Under Capricorn (1949)

Its hardly surprising that a director with the stature of Alfred Hitchcock would have his own production company in his day. What is surprising however, is the fact that said production company would only last for two films. Hitchcock, along with British business mogul Baron Sidney Bernstein formed Transatlantic Pictures in 1945. The two had previously collaborated on a holocaust documentary that was ultimately shelved before finally seeing the light of day in 1985 entitled Memory of the Camps. The first film Hitchcock would helm under his Transatlantic banner was Rope (1948), now famous for its revolutionary long take shooting technique, with the cuts slyly disguised to give the impression that the entire film was taking place in real time. As brilliant as Rope was, the film proved to be controversial with its fairly blatant homosexual overtones (the film was based on the infamous Leopold and Loeb murder case) and didn't do great business in the US. For a follow-up, Hitchcock would once again fly the Transatlantic flag and would shoot the project in a similar long take fashion but he took an interesting left turn with the material. The result was 1949's Under Capricorn, a lush period melodrama that would unfortunately fly over a lot of audiences heads at the time but stands as yet another film often considered to be “lesser” Hitchcock that is in fact an extraordinary piece of work.

Not long after arriving in Australia in hopes of making his fortune, Charles Adare, an Irishman and cousin of the new governor, quickly befriends Samson Flusky (Joseph Cotten), a rich man with a shady criminal past. Much to the chagrin of his cousin, Charles has dinner at Flusky's house where he meets Flusky's wife Henrietta (Ingrid Bergman), a former childhood friend of Charles' sister in Ireland who's now an alcoholic, spending most of her days perpetually drunk in her bedroom. After making a scene, Charles kindly helps Henrietta back to her room, prompting Flusky to plead with Charles to help get Henrietta back to her old self. Charles agrees, though in the process invoking the jealousy of Flusky's nefarious housekeeper Millie and in turn Flusky himself which shines new light on an old scandal involving Flusky and Henrietta's past.

On paper, Under Capricorn might not seem very Hitchcockian but the film gradually reveals itself to be rife with many of Hitchcock's key obsessions. What separates it from other Hitchcock films is the way in which said obsessions reveal themselves, the manner employed by Hitchcock being rather sly. The idea of a high society scandal is one of the more obvious Hitchcock themes to make itself known fairly quickly, but as the story progresses and it becomes known that a murder has been hanging over the heads of certain characters for several years, perhaps Hitchcock's favorite theme of all comes into play, that being a wrong man scenario and again, Hitchcock explores the familiar idea in a different way then audiences at the time were used to. There is also of course the character of Millie, who, although not as overtly sinister as Mrs. Danvers in Hitchcock's Rebecca (1940), the most infamous of all evil housekeepers, she is nevertheless cut from the same cloth and makes for a wonderful antagonist. The central story of Henrietta's plight carries a lot of emotional weight thanks to Bergman's sympathetic performance and the story poses an interesting question in regards to how much self-sacrifice is the idea of love worth. Hitchcock's technical brilliance is on full display with the long takes and despite being set in Australia, the films visuals share many qualities of an American southern gothic aesthetic and the film even tips over into full-on horror territory thanks to the starling appearances of shrunken heads.

Along with not being very popular with audiences and critics at the time who were both expecting a typical Hitchcock thriller, the film was even maligned by its creators with Hitchcock believing it to have been a “disaster” and Joseph Cotten referring to it as “Under Corny Crap” in his autobiography Vanity Will Get You Somewhere. French critics however loved the film as was par for the course when it came to many of Hitchcock films that were underrated elsewhere, particularly in America upon their initial releases. Cahiers du Cinema even named Under Capricorn one of the greatest films of all time in 1958. Despite the box office failure of Under Capricorn and Rope before it, Hitchcock did intend to keep Transatlantic going, with Hitchcock follow-up Stage Fright (1950) originally intended to be a Transatlantic production, the company eventually dissolving after a plethora of issues got in the way of what was to be an adaptation of The Bramble Bush, a novel by American writer David Duncan, with several of Hitchcock subsequent films being released by Warner Bros. Despite having virtually everything working against it and with respect to Hitchcock and Cotten's opinions of the film, Under Capricorn is certainly a film Hitchcock enthusiasts who've yet to make its acquaintance would be wise to sit down with and an interesting look at Hitchcock taking a different approach to some of his favorite topics.