Alfred Hitchcock, “Under Capricorn” (1949)
Set in the early days of the British colony of Sydney in Australia, “Under Capricorn” turns out to be an intense psychological romantic drama of hope, redemption and the possibilities of renewal. A new governor arrives in the Sydney colony in the early 1830s, bringing along his cousin Charles Adare (Michael Wilding) who hopes to make his fortune and return to Ireland a prosperous gentleman. Almost immediately he meets ex-con Sam Flusky (Joseph Cotten) who, after serving his sentence of transportation for having killed his brother-in-law, has become a prosperous land-owner. Sam offers to put up Adare in his mansion where Adare meets Sam’s depressed alcoholic wife Hattie (Ingrid Bergman). After discovering that Adare knows Hattie through his sister Diana, Sam suggests that Adare try to talk and humour Hattie in the hope that she will become the spirited woman she once was. Patiently Adare draws Hattie out of her cocoon and fears, and teaches her how to deal with her recalcitrant servants. Hattie’s new relationship with the convict servants threatens however the position of her housekeeper Milly (Margaret Leighton) who secretly loves Sam, so she plots to get rid of both Adare and Hattie by insinuating to Sam that they are having an affair and by poisoning Hattie.
Milly’s plotting leads to a shooting accident that nearly kills Adare and puts Sam in a difficult position where he faces returning to prison and losing his wealth and property. This leads Hattie to confess publicly that she, not Sam, killed her brother because he had tried to break up her relationship with Sam (as Sam was a lowly stable-boy at the time and she was an aristocrat) and as a result she faces being returned to Ireland to stand trial. Adare is subsequently faced with a choice to clear the Flusky couple’s names and consequently having to return to Ireland promptly without a fortune to his name, or stand aside and see Sam and Hattie separated, their marriage destroyed and Hattie returning alone to Ireland where she faces being condemned to capital punishment.
Plenty of melodrama abounds and Hattie herself faces several threats to her life and sanity. The acting is good if sometimes a bit florid and the dialogue is over-elaborate and too genteel. Hitchcock’s direction is marked by meticulous attention to historical accuracy in visual details and long takes in which the camera sweeps from one scene to the next so that viewers virtually drink in the colour and lavish detail of the historical settings.
Aside from the visual and technical details, what gives this film its attraction is its typically Hitchcockian obsessions: the precarious status of women in society and their dependence, regardless of their social class, on being married and their husbands; the hope for renewal and redemption that can be dashed by past historical ghosts; and the plot that revolves around an irascible, flawed man who is wrongly accused of a crime and is forced to pay for it, and the effects that punishment has on him. Hattie appears an innocent woman controlled by her husband and a sinister housekeeper who wants love and security no less than Hattie does. Class conflict is present as well: the reason the Fluskys are in Australia is that they have upset the social order with their love and a low-born stable groom is presumed to have killed his social superior.
Eventual redemption comes to the characters who have sacrificed a great deal, though it means that secret loves must forever remain secret or die. There is conflict between duty and maintaining social order and stability on the one hand; and on the other, natural longing and desire, and the potential for social disruption inherent within. It is this dilemma that faces Charles Adare, Hattie, Sam and Milly, and one in which each choice and its alternative are irrevocable, and their consequences are heart-break and sorrow. At the same time there is a possibility of renewal and hope for new futures.