When looking at the long career of Alfred Hitchcock, we can divide it into various distinct eras – there were the experimental 1970s, the provocative 1960s, the absolutely rivetting 1950s (his greatest decade) and the tumultuous 1940s. This decade in particular was notable for being the one that had some of the director’s most significant works, as well as a few of his less-effective projects, signalling that he was at his most experimental during this time. One of the few instances where he made a genuinely mediocre film was Under Capricorn, which is almost indescribable in how bizarre it is, especially when we consider how it had all the elements to be a great Hitchcock film. It had a terrific cast (many of whom had previously worked with the director), and a setting that may have been new to the director, but which had previously never been much of a problem, with Hitchcock having a particular aptitude for taking on the challenge of working with a new set of cultural conventions. Based on a novel by Helen Simpson, which was previously the subject of a play by John Colton and Margaret Linden, Under Capricorn is undeniably one of the director’s more bizarre offerings, both in tone and storyline, but not in the way that warrants celebration, but rather indicates that he may have momentarily lost his touch when telling this strange story of the perverted games of power set against the backdrop of 19th century Australia – and it’s easy to refer to this as a minor work when we knew how Hitchcock would very soon find himself back on track, meaning that this was only a temporary divergence from his incredible genius, proving that even the best artists sometimes make mistakes.

It’s not a matter of the film being bad, so much as it doesn’t have much of a story to begin with – Hitchcock’s strengths as a director come through the perfect marriage of style and substance, to the point where his films have strong stories and are always executed beautifully. From the outset, Under Capricorn is not particularly effective in terms of its narrative – we are never entirely sure who the focus of the film should be when it comes to the characters, since there are seemingly three distinct perspectives that anchor the film. It isn’t unheard of to have three core characters, granted that they serve a function – yet, not a single one of these characters seems to be all that interesting, which sets off a dreadfully convoluted series of scenarios that seem entirely out of place, and quite frankly uninteresting when we consider how there was potential simmering beneath this film, with the setting (both in terms of era and geographical location) being extremely promising, especially under the guidance of a director who could weave magic out of nearly anything, producing compelling films from the most abstract sources. Perhaps it is the original text that does not do service to the narrative (especially when we realize how much this film relies on its stage-bound origins, with Hitchcock’s attempts to expand the world beyond the parlours in which the action takes place not being enough to motivate us to pay too much attention), but there’s something consistently off-kilter when it comes to this film, a quality that just causes us to lose interest, especially in the moments where there isn’t much to be said, outside of whatever overwrought social commentary the director was aiming to infuse into a remarkably flaccid screenplay, which was surprisingly written by Hume Cronyn and Osborne Henry Mavor (credited under his pseudonym of James Bridie), both of whom were gifted writers in their own right, making the relative failure of Under Capricorn even more bewildering.

It is truly an unfortunate sounding of the death knell of a film and its potential for greatness when the likes of Ingrid Bergman and Joseph Cotten are leading your film, and it still comes through as an almost thoroughly uninteresting work. Undeniably gifted actors, they’re both turning in lower-tier work, despite playing roles that would normally be in their wheelhouse. Bergman played arguably the best female character in Hitchcock’s entire oeuvre a few years earlier when she starred across from Cary Grant in Notorious, but here takes on a character that isn’t only far less interesting, but also written with less than a fraction of the dedication as some of the other roles she played in her illustrious career. It takes a lot of work to cast someone as gifted as Bergman and still give her very little to do, but this film manages to achieve that with flying colours. Cotten is not any better – brooding and complex, he is done an enormous disservice by this film’s total lack of nuance when it comes to defining his character, somehow who is caught between a tragic anti-hero and an outright antagonist, never being sure of what direction to take the character. To their credit, neither Bergman or Cotten are necessarily at fault for the failure of the film – they certainly did their best with what they were given, which was essentially the paltry scraps of a much more interesting film. The characters are so opaque and uncompelling, it’s difficult to feel any emotion towards them – and this isn’t even factoring the supporting cast, with the likes of Margaret Leighton and Cecil Parker supposedly being pivotal characters who are important to the progression of the plot, but don’t really get to do anything other that appear sporadically on screen, leaving very little impression, which is ultimately the most common flaw throughout the film.

The era of colonial expansion into Australia throughout the 19th century is a fascinating one, and has been the subject of a few terrific films, but not to the point where it can be considered oversaturated, meaning that there are still an abundance of stories to be told. The prospect of a psychological thriller set in a world caught between a penal colony and thriving state is enticing, especially when it is under the direction of someone as assured in his craft as Hitchcock – yet, the problems just begin to compound as the film progresses. There’s never really anything noteworthy being done on screen, and had this exact story been transposed to Europe or the United States (since outside of a few plot references, there was very little reason for it to be set in Australia other than for the sake of commenting on colonialism, which isn’t even that important of a theme in any case), it’s likely to have been seen as nothing more than a garden-variety melodrama with tinges of psychological thriller. It almost seems beneath Hitchcock to have made this film, since there is nothing particularly distinctive about it that can be traced back to his bespoke style – if anything, this would be more akin to someone doing a pale imitation of the director, as opposed to a film made by the proverbial Master of Suspense himself. It rarely leaves any significant impression, outside of the brief sojourns into the minds of its characters that hint at something interesting, but which ultimately don’t actually contribute that much in the first place.

Perhaps the most unfortunate problem with Under Capricorn is the most simple – this is just not an interesting film. As one of the rare misfires in Hitchcock’s career, it feels particularly ill-conceived. It’s a disappointing film, since the prospect of the director making a lush melodrama set in colonial Australia seemed like the formula for a terrific film, but instead turned out to be an affair devoid of any humour or heart, instead being essentially nothing more than two hours of overwrought meandering between perspectives, none of them even close to convincing. The bigger challenge is determining who to blame for this film’s mediocrity – the screenplay is bland, but it is the product of the source material, with very little being able to be done without betraying both of the works that inspired it. The directing tries to be dynamic, but it essentially falls flat in every instance, and the performance (while not bad) are just as lifeless as the narrative. There’s actually very little that can be considered redeemable about the film in the first place – there’s not any real sense of urgency, and the story doesn’t really amount to much. It has a weak introduction, a meaningless storyline and an unsatisfying ending, all of which seem wildly out of place for a Hitchcock film, making this an occasion where even the most polished and well-regarded of filmmakers saw a moment of failure. Mercifully, Under Capricorn was made on the precipice of the director’s most interesting decade, where he’d produce some tremendous and iconic films, and while he still had to overcome the mediocre Stage Fright to get there, it’s comforting to know that this did not signal the end of his artistic brilliance, but rather a momentary obstacle necessary to unlocking the next two decades of exceptional work.