UNDER CAPRICORN (1949)

A Hitchcock period melodrama, like his earlier JAMAICA INN. It's not very well regarded by critics, but despite some weak stretches, it's interesting enough to see once. Michael Wilding, a young man from a monied background but with no visible means of support, arrives in Australia (in 1830) with his uncle, the new governor of New South Wales. He gets involved in the affairs of his cousin (Ingrid Bergman) who, for all intents and purposes, seems stuck in an unhappy marriage with Joseph Cotten, a former convict who has made a decent living since his release, though he is snubbed by the "high society" types. Bergman is a barely functioning alcoholic and Wilding assumes that it's Cotten's fault, as he comes off as hard and uncaring, but the truth of their situation is more complicated. (Some critics have said that the movie is about a woman who suffers under her sadistic and cruel husband, but they clearly didn't watch the whole movie!) There are echoes of REBECCA and SUSPICION, though the atmosphere is never gloomy and menacing enough to get any real tension going. There are many long single-take shots (a technique that Hitchcock had apparently not gotten out of his system with ROPE the year before) and many of them work quite well, especially an astonishing seven-minute take which follows Wilding as he arrives at Cotten's house for dinner and peeks through a series of windows to get a glimpse of the dysfunctional dynamics going on inside. Margaret Leighton is the sinister housekeeper; she's good but not as effective as Judith Anderson was in REBECCA--who could be? The film is in rich Technicolor, with lots of lovely blues, golds, and browns. Dramatically undernourished, up to and including an anti-climactic climax, but still worth seeing. [DVD]