Undercurrent

Although best known for his marvellous MGM musicals, Minnelli also directed several superbly stylish melodramas (The Bad and the Beautiful, Some Came Running). This early example is a sombre, faintly noir-ish romantic thriller, with Hepburn marrying the handsome, wealthy, but cruel Taylor, and finding help when she needs it from his mysterious brother (Mitchum). Echoes of Rebecca, Gaslight, etc, but in its quiet understatement it becomes less of a full-blown weepie, more a haunting and subtle study of malevolence and gullibility. Surprisingly, it finally impresses by the very absence of those memorably hysterical, stylistically baroque touches that make Minnelli's musicals and later dramas so wonderful.