mrryanscott-15530 This is an underrated Alfred Hitchcock movie. True he churned out tons of movies and not all of them were good, for every classic like North By Northwest there were maybe a dozen of his early films that were just OK. But this is one of the good ones. It's not the type of thriller movie he is famous for from later in his career like Psycho, this is about a guy who travels to Australia in 1831 hoping for a better life. He meets his old sweetheart who is now married and an alcoholic and learns she has some dark secrets. Don't want to spoil anything but it's a great story with very good acting.

Hitchcoc The main problem with this film is that it is quite dull. At this time the master was into some sustained images carrying things. The camera scans and moves across the screen with few cuts or inserted images. Granted, there are some nice images, with Australia an interesting locale for this film. The problem is the casting, the pace, and the plot itself. We are never engaged in the confusing plot. Hitchcock was about suspense and there is little here. It's as if he needed to make a mainstream film. Ingrid Bergman, one of my favorite all time actresses, is really miscast here. Joseph Cotten, a staple in the Hitchcock films does a decent job but is swimming upstream the whole time. If you want to see this as a curiosity, it keeps one engaged, but it's too bad he didn't find another project.

cinemabon Under Capricorn – Directed by Alfred HitchcockThe great experiment – hire the best actors and give them long takes to act on sets, just as they would on stage. Their performances should sell tickets. Hitch couldn't understand that this was neither the time nor the place to make that gamble. To understand why this film seems so stilted compared to other Hitchcock films both before and after, you must understand the two acting styles between theater and film. William Wyler and other directors (including Hitch) were the first to recognize that because of film's intimacy with close up lenses, the use of large gestures, voluminous voices, and heavy emphasis on certain phrases tend to over dramatize when the image is expanded to a hundred foot screen.Stage acting must sustain a performance when the actor is on stage – all the time the actor is on stage. A film actor isn't on stage or even in front of an audience (though sometimes the crew will behave that way to encourage an actor). Film is an intimate medium and is more a directors and editors medium. A shot can be shortened or cut to a differing length no matter how well an actor has performed at its conclusion. Consecutive shots make up the film process, not continuous performances.The long takes in "Under Capricorn" serve to undermine the filmmaking process and Hitch would learn this lesson the hard way as this film failed with audiences. The movie is more a staged melodrama and less the kind of suspenseful film that cemented Hitchcock's reputations. After World War II, acting styles had changed radically. New York began to churn out actors from the Actor's Studio versus the Stanislavsky method that actors like Bette Davis employed. Instead of shooting what he needed for the plot, Hitchcock decided to let the actors perform. He never made a film this way again. Film is not theater for so many reasons and forcing it to be one makes for poor cinema. How many filmmakers learn that lesson the hard way?The first day of shooting "Wuthering Heights," William Wyler almost fired Lawrence Olivier. "I don't care where you've acted or what you've done on stage, this is film and you must give me realism or we'll be here all day." Olivier learned to pull back under Wyler's direction. Hitch may have been the master of suspense, but he was no good when it came to evoking spontaneous performances. Once he went back to his formula way of making pictures, he became successful as evidenced in his next film, "Strangers on a train." "Under Capricorn" was an experiment that failed. Every auteur genius is allowed one or two in their career. Kubrick, Spielberg, Wyler – they all had them. Hitch had them, too.

Armand a meritorious film for its cast. and for its place in Hitchcock filmography, a romance isle in a large ocean of thriller/crime. the story is far to be new and that is its basic virtue , remembering the others stories. the acting is only correct. Ingrid Bergman gives vulnerability nuances to her character who can be another Paula Alquist and Ilsa Lund in same package. Joseph Cotten is the best choice for the outsider and Michael Wilding creates a splendid ingredient for a story with many common ingredients of romantic film. far to be a bad movie, it is only ordinary, stage for its actors to remember the nuances of each of them art. soft, nice, charming. a piece from a very long chain.