Of the eleven films Katharine Hepburn made at M-G-M (1940-‘52), eight were with Spencer Tracy, three without. This was best of the ‘withouts.’ Kate, assistant to and living with her science professor dad Edmund Gwenn, is well on her way to spinsterhood when industrial titan Robert Taylor walks into their house and walks out with a bride. Not a lot of chemistry between these two, but that winds up helping the drama since Taylor soon starts to show his true pathological colors about some unexplained family drama involving wise & gentle younger brother Robert Mitchum, currently (make that undercurrently) out of sight (dead?), if never out of mind. The film has some trouble getting on its feet, but is perked up by having all three leads play against type, and even more once director Vincente Minnelli starts laying on that Modern American Gothic atmosphere. (Lenser Karl Freund providing plenty of shadowy light.) It may be no more than a foolish sort of dark & stormy night melodrama, with big nods toward Hitchcock’s REBECCA/’40 and SUSPICION/’41, the climax plays like SUSPICION on horseback, but also some dumb fun.
DOUBLE-BILL: That’s the slow movement of Brahms’ Symphony #3, reconfigured as a piano concerto, blaring on the soundtrack when composer Herbert Stothart’s title card comes up. The same piece so prominently used in AIMEZ-VOUS, BRAHMS? (aka GOODBYE AGAIN/’61).
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: If Mitchum’s face looks a bit gaunt here, it may be because he was hustling back and forth making three films concurrently. (Make that 'underconcurrently.')
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