Alfred Hitchcock Collectors Guide: Under Capricorn (1949)

by Brent Reid
  • One of the Master of Suspense’s least-seen American films
  • Source novel author also penned the director’s twice-filmed Murder!
  • Under Capricorn, underrated: Not the Technicolor yawn many make out
  • It seemingly gets hate just for being by Hitchcock and daring to be different
  • British works are almost always sidelined but all deserve at least a second look

Note: this is part of an ongoing series of 150-odd Hitchcock articles; any dead links are to those not yet published. Subscribe to the email list to be notified when new ones appear.

Under Capricorn: Writing on a Classic, Pt 2: More writing; Collectors Guide, Pt 2: Home video

Under Capricorn aka Les amants du Capricorne and Slavin van haar hart (1949, dir. Alfred Hitchcock) Belgian poster

Belgian poster; its French and Flemish titles translate as “The Capricorn Lovers” and “Slave to Her Heart”


Contents


Production

Cold husband. Broken wife. Gallant lover. A triangle set to explode… and reveal a strange crime.
Dim the house lights and dig in for a dark tale of love, frustration, violence and vengeance as only the great Alfred Hitchcock could tell it. The setting is Australia in the 1830s. Sam Flusky (Joseph Cotten) has served out his sentence for killing his wife’s brother and has now become a very successful businessman.

But his wife, Lady Henrietta (Ingrid Bergman), is strangely dispirited and degenerating deeper into alcoholism — until an old friend (Michael Wilding) arrives Down Under and begins to pay her the most ardent attention. The tension builds between the two men until it erupts into attempted murder, and the story twists sharply to expose a painful secret. Bergman, Cotten, Wilding, Hitchcock… four brilliant stars that make this film a superb piece of entertainment. – US VidAmerica Betamax (1982) and VHS (1985)


Mystery, murder and passion from the master of suspense.
Years of love and pent-up emotion explode into wild jealousy and violence in this Alfred Hitchcock classic set in Australia, 1830. Although now a successful businessman, Sam Flusky Joseph Cotten) once served a sentence back home in Ireland for the killing of his wife’s brother. His wife, Lady Henrietta (Ingrid Berman) has lately become deeply depressed and resorted to alcoholism. Cotten welcomes an old friend from Ireland, Charles Adare (Michael Wilding) into the household in the hope he may cheer her up. Wilding falls in love with her and the resulting tension, further incited by an evil housekeeper, ends in attempted murder that brings back strange and painful secrets from the past. A gripping suspense… brilliant performances from Bergman, Cotten and Wilding. – UK MEVC VHS (198-)


Joseph Cotten and Ingrid Bergman in Under Capricorn (1949, dir. Alfred Hitchcock)

Joseph Cotten and Ingrid Bergman. The film was shot in three-strip Technicolor but its customary B&W production stills were often colorized for publicity purposes. So, Technicolorized, anyone? This much-tinted original in particular was first redone for the original US lobby cards and insert poster, then a French theatrical re-release and at least thrice more to adorn the US and two French releases below.

Alamy, BridgemanGetty, Imago, Shutterstock

This “Alfred Hitchcock production with exploitable femme angles and Ingrid Bergman” isn’t one of the Master’s most acclaimed efforts, mainly due to it seldom meeting most fan’s expectations of what a Hitchcock film should be. In truth, it’s an exceptionally well-made but somewhat overlong period drama that if approached in the right frame of mind more than satisfies. Also, of course, there are many interesting long, uninterrupted takes of up to 9½ minutes, continuing the experimental but difficult method Hitch executed in Rope, albeit to a lesser degree.

Under Capricorn is based on Helen Simpson’s eponymous 1937 novel and in turn became an illustrated UK novelisation by Warwick Mannon, who turned out around 20 such tomes. Simpson also contributed dialogue for Sabotage and wrote the source novel for Hitch’s Murder! and Mary. Capricorn was the first of 10 Hitchcocks with input from his personal assistant and script supervisor, Peggy Robertson. She was a fellow Brit who was interviewed years later for documentaries on Vertigo, Psycho, and the Master’s Selznick years, and told a rather amusing soufflé anecdote! Capricorn was set to join the six films whose rights reverted to Hitch but box office failure led to it being repossessed by its financiers, resulting in its present-day ‘singleton’ status.

In September 2019, Charles Barr and Stéphane Duckett organised Under Capricorn: 70 Years On, a two day symposium and 35mm archival Technicolor print screening, with a host of international experts discussing just about every conceivable aspect of the film. The 15 papers presented have been archived online and are very highly recommended. It may have no actual dedicated books but if Under Capricorn was generally better known and regarded, this resource would certainly have been published as one. As it stands, it really is a gift. Also free are these excellent essays…


Soundtrack

British composer Richard Addinsell’s rousing score is one of the film’s highlights but unfortunately there have been no full re-recordings nor any releases with isolated music tracks, as with Young and Innocent, the Hitch-SelznicksNorth by Northwest and Psycho. The only original music to see release is that of the opening credits, lifted directly from the film for a UK bootleg CD from Enlightenment Records. However, there are two specially adapted suites from 1993 and 1997, the first of which has been issued on several compilations but a pair of CD and LP double albums are the most comprehensive.

More contemporaneously, to help promote the film a rearranged version of Addinsell’s main theme was released as sheet music with lyrics by Kay Twomey and retitled “One Magic Wish (On an Evening Star)”. A 1949 instrumental recording by the Mantovani Orchestra was also released on several 78rpm records and a single compilation.


Under Capricorn (1982)

Under Capricorn (1982) TV miniseries

Helen Simpson’s scorching novel of passion and unspoken loyalty is brought to life in a major miniseries, unfolding in the epic Australian tradition of Against the Wind and Sara Dane.
In 1831 Charles Adare (Peter Cousens, Return To Eden) arrives in colonial New South Wales and hopes to make his fortune in an exciting new land of opportunity. The nephew of the territorial governor, Charles endears himself to rich landowner Sam Flusky (John Hallam, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves) in the hope of securing his future. In his grand pursuit of property, Charles is invited to stay with Sam and encounters his troubled wife Henrietta (Lisa Harrow, The Last Days of Chez Nous) and devious housekeeper Milly (Julia Blake, Travelling North), entering a tumultuous passage of existence that will test his heart and sharpen his resolve. – Australian DVD

This much racier antipodean epic fleshes the story out – literally: there’s much of it on display – to 3½ hours but it’s well-paced and never sags, beating Hitch’s version for sheer entertainment value on, ahem, all fronts. Home video choices are unsurprisingly few but at least NTSC and PAL-locked viewers are catered for between both sets of region 0 DVDS.


Saraband for Dead Lovers (1948)

Saraband for Dead Lovers aka La prisionera del castillo (1948) Argentinian poster by Osvaldo Venturi

Argentinian poster by Osvaldo Venturi

Based on a true story, Saraband for Dead Lovers was the first colour feature from the famous Ealing Studios. It tells the tragic story of Sophie Dorothea, a young girl forced into a loveless marriage with King George I of England, a cruel and ruthless monarch. Sophie Dorothea’s bleak existence is transformed when the manipulative Countess von Platen, an influential figure in the royal court, adopts a handsome young protegee, Count Philip Konigsmark. However, in a world where the monarch wields the power, Sophie Dorothea and Konigsmark’s forbidden passion places them in danger, for if their betrayal is discovered, they must face the wrath of the king. – UK DVD

Simpson’s 1935 novel, Saraband for Dead Lovers, was adapted for the eponymous 1948 Ealing Studios film, their first in colour, starring Stewart Granger and Joan Greenwood. A handsome tie-in book was also produced the same year, subtitled The Film and Its Production. All the cast are utterly magnificent in their portrayal of events based on a real-life German royal scandal and if you’re in the mood for a fast-moving costume drama with more oomph and action than Capricorn, this should tick your boxes nicely. It’s only seen official release on a pair of handsome looking discs in the UK and Germany so far, the latter with an optional original dub:

Bootlegs: US (Nostalgia Family), Italy (Sinister Film), Spain (Suevia, Regia).

Several re-recorded excerpts of Alan Rawsthorne’s fine score are also available, including the Prelude, recorded separately for a single-sided radio promo during the original film scoring sessions. This still-new practise had been pioneered across the pond for Since You Went Away and Spellbound.

Clip

Under Capricorn: Writing on a Classic, Pt 2: More writing; Collectors Guide, Pt 2: Home video


This is part of a unique, in-depth series of 150-odd Hitchcock articles.

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