Minnelli's only film noir, Undercurrent features Katharine Hepburn as a sheltered daughter who marries Robert Taylor and discovers the real world to be hell--personified by her own husband. So she begins to fall in love with the image of her husband's missing brother, who later shows up in the person of Robert Mitchum. In Film Noir: An Encyclopedic Reference..., the authors note that “Although Minnelli is customarily more precise in his characteristic visual usages, certain sequences manifest an awareness of the noir style....” What is decidedly “noir” about the film is its suspenseful development of characters out of shadow figures. Mitchum's character unfolds entirely out of contradictory descriptions--Taylor's virulent hatred of him versus the “true” man Hepburn creates. Taylor's madman is slowly revealed; persecuted by an invisible enemy (his absent brother), he feeds his mania to his wife in small doses. Finally, Hepburn's naive wife is the most ephemeral character of all; she soon proves herself to be no fool. The New York Times review calls Hepburn's performance “crisp and taut,” Taylor's one of “brooding meanness” and Mitchum “appealing in a crumpled, modest way.”