Product Description

Screen legends Ingrid Bergman (Notorious) and Joseph Cotten (Citizen Kane) star in this spellbinding melodrama from the screen's Master of Suspense, Alfred Hitchcock! Banished for murder to Australia, Sam Flusky (Cotton) takes his victim's troubled sister, Henrietta (Bergman), as his wife. The arrival of a new governor also brings Henrietta's old friend, Adare (Michael Wilding), who tries to help her conquer the demons plaguing her life. But something mysterious is afoot; is Henrietta going insane, or is there a sinister plot at work? A gripping, atmospheric yarn in the style of Rebecca and Gaslight, this sumptuous production features some of Hitchcock's most audacious visual tricks and is now presented on DVD in a rich new Technicolor digital transfer!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #32802 in DVD
• Released on: 2003-06-17
• Rating: Unrated
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Color, DVD, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 117 minutes

Amazon.com
With the long-take experiment of Rope still fresh in his mind, Alfred Hitchcock turned his attention to romantic melodrama: Under Capricorn, a novel of 1830s Australia. Having little of the usual suspense to rely on, Hitchcock used the elegant long-take method to draw out Ingrid Bergman's harrowing performance. As a fallen aristocrat who married a former stable boy (Joseph Cotten) and moved Down Under, Bergman gives a fine portrayal of a woman hemmed in by a sour marriage and a guilty secret. The actress also felt hemmed in by Hitch's elaborate camera movements; she hated them. This expensive picture flopped on its first release, but it has a hypnotic flow despite a tendency toward talkiness. Hitchcock fans will recognize, beyond the details of plot, a couple of the director's key motifs: the jaundiced view of marriage, and the anxieties underlying social status. And, of course, the worship of an actress. --Robert Horton

Customer Reviews

One of the unknown and nevertheless one of the best films of Hitchcock
By some thoughtless prejudices "Under Capricorn" is rejected among the people who love violence and action as an "untypical" or "tedious" film of Hitchcock which lacks for suspense and goose-flesh (Hitchcock himself most cynically and deliberately contributed to similar prejudices by his commentaries towards the public and Truffaut). In fact this film is as deep and beautiful as "Vertigo" and as terrifying and psychologically subtil as "Psycho" (these latter films seem to be some kind of a scale in valuation of all other films of Hitchcock). "Under Capricorn" is full of symbols and motives which recur in the earliest and the latest films of Hitchcock. The theme of guilt and past ("Vertigo"), the motive of being addicted to alcohol (TV-film "Poison") and the motive of the deep love between the married couple ... all these themes are combined with each other to a wonderful masterpiece of cinematic and human art. Hitchcock shows Ingrid Bergman and her rival (Margaret Leighton) with a most empathising subtility, there is a strict and mirror-like duality among the characters, everybody seems to be the exact counterpart of the other (something like a photograph and the negative).
The visual quality of the film on this DVD (edited by "Image Entertainment") is, I have to admit, not as good as the quality of other well known films of Hitchcock which are on DVD (for example the editions by "Warner" or by "Criterion"), but it is at least much better than that terrible French edition by Universal ("Les Amants du Capricorn") and it is, so far as I can see, the only acceptable and obtainable edition (the German edition by "Kinowelt" is cut and therefore worthless); there is no bonus on the DVD but I am not missing it at all. The menue is very good and shows the chapters in detail. I like this edition.

Hitchcock stretches with mixed success
A period piece directed by Hitchcock? Yes, it is a surprise. It wasn't the first though It must have surprised Hitch as well. While produced by his own company (Transatlantic Pictures), Under Capricorn would seem a natural choice for David O Selznick as producer but all wrong for Hitchcock as director. While Under Capricorn is flawed, it's got a number of strengths chiefly the performance by Ingrid Bergman and the unusual experiment begun in Rope with long takes. Under Capricorn doesn't rely on as many gimmicks as Rope did and, while Joseph Cotton may seem odd for his role (Burt Lancaster was Hitchcock's original choice), he does a solid job in the role. Although the Irish accent perpetually eludes the three principal actors, it's no worse than watching a film set in, say, Germany with actors attempting German accents while speaking English.

Yes, the material might seem appropriate for Hitch given the themes explored but this romantic melodrama was really quite a stretch for him as a director. The experience here certainly made his later works richer (such as Vertigo) but, on the whole, Under Capricorn was clearly a learning experience for Hitch.

The performances are grand and as florid as one might expect given the material. The screenplay by James Bridie (with considerable rewriting by Hume Cronyn)leaves Hitch in a lifeboat without oars; Hitch pretty much goes nowhere over the course of the film's 116 minutes. Unfortunately, this expensive miscalculation would do in Hitch's Transatlantic films (Rope was the first Transatlantic production and, despite some obvious flaws, is a much better film).

Still, despite its considerable flaws, Under Capricorn is a worthy experiment and worth a look from Hitchcock fans. The transfer is solid although not as rich as I expected and the extras are pretty slim (especially compared to Rope and Shadow of a Doubt).

A forgotten gem comes to DVD!!
First off my thanks to Image for bringing this little seen Hitchcock film to DVD. I haven't seen the DVD yet so I don't know how the color hues of this late 40's film have held up. Image was a high quality Laserdisc producer and they have carried on with DVD. They have produced fifty titles for Universal and many more both for other studios and on their own. While light on extras the price, at least lately, is always fair for the product offered. Something I can't say of every DVD producer out there. "Under Capricorn" was Ingrid Bergman's last film for Hitchcock. Shot in color it does feature a Hitchcock cameo appearance in a crowd. While it does not have the flash of some of his later films, it has some moody and creepy moments as Bergman is being haunted by a jealous housekeeper. Also notable is Joseph Cotten who gives his usual excellent performance along with a nice turn by Michael Wilding. As the 1993 Sterling Video VHS release has been out of print for some time I can't wait to see this DVD. Thanks, CAL