Alfred Hitchcock's
Under Capricorn
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NOW ON DVD
Dim the house lights and dig in for a dark tale of love,
frustration, violence and vengeance as only
Alfred Hitchcock
could tell it.
The setting is Australia in the 1830's. 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.
Hitchcock
was hooked on his experiments
with long takes, using whole magazines of film with no cuts. One sequence at a
dinner table, just before Miss Bergman's entrance, ran more than seven minutes
without a cut. Bergman complained to her director about the stress caused by
such long takes. Hitchcock, never the director to argue with his cast, simply
walked off. Bergman continued her temperamental outburst long after she
realized Hitchcock was no longer an audience to it.
Bergman, Cotten, Wilding, Hitchcock... four brilliant stars that make this film a superb piece of entertainment.
Under Capricorn - Color/117 minutes. This classic is available at your favorite movie store.
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