SoftInloveRox Horrible, fascist and poorly acted

Smartorhypo Highly Overrated But Still Good

Stellead Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

Kimball Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

horridhendy I am a huge Hitchcock fan but holy sh*t, this is one of the most tedious, boring and dull movies I have ever seen. I am trying to work my way through Hitchcock's oeuvre so I stuck with this film but only out of what felt like necessity. I checked the movie run-time at an hour and a half to go, then an hour and ten minutes, then an hour, then 47 minutes, then 39 minutes then 28 minutes (not long now) then 22 minutes (christ, has it only been six minutes) then 19 minutes (Ugh, when will it be over) then 12 minutes (finally, it's almost done), then 8 minutes...then it was over and I felt free, relieved and happy. Thank god it's over, it's over and I never have to watch it again. It was PAINFUL.

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.

SnoopyStyle It's 1831, there's a new governor of Australia. His second cousin Charles Adare (Michael Wilding) accompanies him on his new post. He meets powerful landowner and ex-convict Sam Flusky (Joseph Cotten) who worked hard to get where he is now. Charles is eager to make his own fortune and Sam offers him an opportunity to buy some land. Flusky's wife Henrietta (Ingrid Bergman) is an alcoholic bordering on madness in the face of her cold-hearted husband.Director Alfred Hitchcock is doing long uncut scenes again but this time, it lacks the excitement of something interesting. It's definitely not the crowd pleasing thrillers that he's known for. This is more of a costume drama. There are some interesting camera movements but that's all the audience can hold onto. It's not that the camera movements improve the movie. It's just interesting technically. The movie is a bad costume drama reminiscent of old British translations of stage plays. The lack of cuts make it hard to concentrate. In Rope, there was far fewer characters. This is just an unfocused run-on sentence. The best compliment I can make about this movie is that it's a failed experiment.