Under Capricorn

Alfred Hitchcock’s Under Capricorn (1949) is unusual in his work in that the mystery at its center is a presumed marital mismatch.

Bright colors: Michael Wilding and Ingrid Bergman in Alfred Hitchcock's Georgian costume melodrama Under Capricorn (1949).

Audiences didn’t go for it. Rather than corpses, shadows, and ironic jeux d’images, the film is a bright costume melodrama told in long takes that feature dialogue and acting; it is in Technicolor (Rope the year before was Hitchcock’s first); and it is set in Australia long before Australia was “cool”. Imagine a later Douglas Sirk or Vincente Minelli picture without the elaborate Hollywood studio sets (Hitchcock shot Under Capricorn in MGM British Studios in postwar England), and without Hitchcock’s characteristic expressionist vocabulary, lighting, and camerawork. It’s just not what Hitchcock does!

Mr. Flusky (Joseph Cotten) and his wife are unambiguous in their feelings toward one another while others follow their prejudices in Alfred Hitchcock’s Under Capricorn (1949).

In this story, a marriage of social unequals stands in for criminal mischief. But no less than in Hitchcock’s murder mysteries, society looks where its prejudices point rather than at where the evidence leads. Sam Flusky (Joseph Cotten) is a self-made colonial landowner, a former convict transported from Ireland; his wife Henrietta [Hettie] Considine (Ingrid Bergman) is his former Irish master’s daughter. As far as the British class system goes, society’s doors are closed to this couple and apart from colorful gossip no more need be said of their ill-favored match.

Millie and Danny: Margaret Leighton’s Millie in Hitchcock’s Under Capricorn (1949) recalls Judith Anderson’s Mrs. Danvers a decade before in Rebecca.

Under Capricorn’s plot recalls Hitchcock’s Rebecca (1940) with its malevolent “Danny” Danvers devoted to her mistress. Here Flusky’s housekeeper Millie (Margaret Leighton), operating as mistress of his house and nurse of madame, is unrequitedly devoted to Flusky. By the way, Bergman was the one originally “gaslighted” in George Cukor’s famous 1944 film; Cotten was the cop.

The new governor (Cecil Parker) arrives in Sydney, New South Wales, in Alfred Hitchcock’s Under Capricorn (1949).

The story opens with the arrival in 1831 Sydney, New South Wales, of the colony’s new governor (Cecil Parker) accompanied by his younger second cousin Charles Adare (Michael Wilding). Adare, an Anglo-Irish dandy, has little going for him professionally or financially, besides his sense of entitlement. In short order he meets the gruff Flusky. Each from the west of Ireland senses a “bumping into bygones” with a dim, long-ago recognition of the other’s name. Intrigued by the social reputation and gossip surrounding Flusky, Adare accepts his invitation to dine at his home despite several warnings—and his cousin’s orders.

Hitchcock’s camera approaches and explores the Flusky household in a ten-minute take in Under Capricorn (1949), the second color film in which he experimented with the technique.

The audience is introduced to the Flusky household in the evening from Adare’s point of view in a ten-minute take (TMT). This is a single continuous shot made using a complete reel of 35mm sound film (at a standard length of 1000ft/305m at 24 frames per second, this runs actually about 11 minutes). Hitchcock experimented with this technique in Rope the year before, an 80-minute film composed almost entirely of TMTs spliced literally back-to-back. In this TMT, the camera tracks Adare’s approach to the front door of the Flusky house; and then outside the house looking in from the veranda, following inside voices to activity in the kitchen; it then follows Adare into the kitchen to meet Flusky, Millie, and Flusky’s secretary Winter (Jack Watling); and then Flusky brings Adare back through the inside of the house Adare has just surveilled from the veranda to a reception room where he is introduced to the other dinner guests making apologies for their wives; the camera follows this group to the dinner table. The TMT ends after Mrs. Flusky appears unannounced and takes a seat at the table. Adare—and the audience—have the complete picture.

What sweeter, more irresistible music than a damsel in distress? Ingrid Bergman and Michael Wilding in Alfred Hitchcock’s Under Capricorn.

Mrs. Flusky appears in turn lovely, watchful, alarmed, nervous, self-involved, distracted, pathetic: the full range of faces and feelings a masterful actor like Bergman projects to capture viewers no less than the narrative point of view. What sweeter, more irresistible music can there be to a Shelleyan soul like Adare than a damsel in distress, better yet a former genteel acquaintance?

Hettie Flusky’s reflection is Ingrid Bergman’s extraordinary face in an impromptu mirror in Alfred Hitchcock’s Under Capricorn (1949).

Viewers see Under Capricorn’s dénouement through Hettie Flusky’s (Ingrid Bergman) eyes.

The visual storytelling in long takes focuses on Bergman’s extraordinary face and gestures. This is where the viewer must pay the closest attention, where most of the “evidence” is revealed. Alone and with others, husband and wife are unambiguous in their feelings toward one another throughout the narrative while other characters see what they want or think they are supposed to see. The rest of this often overlooked work we shall leave to the viewer to see.

No Hitchcock film is complete without a Real MacGuffin—a shrunken head rolls around in Under Capricorn (1949).

Under Capricorn 1949 U.K. (118 minutes) Transatlantic Pictures; Warner Brothers. Directed and produced by Alfred Hitchcock; screenplay by James Bridie, adapted by Hume Cronyn from the novel by Helen Simpson; cinematography by Jack Cardiff; editing by A. S. Bates; music by Richard Addinsell and Louis Levy; costumes by Roger Furse.