Under Capricorn

If Under Capricorn is not Hitch's crowning glory, it is undeniably his most underrated film. Read full review

It is an overlong, overlabored essay on the torments of conscience and love which Mr. Hitchcock has beautifully filmed in Technicolor but pointed in glaring blacks and whites. Read full review

Though Under Capricorn’s dark and twisty narrative eventually unearths everyone’s secrets, it’s the swooning camera that most fully taps into the class and sexual tensions that consume the characters. Read full review

Slow, a mite predictable, and rather verbose, the film nevertheless has an elegance (thanks to long, sweeping takes) and a poignant romanticism that looks forward to Hitchcock's more pessimistic account of human relationships in Vertigo. Read full review

Shot in astonishingly elaborate long takes, this is the kind of film that finds the most brilliant poetry in the slightest movement of the camera—a paradigm of cinematic expression. Read full review

This has many more plus points than critics at the time were willing to admit. Read full review

A Hitchcock stinker, set in Australia in the early 19th century (though shot in England).

A critical and box-office disaster that the Master himself dismissed. It is in fact a fascinating film, and was revered in France by Truffaut and others as Les amants du capricorne. [02 Apr 2006, p.10]

Despite its great cast, this is certainly not one of Hitchcock's triumphs. [28 Sep 2013, p.40]

UNDER CAPRICORN is talky and static, with little of Hitchcock's trademark suspense. Read full review

Under Capricorn is still stigmatized by its terrible reviews and whopping financial losses, but with one of Ingrid Bergman's best performances, a grabber setting (1831 Sydney) and Technicolor cinematography by the era's greatest color specialist (The Red Shoes' Jack Cardiff), a lot of current movies should be as lacking. [27 Jun 2003]

Under Capricorn is overlong and talky, with scant measure of the Alfred Hitchcock thriller tricks. Read full review