Your Brother's Hot! And Other Things Not to Say to Your Husband. More Movie Musings
Watched another interesting old movie yesterday. Undercurrent, starring Robert Taylor playing against his good looks, a young Robert Mitchum and a woefully miscast Katherine Hepburn. I'm sure I've seen this one before, but I have only the vaguest memories of it, so it was almost like seeing it for the first time.
Basic plot: Ann (Hepburn) is the grown daughter of a famous, sweet old scientist (Santa Clause from Miracle on 34th Street no less.) Sheltered and naive, she's headed for a life of spinsterhood as a female scientist. (Remember, this is 1946, so this is a considered a shockingly sad fate. Or it would be more shockingly sad if this was Lana Turner, maybe. Katherine Hepburn, you're going "Okay...not a problem.")
Anyway, enter handsome, charming, smart and tremendously rich inventor Alan Garroway, played by Robert Taylor. He sweeps Ann off her feet, and here is where the problem begins. Katherine Hepburn just isn't a sweepable kind of girl. She is many many fine things, but this she is not. There's a scene where she asks her father what the handsome Alan could possibly see in a plain Jane like her and heaven help me, I'm sitting there thinking "Yeah, I don't know either!" Not that she isn't wonderful in her own way, but she just isn't this woman. She isn't Robert Taylor's woman. But more importantly, it's impossible to buy her as so insecure and ignorant of the world that she completely overlooks the red flags this guy is waving right in her face.
But she does and she marries him and he whisks her away to his home in Washington, where he owns a factory that produces some sort of Marvelous Thing that is Very Important and makes him Lots of Money. (Sorry, I wasn't paying attention to that part.)
As Ann is introduced into his circle, she begins to hear more and more about his brother Michael. Everyone seems to be obsessed with Michael in a very unhealthy way. Michael supposedly bankrupted the company and it was only the invention of this Marvelous Thing that saved it. And Michael may be a murderer.
Ann--who has now lost whatever interest she had in science because she has found a woman's true calling in marriage, interior decorating and idle gossip--becomes obsessed with Michael herself. Why not? Everyone else is. And what else is there to do? So she starts snooping around and the movie asks us to believe that she begins to fall in love with Michael, even though she has never met him and he's supposed to be this awful person who squandered millions, put the jobs of hundreds of people at risk and may have murdered a German refugee engineer.
She meets up with Michael's girlfriend, va-va-voom Jayne Meadows--who is the only cast member who seems really invested in the project. Now she knows stuff but naturally won't come right out and say it. See, in stories like this nobody can ever give anyone a straight answer. Because then the story would be over. So they have to be all cagey and answer questions with questions.
"May I have a glass of water?"
"Have you asked yourself why you want a glass of water?"
That sort of annoying thing. But she somehow circuitously manages to suggest that Michael is taking a bum rap and it is, in fact, Alan who is the bad guy and that Alan has murdered Michael to cover it all up.
But marriage has wiped Ann's mind free of any capacity for clear, scientific thought it once held. She operates now on the reactions of a four-year-old, who believes the last thing the last person tells him.
So she's all worked up over the thought that the terrific guy who inexplicably married dull old her may have murdered his own brother. When she timidly dances around the issue, her concern that he is a cold-blooded murderer but oh dear, he is so handsome and he loves her and of course, if he says he didn't murder anyone, she'll believe him. He becomes verbally abusive. The guy has got a red flag in each fist and one in his teeth and is waving them like crazy but when he suggests they go out to his "ranch" in the Virginia countryside, her brain shuts down again because he loves her and mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm (that's the humming sound her brain makes when the batteries short out.)
So she goes out to the "ranch." (He's coming up later.) The "ranch" makes Monticello look like a shack. Like so many massive movie estates, it seems to run beautifully with minimal staff, in this case, faithful retainer hang-dog-faced George. George clearly knows exactly what's going on, but he ain't saying nothin' to nobody, except to glumly warn Miss Ann to just leave things alone. Yeah, just keep on sleeping with your murderous, abusive husband, Ann, and be glad you have a husband at all.
From an upstairs window, Ann sees a shadow in the stable yard. The faithful resident dalmatian rushes up to Shadow Guy and goes nuts. Because of course no dog has ever happily greeted a total stranger or even a casual acquaintance, Ann instantly assumes this man to be Michael. He's alive! Given the fact that nobody else in this movie can give anyone a straight answer, she isn't to be blamed for taking the word of a dog on this matter.
Happy happy happy! Her gorgeous husband who loves her is not a murderer! (She does not stop to consider that this opens up the new problem of what she will now do with her time.)
Then later that night, Alan shows up and the movie abruptly switches POVs and gives you this odd scene with Alan and Michael in the stable where All Secrets Become Known. Michael confronts Alan with the truth as he knows it and how the audience needs to know it. Michael has not just been Lying Low, he's been Figuring Things Out and he has figured out that Alan killed the German inventor, stole his idea and rebuilt the family fortune. None of which Alan bothers to deny. Michael has met Ann, incognito. He thinks she is a Fine Person. (Well, she is, I guess. If you like indecisive dishrags.) Too Fine a Person to be mixed up with scum like Alan. And he's going to tell her that she married a murderer. (Which actually would have made a better title than Undercurrent.)
No, no, Alan says. I'll take care of that. Promise. Well, okay, Michael says because he's unbelievably stupid. Or maybe that enormous hat he's wearing is heating up his brain and making rational thought difficult.
Now we know what Ann doesn't know. Next morning, we switch back to Ann's POV. She finds Michael's cigarette butt in the stable yard and accepts it as proof positive that Michael is indeed alive. (She picks it up and rolls it between her fingertips which isn't the least bit gross at all, and apparently, her fingertips possess the miraculous ability to analyze DNA and determine who once sucked on it.)
Happy happy! That night, she feels the need to confess all of the awful suspicions she harbored against her beautiful husband, mistaking him for a rational human being who will think this is a fine thing for her to do.
Instead, he blows up. He doesn't blow up over the fact that she thought he murdered his own brother. He doesn't even blow up over the fact that he is supposed to tell her that he is actually a murderer, just not a fratricidal one. No, he blows up because he thinks she's in love with his brother. He swears she will never ever leave him! Now go to bed!
Which she apparently does because the next scene, it's morning and she's furtively dressing to run away. I guess she needed a good night's sleep. Also, she seems to be quite persnickety about the proper Running Away from Your Psychopathic Husband attire because she certainly takes her sweet time. Me, I'd have pulled on the sweats and the sneakers and run, but Ann is a Finer Person than I.
Now here's where the movie just gives up and goes completely insane.
Once she is dressed to perfection, she daintily flits downstairs only to find that Alan has sent faithful retainer George into town with the car in an attempt to keep her from running off. This is rather incomplete thinking on his part due to the fact that they do, indeed, possess another car. It's in working order and Ann--surprisingly--knows how to drive it.
She flees hysterically but still rather daintily to the garage, gracefully and pointlessly discarding a silk scarf as she goes. You think "Okay, this scarf will be Important." But it isn't. She merely has a bad habit of dropping clothing accessories here and there. Or it could all be a case of poor editing.
Anyway, she gets in the car, it starts, she backs it out and drives down the driveway, where she has to stop to open the large gates. The car is huge. The gates are wooden. A murderous psychopath is on her tail. Drive through the damned gates already! But other than her pathological problem with kerchiefs, she has been established as a neat person with an attention for detail. No way is she going to trash these gates.
She gets out, opens the gates turns back to the car and AH! Alan! Murderous psychopath sneaks up on you as you are breathlessly desperately trying to escape and you're going to jump a mile and scream like Janet Leigh. But Ann reacts as though she just bumped into someone in the grocery store.
He tells her that George had prepared breakfast for them before he left and opens the car door in a commanding way. Ann doesn't run screaming down the road like a normal person. No. She obediently gets in the car because she has apparently been raised not to waste a good breakfast, murderous psychopath or no murderous psychopath. Back at the massive mansio--I mean house, she decides she isn't hungry after all and runs upstairs.
Now this happens all the time in movies and I just hate it. You are trying to get away from this guy. He has caught you for the time being. This house is freaking enormous. Why run upstairs??? You are cutting off so many means of escape by taking yourself up a floor. You can't hide! Don't you know anything? Sometimes it seems to me that people in movies have never actually seen any other movies. They are the only people in America who have never been to the movies so they don't know how these things work out.
Lucky for Ann, Alan isn't that bright and figures he's got her now and she'll just stay upstairs. Problem solved. But because he has never been to the movies, he is not expecting the Nosy Neighbor. So when she rides up to the house on her horse to invite him and his bride to breakfast, he feels quite comfortable standing on the portico, casually chatting with her, front door wide open. Ann is still sleeping, he tells her. Couldn't possibly come to breakfast.
Ann spies her from the upstairs window (a good spying spot,) flits back downstairs and says of course they'll go to breakfast. They'll ride back with her. Alan can't come up with a reason to thwart this plan so he just says okay and sends Ann back upstairs to change her clothes.
At this point, the plot seems to have spun out of the control of whoever was writing it. When you are trying to maintain tension, I don't recommend having your so-called heroine change her clothes twice in the same sequence.
But she does and she comes back downstairs to find that Alan has saddled a horse for her. Nosy Neighbor takes the time to remark that "Oh, that's Nellie. She's a nice calm ride." Exposition! A moment later, when Alan rides out on a demented stallion, she is called upon to establish that this horse is Bad News and she is surprised that Alan is still trying to break it.
They casually discuss the route they should take to Nosy Neighbor's house and decide on the shortcut, even though the rains may have made it difficult. So you expect the rains to have made it difficult, but turns out they haven't. Water plays no role in what happens next, so this is all wasted dialogue.
Nosy Neighbor notices that things seem a little rocky between the newlyweds (little does she know!) and launches into a stream of platitudes. Ann can't stand it and blurts out "I must tell you!" But Alan kicks his crazy horse into a gallop and is found in an unconscious heap up the trail. Nosy Neighbor rides off for a doctor while Ann wails "Don't leave me here alone!" apparently forgetting that she has a horse of her own and could just remount and ride away.
But no. It's a film full of muddy thinkers. Why should Ann be any different? She hangs around a second too long. The minute Nosy Neighbor is out of earshot, Alan sits up. He wasn't knocked out at all. Just wanted Nosy Neighbor out of the way. But he suggests they ride on to her house anyway. Breakfast is waiting and these people have a sort of pathological devotion to breakfast.
So Ann, obedient to a ludicrous fault, mounts and follows Alan up the trail, which exits the woods and now they are suddenly riding along the edge of dizzyingly high, sheer cliffs. Who knew the Cliffs of Insanity were in Virginia?
Alan seems to have his psycho horse under control admirably, so that he can use him to try to force Ann's horse off the edge of the Cliffs of Insanity. Ann helplessly screams "Save me!" I don't know who she's screaming to. Maybe the horse. But the horse is all "Lady, I'm trying to save myself!" Which it manages to do, inadvertently saving Ann in the process.
They're back in the woods. Ann and the horse take off. The horse clearly thinks it's every man for himself at this point and Ann gets knocked off by a low-hanging branch. Alan catches up, dismounts and kneels by her inert body. Ann comes to just in time to see him raising a large rock, preparatory to bashing her brains in. (Finally, he displays some active problem solving skills.)
Ann just lays there, waiting for him to bash her brains in. (Did you really expect more from her?) She doesn't even scream "Save me!" this time, which is weird because guess what? Alan's horse freaks out and stomps him to death! Now this is great film making but even something this incredibly awesome can't make up for the rest of the mess that is this movie.
Come to think of it, the horse was in the stable the night Michael confronted Alan about murdering the German inventor. Remember Michael? Didn't you kind of expect him to pop up at some point during this whole sequence? Me too. But the horse knows better. He knows Alan killed the inventor. He is the only one in the whole movie smart enough to figure out that he is going to have to take care of matters on his own.
It is a sad sad thing when your characters are so clueless that the livestock has to take over and resolve things for them.
Cut to the terrace of the mansion/ranch where Ann sits al fresco at a breakfast table (what is it about breakfast???) with Nosy Neighbor, lamenting How Horrible It Has All Been. In the background, someone is playing Brahms beautifully and sensitively on the piano. Nosy Neighbor wants to know who. Ann says it's her father, who is apparently staying with her. He's so sensitive and beautiful. You must be sensitive and beautiful to understand Brahms. On cue, he comes out and kisses her. But the Brahms continues. What beautiful and sensitive soul is playing the piano?
Ann wheels herself into the mansion (oh yeah, she's in a wheelchair for some reason, even though she was on her feet after Alan's horse saved her life) where she discovers Michael, sensitively and beautifully playing the piano. Yeah, Michael. Remember him? Whole movie sort of revolves around him. Where the heck has he been, anyway? He has the grace to sort of sheepishly apologize for walking off and leaving Ann in the hands of a murderous psychopath. Hindsight being 20/20 and all, it never crossed his mind that this maybe wasn't an ideal move. All I can say is thank God for the horse.
Ann and Michael then discuss what to do with all of the ill-gotten gains her murderous husband has left to her. She virtuously feels that it all belongs to the family of the murdered German inventor, though I don't recall anyone ever actually telling her about the German inventor. They then exchange a few tepid glances that supposedly hold the promise of future romance but there's really nothing there and I say call Jayne Meadows, Michael. She's hot.
This was an attractive and well-produced movie. Stylish (directed by Vincente Minelli, so...natch.) But the principal actors all seemed terribly uncomfortable with their roles, relationships and the stupid things they were made to do and say. Katherine Hepburn was certainly capable of chemistry with actors, but she ignites nothing with either male lead in this movie. She was the weirdest choice for this role. From a contemporary perspective, it's a pretty crappy role anyway, the helpless female who utterly subsumes herself in a relationship with a man. But a different type of actress (not a better actress, just a different sort) could have at least made her sympathetic. Ingrid Bergman did that sort of thing very well.
But the plot falls apart because it relies too much on people behaving irrationally. And not irrationally the way people actually behave irrationally in real life. They behave as though their brains periodically stop functioning and the plot jerks them where it thinks it needs them to go. That's bad enough. But when the plot doesn't even know where it needs to go, then you're really in trouble. To me, this movie seemed like a first draft, where they haphazardly slapped the ending together and then didn't take the time to go back and work out a more logical way to make it fit together.
If plot grows out of character, then you have to actually think about who your characters are and not just say "Okay, let's do this and then let's do that" and hope it all fits together and then have your whole plot turn on the actions of a badly behaved horse.
The Brahms was really nice, though.
Basic plot: Ann (Hepburn) is the grown daughter of a famous, sweet old scientist (Santa Clause from Miracle on 34th Street no less.) Sheltered and naive, she's headed for a life of spinsterhood as a female scientist. (Remember, this is 1946, so this is a considered a shockingly sad fate. Or it would be more shockingly sad if this was Lana Turner, maybe. Katherine Hepburn, you're going "Okay...not a problem.")
Anyway, enter handsome, charming, smart and tremendously rich inventor Alan Garroway, played by Robert Taylor. He sweeps Ann off her feet, and here is where the problem begins. Katherine Hepburn just isn't a sweepable kind of girl. She is many many fine things, but this she is not. There's a scene where she asks her father what the handsome Alan could possibly see in a plain Jane like her and heaven help me, I'm sitting there thinking "Yeah, I don't know either!" Not that she isn't wonderful in her own way, but she just isn't this woman. She isn't Robert Taylor's woman. But more importantly, it's impossible to buy her as so insecure and ignorant of the world that she completely overlooks the red flags this guy is waving right in her face.
But she does and she marries him and he whisks her away to his home in Washington, where he owns a factory that produces some sort of Marvelous Thing that is Very Important and makes him Lots of Money. (Sorry, I wasn't paying attention to that part.)
As Ann is introduced into his circle, she begins to hear more and more about his brother Michael. Everyone seems to be obsessed with Michael in a very unhealthy way. Michael supposedly bankrupted the company and it was only the invention of this Marvelous Thing that saved it. And Michael may be a murderer.
Ann--who has now lost whatever interest she had in science because she has found a woman's true calling in marriage, interior decorating and idle gossip--becomes obsessed with Michael herself. Why not? Everyone else is. And what else is there to do? So she starts snooping around and the movie asks us to believe that she begins to fall in love with Michael, even though she has never met him and he's supposed to be this awful person who squandered millions, put the jobs of hundreds of people at risk and may have murdered a German refugee engineer.
She meets up with Michael's girlfriend, va-va-voom Jayne Meadows--who is the only cast member who seems really invested in the project. Now she knows stuff but naturally won't come right out and say it. See, in stories like this nobody can ever give anyone a straight answer. Because then the story would be over. So they have to be all cagey and answer questions with questions.
"May I have a glass of water?"
"Have you asked yourself why you want a glass of water?"
That sort of annoying thing. But she somehow circuitously manages to suggest that Michael is taking a bum rap and it is, in fact, Alan who is the bad guy and that Alan has murdered Michael to cover it all up.
But marriage has wiped Ann's mind free of any capacity for clear, scientific thought it once held. She operates now on the reactions of a four-year-old, who believes the last thing the last person tells him.
So she's all worked up over the thought that the terrific guy who inexplicably married dull old her may have murdered his own brother. When she timidly dances around the issue, her concern that he is a cold-blooded murderer but oh dear, he is so handsome and he loves her and of course, if he says he didn't murder anyone, she'll believe him. He becomes verbally abusive. The guy has got a red flag in each fist and one in his teeth and is waving them like crazy but when he suggests they go out to his "ranch" in the Virginia countryside, her brain shuts down again because he loves her and mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm (that's the humming sound her brain makes when the batteries short out.)
So she goes out to the "ranch." (He's coming up later.) The "ranch" makes Monticello look like a shack. Like so many massive movie estates, it seems to run beautifully with minimal staff, in this case, faithful retainer hang-dog-faced George. George clearly knows exactly what's going on, but he ain't saying nothin' to nobody, except to glumly warn Miss Ann to just leave things alone. Yeah, just keep on sleeping with your murderous, abusive husband, Ann, and be glad you have a husband at all.
From an upstairs window, Ann sees a shadow in the stable yard. The faithful resident dalmatian rushes up to Shadow Guy and goes nuts. Because of course no dog has ever happily greeted a total stranger or even a casual acquaintance, Ann instantly assumes this man to be Michael. He's alive! Given the fact that nobody else in this movie can give anyone a straight answer, she isn't to be blamed for taking the word of a dog on this matter.
Happy happy happy! Her gorgeous husband who loves her is not a murderer! (She does not stop to consider that this opens up the new problem of what she will now do with her time.)
Then later that night, Alan shows up and the movie abruptly switches POVs and gives you this odd scene with Alan and Michael in the stable where All Secrets Become Known. Michael confronts Alan with the truth as he knows it and how the audience needs to know it. Michael has not just been Lying Low, he's been Figuring Things Out and he has figured out that Alan killed the German inventor, stole his idea and rebuilt the family fortune. None of which Alan bothers to deny. Michael has met Ann, incognito. He thinks she is a Fine Person. (Well, she is, I guess. If you like indecisive dishrags.) Too Fine a Person to be mixed up with scum like Alan. And he's going to tell her that she married a murderer. (Which actually would have made a better title than Undercurrent.)
No, no, Alan says. I'll take care of that. Promise. Well, okay, Michael says because he's unbelievably stupid. Or maybe that enormous hat he's wearing is heating up his brain and making rational thought difficult.
Now we know what Ann doesn't know. Next morning, we switch back to Ann's POV. She finds Michael's cigarette butt in the stable yard and accepts it as proof positive that Michael is indeed alive. (She picks it up and rolls it between her fingertips which isn't the least bit gross at all, and apparently, her fingertips possess the miraculous ability to analyze DNA and determine who once sucked on it.)
Happy happy! That night, she feels the need to confess all of the awful suspicions she harbored against her beautiful husband, mistaking him for a rational human being who will think this is a fine thing for her to do.
Instead, he blows up. He doesn't blow up over the fact that she thought he murdered his own brother. He doesn't even blow up over the fact that he is supposed to tell her that he is actually a murderer, just not a fratricidal one. No, he blows up because he thinks she's in love with his brother. He swears she will never ever leave him! Now go to bed!
Which she apparently does because the next scene, it's morning and she's furtively dressing to run away. I guess she needed a good night's sleep. Also, she seems to be quite persnickety about the proper Running Away from Your Psychopathic Husband attire because she certainly takes her sweet time. Me, I'd have pulled on the sweats and the sneakers and run, but Ann is a Finer Person than I.
Now here's where the movie just gives up and goes completely insane.
Once she is dressed to perfection, she daintily flits downstairs only to find that Alan has sent faithful retainer George into town with the car in an attempt to keep her from running off. This is rather incomplete thinking on his part due to the fact that they do, indeed, possess another car. It's in working order and Ann--surprisingly--knows how to drive it.
She flees hysterically but still rather daintily to the garage, gracefully and pointlessly discarding a silk scarf as she goes. You think "Okay, this scarf will be Important." But it isn't. She merely has a bad habit of dropping clothing accessories here and there. Or it could all be a case of poor editing.
Anyway, she gets in the car, it starts, she backs it out and drives down the driveway, where she has to stop to open the large gates. The car is huge. The gates are wooden. A murderous psychopath is on her tail. Drive through the damned gates already! But other than her pathological problem with kerchiefs, she has been established as a neat person with an attention for detail. No way is she going to trash these gates.
She gets out, opens the gates turns back to the car and AH! Alan! Murderous psychopath sneaks up on you as you are breathlessly desperately trying to escape and you're going to jump a mile and scream like Janet Leigh. But Ann reacts as though she just bumped into someone in the grocery store.
He tells her that George had prepared breakfast for them before he left and opens the car door in a commanding way. Ann doesn't run screaming down the road like a normal person. No. She obediently gets in the car because she has apparently been raised not to waste a good breakfast, murderous psychopath or no murderous psychopath. Back at the massive mansio--I mean house, she decides she isn't hungry after all and runs upstairs.
Now this happens all the time in movies and I just hate it. You are trying to get away from this guy. He has caught you for the time being. This house is freaking enormous. Why run upstairs??? You are cutting off so many means of escape by taking yourself up a floor. You can't hide! Don't you know anything? Sometimes it seems to me that people in movies have never actually seen any other movies. They are the only people in America who have never been to the movies so they don't know how these things work out.
Lucky for Ann, Alan isn't that bright and figures he's got her now and she'll just stay upstairs. Problem solved. But because he has never been to the movies, he is not expecting the Nosy Neighbor. So when she rides up to the house on her horse to invite him and his bride to breakfast, he feels quite comfortable standing on the portico, casually chatting with her, front door wide open. Ann is still sleeping, he tells her. Couldn't possibly come to breakfast.
Ann spies her from the upstairs window (a good spying spot,) flits back downstairs and says of course they'll go to breakfast. They'll ride back with her. Alan can't come up with a reason to thwart this plan so he just says okay and sends Ann back upstairs to change her clothes.
At this point, the plot seems to have spun out of the control of whoever was writing it. When you are trying to maintain tension, I don't recommend having your so-called heroine change her clothes twice in the same sequence.
But she does and she comes back downstairs to find that Alan has saddled a horse for her. Nosy Neighbor takes the time to remark that "Oh, that's Nellie. She's a nice calm ride." Exposition! A moment later, when Alan rides out on a demented stallion, she is called upon to establish that this horse is Bad News and she is surprised that Alan is still trying to break it.
They casually discuss the route they should take to Nosy Neighbor's house and decide on the shortcut, even though the rains may have made it difficult. So you expect the rains to have made it difficult, but turns out they haven't. Water plays no role in what happens next, so this is all wasted dialogue.
Nosy Neighbor notices that things seem a little rocky between the newlyweds (little does she know!) and launches into a stream of platitudes. Ann can't stand it and blurts out "I must tell you!" But Alan kicks his crazy horse into a gallop and is found in an unconscious heap up the trail. Nosy Neighbor rides off for a doctor while Ann wails "Don't leave me here alone!" apparently forgetting that she has a horse of her own and could just remount and ride away.
But no. It's a film full of muddy thinkers. Why should Ann be any different? She hangs around a second too long. The minute Nosy Neighbor is out of earshot, Alan sits up. He wasn't knocked out at all. Just wanted Nosy Neighbor out of the way. But he suggests they ride on to her house anyway. Breakfast is waiting and these people have a sort of pathological devotion to breakfast.
So Ann, obedient to a ludicrous fault, mounts and follows Alan up the trail, which exits the woods and now they are suddenly riding along the edge of dizzyingly high, sheer cliffs. Who knew the Cliffs of Insanity were in Virginia?
Alan seems to have his psycho horse under control admirably, so that he can use him to try to force Ann's horse off the edge of the Cliffs of Insanity. Ann helplessly screams "Save me!" I don't know who she's screaming to. Maybe the horse. But the horse is all "Lady, I'm trying to save myself!" Which it manages to do, inadvertently saving Ann in the process.
They're back in the woods. Ann and the horse take off. The horse clearly thinks it's every man for himself at this point and Ann gets knocked off by a low-hanging branch. Alan catches up, dismounts and kneels by her inert body. Ann comes to just in time to see him raising a large rock, preparatory to bashing her brains in. (Finally, he displays some active problem solving skills.)
Ann just lays there, waiting for him to bash her brains in. (Did you really expect more from her?) She doesn't even scream "Save me!" this time, which is weird because guess what? Alan's horse freaks out and stomps him to death! Now this is great film making but even something this incredibly awesome can't make up for the rest of the mess that is this movie.
Come to think of it, the horse was in the stable the night Michael confronted Alan about murdering the German inventor. Remember Michael? Didn't you kind of expect him to pop up at some point during this whole sequence? Me too. But the horse knows better. He knows Alan killed the inventor. He is the only one in the whole movie smart enough to figure out that he is going to have to take care of matters on his own.
It is a sad sad thing when your characters are so clueless that the livestock has to take over and resolve things for them.
Cut to the terrace of the mansion/ranch where Ann sits al fresco at a breakfast table (what is it about breakfast???) with Nosy Neighbor, lamenting How Horrible It Has All Been. In the background, someone is playing Brahms beautifully and sensitively on the piano. Nosy Neighbor wants to know who. Ann says it's her father, who is apparently staying with her. He's so sensitive and beautiful. You must be sensitive and beautiful to understand Brahms. On cue, he comes out and kisses her. But the Brahms continues. What beautiful and sensitive soul is playing the piano?
Ann wheels herself into the mansion (oh yeah, she's in a wheelchair for some reason, even though she was on her feet after Alan's horse saved her life) where she discovers Michael, sensitively and beautifully playing the piano. Yeah, Michael. Remember him? Whole movie sort of revolves around him. Where the heck has he been, anyway? He has the grace to sort of sheepishly apologize for walking off and leaving Ann in the hands of a murderous psychopath. Hindsight being 20/20 and all, it never crossed his mind that this maybe wasn't an ideal move. All I can say is thank God for the horse.
Ann and Michael then discuss what to do with all of the ill-gotten gains her murderous husband has left to her. She virtuously feels that it all belongs to the family of the murdered German inventor, though I don't recall anyone ever actually telling her about the German inventor. They then exchange a few tepid glances that supposedly hold the promise of future romance but there's really nothing there and I say call Jayne Meadows, Michael. She's hot.
This was an attractive and well-produced movie. Stylish (directed by Vincente Minelli, so...natch.) But the principal actors all seemed terribly uncomfortable with their roles, relationships and the stupid things they were made to do and say. Katherine Hepburn was certainly capable of chemistry with actors, but she ignites nothing with either male lead in this movie. She was the weirdest choice for this role. From a contemporary perspective, it's a pretty crappy role anyway, the helpless female who utterly subsumes herself in a relationship with a man. But a different type of actress (not a better actress, just a different sort) could have at least made her sympathetic. Ingrid Bergman did that sort of thing very well.
But the plot falls apart because it relies too much on people behaving irrationally. And not irrationally the way people actually behave irrationally in real life. They behave as though their brains periodically stop functioning and the plot jerks them where it thinks it needs them to go. That's bad enough. But when the plot doesn't even know where it needs to go, then you're really in trouble. To me, this movie seemed like a first draft, where they haphazardly slapped the ending together and then didn't take the time to go back and work out a more logical way to make it fit together.
If plot grows out of character, then you have to actually think about who your characters are and not just say "Okay, let's do this and then let's do that" and hope it all fits together and then have your whole plot turn on the actions of a badly behaved horse.
The Brahms was really nice, though.