"Under Capricorn" Review

 

by Daniel White

Despite failing to wrap her sturdy Swedish tongue around a lilting Irish brogue, Ingrid Bergman still manages to captivate in Alfred Hitchcock's Under Capricorn (1949). The last film she would appear in before galavanting off to Rome to work with Italian director Roberto Rossellini, it's an atypical Hitchcock flick. More of a romantic melodrama than anything else, Under Capricorn failed to click with critics and moviegoers alike upon its initial release. Doomed by Bergman's infamous love affair with Rossellini and its glaring lack of suspense, Under Capricorn tanked, considered one of Alfred Hitchcock's lesser endeavors. However, it's a beautiful-looking affair, with exquisite set designs and swooping camera maneuvers (no less than four technical workers are listed as "operators of camera movement").

Ingrid takes her sweet time showing up. Stumbling into the proceedings after almost thirty minutes, she's in an alcoholic stupor, a pale, disheveled mess. Set in 1831 Australia, she plays Lady Henrietta Fluskey, wife of Sydney businessman, Sam Fluskey (the brooding Joseph Cotten). Sent to the penal colony as a convict, Fluskey is now a successful landowner. But he and his booze-hound of a wife cannot escape their tragic past. Enter breezy bon vivant Charles Adare (Michael Wilding). Cousin to the new governor (Cecil Parker), the Irish-born Adare remembers Lady Fluskey as a spirited young girl. Desperate to save the drunken Hattie from the clutches of her nefarious housekeeper (Margaret Leighton), he soon falls in love with our lush of a leading lady.

Think Rebecca Down Under, with Leighton marvelous in the devious Mrs. Danvers role. While the story doesn't hold up as well as that classic Daphne du Maurier tale, it's still a pretty good yarn. Both Bergman and Cotten are appropriately melancholy as the haunted Fluskeys. Wilding as Charlie is unsubstantial but the rest of the support cast emote superbly.

Composer Richard Addinsell has provided a gorgeous, stirring score, that helps to distract from costume designer Roger Furse's often unflattering outfits for Ingrid. A movie bathed in sumptuous color, cinematographer Jack Cardiff is, as usual, sublime. Filmed primarily in England and produced by Hitchcock's own Transatlantic Pictures, Under Capricorn was distributed by Warner Bros.

Inexplicably narrated by that most American of actors, Edmond O'Brien (what, they couldn't get Cecil Kellaway?), Under Capricorn is currently available on YouTube.