylor was always a far more interesting actor when he played sinister roles although isn't that so for just about everyone?  And although Mitchum reportedly did not like his part, he captured the audience's attention for the same reasons that he became a big star... he was always rather mesmerizing.  

Hepburn & Taylor being silly

Edmund Gwenn, whose next film was his most famous, that of Kris Kringle in Miracle on 34th Street, plays Hepburn's professor-father.  Marjorie Main is the housekeeper who wants Hepburn to get married before it's too late.  Both provide some light comedy moments but when Hepburn marries and moves away, we see them no more.

I have never been a big Jayne Meadows fan, especially as a television panelist or even as Steve Allen's wife, but she made a handful of movies where I found her delightful.  This was her first film and playing a snooty, rich woman became her stock in trade.  The scene with Hepburn in Meadows's apartment was so bitchy and fun.

The story of a woman who marries a psycho has been done many times and sometimes better and certainly worse (especially when a TV movie) but this offers a tidy-enough suspense angle, that great photography, some exciting horsemanship, and ends as it should.  

The film has always taken some serious hits from critics particularly and sometimes the public.  It's not perfect.  It's been criticized for being plodding, slow and too long.  I agree with none of that.  There are a few things that don't make a lot of sense but if nothing else, let's allow that such things go hand-in-hand with noir.  Ok, there's one more thing on the side of this film being a noir.

Here's a trailer:

Next posting:

To Africa we go... and I love

going to Africa