- What happened to Michael Garroway? Nobody in Vincente Minnelli's Undercurrent is more interested in having that question answered than Ann Hamilton (Katharine Hepburn), who recently married Michael's brother, Alan (Robert Taylor). A successful businessman, Alan claims that his layabout brother was effectively disowned after stealing from the family. A series of inconsistent details and Alan's reticence to discuss the matter, however, drive Ann to interrogate the family servant (Leigh Whipper), Alan's business partner (Clinton Sundberg), Michael's old flame (Jayne Meadows), and their family ranch's caretaker (Robert Mitchum). Everyone knows more than they're saying, but nobody is willing to confirm even whether Michael is dead or alive.
- Complicating matters further is the fact that Ann feels like a fish out of water in her new husband's circle of friends. Accustomed to experimenting in her doting father's (Edmund Gwenn) chemistry lab, turning down unwelcome advances from a single-minded professor (Dan Tobin), and feeding the maid's (Marjorie Main) poached eggs to the family dog, Ann finds herself propelled unwillingly into the social strata of Washington D.C.'s political scene. In the meantime, she grows more and more convinced that Alan killed his brother. It sounds funny, but even Alan's own dog doesn't like him. You almost start to feel sorry for the guy.
- Oddly enough, Undercurrent's incredibly talented cast causes more problems than it solves. Although Hepburn delivers a great performance, it is nearly impossible to accept her as a character who is allegedly both frumpy and unconfident. Similarly, Mitchum simply was not made to play overwhelmingly decent, upstanding characters. The film's scenery and settings, however, are excellent, and its cinematography (by Karl Freund) does a great job with both the natural light of the ranch's oak forest and the shadows of a creepy stable. Incidentally, the stable acts as a gathering place for a couple of truly weird characters (Billy McClain, Hank Worden) and one murderous horse. I almost wish the movie had spent more time on those weird undercurrents than on the ones it actually explored.
- Based on a story by Thelma Strabel.
