Filmed on an expansive budget, Under Capricorn has everything going for it except its script - a trite magazine story with soap opera characters indulging in lots of talk and dissension which involves very little action and which all comes to a ridiculously facile conclusion. Admittedly, it has all the gothic trappings of Rebecca (which is really a costume picture in modern dress), Great Expectations and Gaslight, but unfortunately the result is just plain boring. However, the credits are pretty wonderful. The film is always very attractive to watch with its fluid camera movement, long takes, stunning costumes (by Roger Furse), colorful sets and adroit cinematography (how about that long take in the middle of which Wilding takes off his coat and puts it behind the window-pane to show Bergman her reflection?). And Addinsell's music score shimmers with pleasing atmosphere. The players are very agreeable too. Michael Wilding with his odd air of hesitant confidence, has always struck me as an amiable and capable actor, and here he has a role well-measured to his talents. Ingrid Bergman is also ideally cast (although she doesn't maintain her Irish accent much past her most effective introductory scene about 30 minutes into the film). In an equally difficult role, Joseph Gotten manages a reasonable conviction and is given solid support by players like Cecil Parker and Dennis O'Dea. My one complaint against the acting is that Margaret Leighton's portrait of the sinister housekeeper is somewhat exaggerated, lacking the slyness someone like Judith Anderson or Gale Sondergaard would have brought to the part.

Under Capricorn is a Hitchcock's movie far bellow acceptable level than others works from the master....the plot is about Sam Flusky (Joseph Cotten) an ex-convict who make fortune in Australia and have an unstable and alcoholic woman called Henrietta (Ingrid Bergman) but when he meet Charles Adare (Michael Wilding) as the Governor's cousin,he see the possibility to change your local status even accepting him to help your wife which already knew on Ireland before,they became friends but Adare falling in love for Henrietta...still interesting and a bit of humor too,as the Governor played by Cecil Parker who rules under the British book of way to unchanging command simply stolen the movie

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.

Unusual genre change for Hitchcock, a suspense-less western, crossed with romance and costume drama/ stage play, in the Land Down Under.Long and lumbering mess of a movie, with Hitchcock more interested in setting up lengthy tracking shots than anything else. In the previous year's Rope, Hitchcock used the same trick to good effect, but here it seems to have no purpose, no relation to the story. In Rope, the long, unedited takes resembled an unblinking, all seeing eye.Here, it seems like the same unblinking, all-seeing eye refuses to look away, even though it knows it should have looked away long ago.The long, unedited takes look like master shots, or even just raw footage. It becomes somewhat hypnotic, dulling the senses to the dull screen story. It feels like we are just blankly staring into space, completely unaware of what is happening, but too bored to even look away. (Is that what the cinematographer felt?) It's like we are carrying on a dull conversation with someone, and that someone refuses to break eye contact, like they are waiting for us to suddenly become interested in the proceedings. A few close-ups were needed to bring out more detail, in the settings and performances, but as it is, it seems like the filmmakers couldn't even bother to do much editing.The set designs and costumes all look good, but that cannot support the entire movie on its own. The film could have benefited (slightly) from on-location photography, but everything was filmed on soundstages in California.Starts slowly, but then it looks as though it may get going and become interesting, but then it fizzles away, all within its first half hour. It doesn't really even have Hitchcock's usual sense of humour to liven the proceedings. A complete waste. Probably one of the few Hitchcock films that I could not sit through a second time.