Reviews


Under Capricorn

Capricorny

To prove the 'trans-Atlantic' in his Transatlantic Pictures meant alternating productions between Hollywood and England, and so Hitch and his family were off to his native land with an international cast (a Swede, an American, and a Brit, all playing Irishmen, none playing one well) in an adaptation of a book none of the production crew (besides Alma) seemed to have liked very well. Once again, Hitchcock was intent on making the film in long takes, and so the massive set (much larger than Rope) was set up with the moving walls and furniture and mobile cameras. Nobody was very happy with the script, and the cast disliked the long takes immensely, with Ingrid Bergman blowing up on the set one day and Hitchcock retaliating by going home. She had demanded - and got - a huge salary for the picture, so Hitchcock gave himself a hefty raise to better her, and in the end the film cost about .5 million and was a box-office failure. The bank ended up repossessing it, and it was difficult to see until a 1968 release for television. Image licensed it for DVD several years ago, but it's still one of Hitchcock's lesser-known works. I was only aware of it from the still of the shrunken head that turned up from time to time in Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine. Michael Wilding is the ne'er-do-well cousin of the new Governor of Australia, and he arrives in the mid-19th century and immediately gets himself involved in a shady land deal with ex-convict Joseph Cotten, who has a drunken wife, Ingrid Bergman, who pretty much stays upstairs all the time, but who knew Wilding when they were children. He tries to help her sober up, but the wicked housekeeper, Margaret Leighton, doesn't want to lose her hold over the house and so interferes. Yep, that's it for two hours: Rebecca redux, sort of. There are secrets to reveal and skeletons in closets. And shrunken heads once in a while. I generally liked the film, it's of interest. The Technicolor is gorgeous, unlike Rope. The long takes are extremely impressive this time; with larger space to work from, the camera zooms upstairs and down and around and in and out, and the effect is not distracting, it's marvelous. Hitchcock looks very dapper in Dickensian togs in his cameo appearances (he pops up twice in the film, milling about the Governor's entourage). And there is a genuine shock in Miss Bergman's bedroom. That said... The film is more 'interesting' than a must-watch Hitchcock classic. First of all, the casting is... weird. The housekeeper is young and beautiful and carries no weight as the villain of the piece. Cotten I thought about long and hard after watching this, and in the end, he doesn't work, not as an Irishman and not as the character. Reading Truffaut's book, I see that Hitchcock - as he had with The Paradine Case - wanted a much tougher, low-life sort of chap to play the part, and had envisioned Burt Lancaster in the role, whom he couldn't afford after writing Ingrid's check. Cotten comes across more whiny than anything when he complains about the class system that keeps him out of New South Wales upper caste. Cotten is actually GOOD in this film, he's just WRONG for it. Casting Ingrid Bergman as an Irish woman is... Well, not as bad as casting her as Joan of Arc, I guess, but still... The background material on the film is interesting, too. Nobody much liked it, and Hitch blamed himself for indulging Miss Bergman (they never worked together again, although they remained friends), for hiring Hume Cronyn to adapt the novel, and for making the film in the first place. Alma blamed herself for pushing the novel onto her husband. And they all moved on.