Under Capricorn (1949)

Film: Under Capricorn (1949)

Stars: Ingrid Bergman, Joseph Cotten, Michael Wilding, Margaret Leighton, Cecil Parker

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2021 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different one Alfred Hitchcock's Leading Ladies.  This month, our focus is on Ingrid Bergman-click here to learn more about Ms. Bergman (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

I had an unexpected trip this morning & afterwards a nap that took longer than expected, but if I was able to keep this streak going through pneumonia & 104-degree temperatures three years ago, I'm definitely not going to stop it today simply because of a four-hour car ride.  And so we're going to get a late night (but still Saturday!) check-in with our Star of the Month, Ingrid Bergman.  Last week we talked about Bergman's unparalleled level of box office & awards supremacy with Joan of Arc, which had the actress playing a literal saint, something she was expected to do offscreen in the eyes of the public.  We're going to take a step back from that today with Under Capricorn, the third and final film that Bergman made with our mascot for the year, Alfred Hitchcock.  The pairings last two films had been large successes, both commercially & critically, and are considered two of the better films Hitchcock made before his most celebrated run in the 1950's.  However, I've seen both of those films (Notorious being one of my personal favorite films from Hitchcock), and as we only see films I haven't seen before for this series, we're going to look at the least-known of the Bergman/Hitchcock pairings, one that is probably less known for a reason...

(Spoilers Ahead) Under Capricorn is a strange movie in that in a lot of ways it's not really about anything, but if you want to summarize it into a plot, it's focused on a love triangle (though at least one character is hoping it'll be a square).  Set in Australia, the film has Charles Adare (Wilding), the second cousin of the local governor Sir Richard (Parker), meeting a childhood friend in the form of Lady Henrietta (Bergman).  Henrietta was once a lady-of-society, but inexplicably she married a man of no fortune named Sam (Cotten), who killed her brother & spent years in prison.  The two have found some financial footing in Australia, but Henrietta has become an alcoholic, and only entrusts Milly (Leighton), her maid, to do the work of running the household.  Charles begins to help Henrietta recapture some of her old stamina & glamour, but it comes at a cost-they're falling in love with each other.  A fateful night reveals this truth, but also another one-that it was Henrietta who killed her brother, not Sam, which is why they are bound together forever as he gave 7 years of his life for her crime.  Meanwhile, Milly is fired, & we find out she is using witchcraft (including leaving a shrunken head in Henrietta's bed, and it reads as problematic as it sounds to a modern audience) to try & keep her drinking so that Sam will leave his wife for her (a plan that kind of just disappears).  In the reveal of the affair, Sam accidentally shoots Charles, and is supposedly going to be hanged for it, until Henrietta says that it was she who killed her brother many years earlier, and Charles eventually lies to save Sam, saying the shot was no one's fault.  The three end on good terms, with Charles returning to Ireland.

That might sound like a lot of story, but it's really not as it plays out.  The stakes remain low-the first 70 minutes of the movie virtually nothing happens, and it meanders way too much, to the point of tedium.  When Sam shoots Charles, the stakes somehow don't increase.  The Hays Code requirements of the time indicate that Bergman's Henrietta isn't going to leave her husband, who is a relatively decent if short-tempered man, for the wealthy playboy (however well-meaning), and so the twists are kind of foregone.  This is a pity, because Margaret Leighton's maid could have left us with some genuine thrills, as she's by-far the best character in the movie, but nothing happens there-her dismissal feels underwhelming, almost as if Hitchcock had lost track of his most interesting character.  As a result, Under Capricorn, despite a pretty strong pedigree, falls flat-it has some moments of fun as a melodrama, but it doesn't stand up to the other Bergman/Hitchcock collaborations.

Bergman is one of the last actresses to have a properly uncomplicated relationship with Hitchcock that we'll look at this year.  Hitchock's treatment of women was sketchy at best and horrifying at worst (and horrifying was increasingly the case as his career continued).  We're not going to gloss over that as the series continues, but I do want to point out that at least for Bergman, this was a partnership that she seemed to enjoy & a friendship that lasted beyond their three pictures.  At his AFI tribute, which she hosted, she called Hitchcock an "adorable genius" and in his acceptance speech he referred to her as "Queen Ingrid."  Hitchcock & Bergman wouldn't work together again after this, despite both making films for a few more decades.  We're going to get into the why of that next week as we encounter one of the most, well, notorious scandals in the history of Classical Hollywood.