Under Capricorn (1949)

Best Avoided

UK
Feature Film
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Writers: James Bridie, Hume Cronyn, Helen Simpson, John Colton, Margaret Linden
Cinematographer: Jack Cardiff
Composer: Richard Addinsell
Cast: Ingrid Bergman, Joseph Cotton, Michael Wilding, Margaret Leighton, Cecil Parker

Hitchcock’s portentous period drama, depicting a tug-of-love between Cotton’s angry ex-con and Wilding’s happy-go-lucky Irish aristocrat over Bergman’s weepy, perma-drunk fallen lady in 19th Century Australia, proves to be a hammy, melodramatic mess of a movie, which lacks any of the qualities that make up his best work. Iain.Stott