- Revisiting contemporary and modern critical appreciation
- Alfred Hitchcock continued long-take experiment he started on Rope
- Ingrid Bergman is a woman on the edge – but not “driven by the demons of hell!”
- US re-release sexed-up the standard costume drama to attract Psycho’s slasher fans
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

Lurid and deliberately misleading: US 1963 re-release one sheet poster; half sheet and lobby cards
Few British pictures have had the array of international talent that contributed to the making of Under Capricorn, Transatlantic Pictures’ second production, which was directed at Elstree by Alfred Hitchcock. With Ingrid Bergman, the screen’s foremost actress, Joseph Cotten, America’s great rugged star, and Michael Wilding, the British filmgoers’ favourite, there appeared Cecil Parker, one of our outstanding character actors, Margaret Leighton the exciting new film actress whose stage fame was established at the Old Vic, and a very strong supporting cast. The late Helen Simpson’s famous novel of life in Australia a hundred years ago was adapted for the screen by James Bridie, one of the most versatile dramatists of the day.
Under Capricorn is the very human story of a wife who follows her convict husband when he is transported for life to New South Wales, and there comes under the spell of a wild young Irishman exiled by his family for his many headstrong scrapes. The drama of conflicting loyalties gives Ingrid Bergman a wonderful opportunity for the deep sincerity of portrayal which has made her world-famous, and gives us a strangely moving performance from Cotten and a delightful new facet of the talents of Michael Wilding.
Bergman, Cotten, and Wilding! This is the exciting new constellation of stars which appears in the latest Hitchcock film, Under Capricorn, which was made at Elstree by Transatlantic Pictures. But there are many more points of interest in the new film than its novel combination of stars, and it may well be remembered as a landmark in cinema history. Based on the late Helen Simpson’s successful novel of life in Australia a hundred years ago, Under Capricorn is a very unusual combination of the conventional and the unexpected—conventional, for human nature is unchanging, and unexpected because of the strange setting of the story, and the strange ways of fate with its characters. Alfred Hitchcock is a master of screen suspense and surprise, and in this film he surpasses himself. It would be unfair to reveal the dénouement, and we have left our photo-preview just before the film’s end.
The longest individual scene ever taken by a movie camera in any country was played by Ingrid Bergman and Michael Wilding in Under Capricorn. It lasted nine and a half minutes, and was a few seconds longer than the previous longest, in Rope. The record scene was a highly emotional and dramatic one in which Ingrid Bergman as Henrietta tells Adare—Michael Wilding—of her terrible struggles against destitution when she first reached Australia. After the sequence was successfully shot, Wilding said he felt ten years younger—poor Michael had only a few lines to say at the end, and he was in a blue funk that after Ingrid had made her enormously long speech he would spoil it by fluffing his little bit, which would mean re-enacting the entire scene. But it was shot perfectly, and the whole unit burst into a cheer of relief and congratulation at the end.

(orig B&W)
It is common knowledge that much research, pre-planning, and careful attention to historical facts are all part of the job when making what is termed a “costume picture.” But many people use the word “research” too loosely. It suggests to them diving into the archives of museums to check on historical accuracy in regard to fashions and furnishings, or to be quite sure, for instance that the correct type of carriage is being used in a picture of such and such a year. But there is another side to research which is not so apparent to average film-goers. In fact, possibly they would never notice the result of some highly intensive inquiries into the forgotten past, unless it so happened that the matter had been overlooked and the characters, by not observing certain everyday habits of the time, strike one as being completely “out of picture.”
During research for Under Capricorn, some interesting sidelights of the period were discovered due, in most part, to the competent and knowledgeable Dr. Charles Beard. For example, a tendency to bow-leggedness in older men came from wearing chains for years in the local prisons. The reaction to this physical imperfection was to cause emigrants, whose sons were born in Australia, never to allow them to ride horses when children, and they were made to walk with their legs as straight as nature would permit, in case any sign of bandiness might be misconstrued.
Perhaps one of the most interesting facts unearthed was that there were no cobwebs on bottles in 1831. The cork spider that lives on cork fly, and its grub, were not imported into England until 1840. So if you see bottles minus the cobwebs, which nowadays would be left on the bottles when brought from the cellars in the house of a connoisseur, don’t say the film people are wrong!
Ingrid Bergman thought it would be instructive to have a permanent record of “Hitch” in action. Accordingly, she arranged for a semi-documentary to be shot simultaneously with the making of the main film. The producer-director-cameraman of this film within a film was a newcomer to the technical side, although not without experience in other branches of the film business—the name, Miss Bergman. With her 8mm. camera Ingrid followed Hitchcock’s movements whenever she was not wanted in front of a camera herself; and she made some useful records of the great director in action. Unfortunately, he was not a satisfactory player; whenever he caught sight of the little movie camera he turned and made horrid faces at it. “It’s what most actors do for me,” he explained! – Photo-Preview, UK tie-in novelisation (US) of Rope
Pictorials: Arizona Sun, Illustrierte Film-Bühne, Picture Show

“Slave of the Heart” German poster; première invite
A British offering by Transatlantic Pictures, this dramatization of Helen Simpson’s novel about Australia of the 1830s is hardly typical of the melodramatic material Alfred Hitchcock customarily masterminds for the screen. Despite the fact that Ingrid Bergman comes under his direction for the third time (Spellbound, Notorious), this is a decidedly disappointing film.
In the beginning a deliberate and sprawling screen play seems chiefly concerned with an irresponsible Irishman, the Hon. Charles Adare (Michael Wilding), and his fastidious plans to recoup his fortunes in the boisterous boom town of Sydney. Thereafter Adare is merely the innocent bystander and catalyst in the uneasy home of Sam Flusky (Joseph Cotten), a gruff and ready landowner with a romantic past.

Bergman is out of the way (alt)
Years before, Flusky, a stable groom on an Irish estate, had eloped with his master’s daughter, Lady Henrietta (Ingrid Bergman). Now a wealthy “emancipist,” he lives in a singularly gloomy mansion that is dominated by a tight-lipped, devious housekeeper (Margaret Leighton) and studiously avoided by the colonial aristocracy. The high-spirited Lady Henrietta, as is revealed in the adapter’s good time, has become a pathetic dipsomaniac who keeps herself out of the way upstairs for weeks at a time.
With the arrival of the engaging young Adare and his small talk of Ireland and the scenes of her childhood, Lady Henrietta emerges from the past into the present, and for a time both the brandy and the malevolent housekeeper are in eclipse. Along about this point the plot starts to buckle under the overload of talk that seems necessary to recapitulate an old crime and build ponderously, if ominously, to another.
While Hitchcock’s Technicolor cameras colorfully re-create the lusty period, he succeeds in making the general narrative only intermittently suspenseful and compelling. Cotten is saddled with a role that is limited in both its appeal and its emotional range, and there are times when Miss Bergman finds the sad and sometimes tiresome Henrietta a little too elusive for even her recognized talent. – Newsweek
US pressbook | Harrison’s, NY Times, Times

Italian poster by Alfredo Capitani, who also created another and a striking poster for Lifeboat. Its title is a direct translation of the English, and it was also released there as Il peccato di Lady Considine (The Sin of Lady Considine).
Under Capricorn: Writing on a Classic, Pt 2: More writing; Collectors Guide, Pt 2: Home video
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This is part of a unique, in-depth series of 150-odd Hitchcock articles.