| Bill Nelson |
Under Capricorn plays at the Heights Theater on Thursday, April 10th, as part of our collaboration on the 2025 Hitchcock Film Festival. For tickets, showtimes, and other series information, visit trylon.org.
HOROSCOPE FOR THOSE BORN UNDER THE SIGN OF CAPRICORN:1 DECEMBER 3, 18312
As the Book says, we may be through with the past, but the past ain’t through with us.3 Your own past will visit you this month in unpleasant ways,4 causing you to doubt your choices, especially your decisions about the people you keep close to you. And you should take such questions seriously! For, while the loyalty that is a part of your nature is admirable, it is not always returned, as you will soon find out.5 This discovery will initiate a dark time of transition in your life. If you navigate it poorly, the consequences could be dire—worse even than emotional pain—and perhaps dangerous. But, if you can fight your usual disposition and become a little more flexible and open to change, there is also reason for hope and the possibility of real happiness in your future.
1 My idea here: a kind of short essay about director Alfred Hitchcock’s Under Capricorn (1949) in the form of a horoscope for one of the main characters, with explanatory notes like this one (and I need to acknowledge here a debt to David Foster Wallace, a favorite writer of mine and the Footnote King). It occurred to me to do a horoscope because the name of the movie has, like, an astrologicky vibe. When I first received the assignment to write this piece, I assumed the actual source of the title is the setting of the story = Australia: the Tropic of Capricorn passes directly over the country, or, put another way, Australia, where the action of the film takes place, is under Capricorn. But I have found out that the title really is inspired by the zodiac sign. The movie, you see, is based on a 1937 novel, also called Under Capricorn, by Helen Simpson, and I have read the thing (not bad but nothing special either—and the movie is the same), and the tie to the supernatural powers of the constellation is explicit there. The author includes an epigraph at the beginning of Book One:
I have read that Capricornus, the heavenly Goat, being ascendant at nativitie, denieth honour to persons of quality, and esteeme to the Vulgar. Can a Starre do so by onlie shineing on a Woman in her pangs? Shall Capricornus bind a poore man the world ouer, no part, no Land undiscouered, where hee may shake free? I will not belieue it: nor that Honour (not forfeit) can be for euer hidd by decree of this distemperate Starre.
Simpson identifies the quote as coming from something called A Limbo For Ladies; I have no idea what that is as I couldn’t track it down, although I gave up quickly cuz knowing the origin of the passage isn’t important. What matters is the meaning; that’s what an epigraph is for, after all: to introduce a theme. Let’s restate that theme in the form of a question: Are some people doomed to difficulties through all their days, or is it possible to leave a problem-plagued life behind and start fresh?
The question hangs over the lives of the three central characters in the novel and film: young Charles Adare (Michael Wilding); and a married couple, Samson and Henrietta Flusky (Joseph Cotten and Ingrid Bergman). Understand, at the time the story takes place, in the first half of the 19th century, Australia was a British colony. Some settlers came of their own accord, and Charles is one of those: second cousin of the new governor who is about to take office, Charles hasn’t made anything of himself in his native Ireland and is seeking adventure and fortune abroad. But famously, some Australian immigrants were transported convicts sent to the continent for punishment and labor, after which they were emancipated. Many stayed in the country, hopeful of joining respectable society. That’s Sam. He and Henrietta are from Ireland too, but he was transported for a very serious crime; it is alluded to by various people, although it is not discussed openly, since it is considered bad form to talk about such things in the colony. Henrietta followed him to Australia, and, since completing his sentence, Sam has become a prosperous businessman, and he and Henrietta have a large and beautiful house and all the material comforts. But, for reasons that are only gradually revealed, their reputation in Sydney is shoddy, and their marriage seems far from happy, as Charles finds out when he falls in with them.
Echoing the epigraph: Will Charles be able to shake free of his dissipated past and attain honor? Will the vulgar Sam Flusky and his bride forever be denied esteem and heartsease?
2 The birthdays of the characters are unknown, but this horoscope is written as a prognostication for Sam, who exhibits many typical Capricorn traits: loyal, goal-oriented, industrious, reserved, rigid, stubborn. I know all this cuz I’m a Capricorn myself. Sam is a dark, brooding character, and he presides over a dark, brooding atmosphere at Minyago Yugilla (his estate) that makes it a place folks call on only reluctantly and contributes to keeping the Fluskys outcasts even among the “rejects” that make up much of Sydney—an ostracization owing too to the erratic behavior of his deeply troubled, unstable wife (polite society in the UK was quick to judge, and transported the undesirables; in this story, those undesirables in turn are quick to judge each other in their new homeland). Sam’s personality makes him a stark contrast to the sunny, funny, instantly popular Charles. The light Charles brings to the Flusky mansion is welcomed by some there, including many members of the staff—and especially Henrietta, basking in his presence—but not so much by others, including head housekeeper Milly (Margaret Leighton), who, in the absence of a strong mistress, has mostly gotten to rule Minyago Yugilla as though it were her own. A newly energized Henrietta is a threat to her privileged role. Anyway, as you see, there are a couple of seeds of conflict here.
The exact date of the horoscope marks Charles’s arrival in Sydney according to the novel—and that’s the event that initiates the story.
3 Okay, I couldn’t not insert this quote from Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia (1999). The line is relevant, and its inclusion is also a kind of homage to the PTA film series at the Trylon that is ongoing as of this writing. I have already been to or else presently hold tickets for every movie in that series. Every. Single. One.
4 As it happens, Charles knew the Fluskys back in Ireland: Henrietta was a childhood friend of Charles’s sister, both from aristocratic families, while Sam worked in the stables of Henrietta’s family. How exactly a lady became the wife of a servant is not at first revealed. Suffice it to say there is a terrible secret that the Fluskys share that bound them together then even as it creates a chasm between them now. The movie has skeletons in its closets: it’s a period picture and a melodrama, but there is mystery and suspense here too. This is Hitchcock, after all.
If the Fluskys are tethered to the past, it’s also true that the movie production itself recalls what came before. For example, Under Capricorn isn’t the first version of a Simpson story that Hitchcock filmed; that distinction belongs to her Enter Sir John (1929), which became Hitchcock’s Murder! (1930). Bergman and Cotten worked together in Gaslight (1944)—and James Bridie, who wrote the screenplay for Under Capricorn in collaboration with Hume Cronyn, swipes the central conceit of that now-classic psychological thriller. The long takes that Hitchcock pioneered in Rope (1948) are back, although they are shorter here and arguably more successful: during a scene in which some of Sydney’s leading lights arrive at the Flusky residence for a grand dinner, the camera weaves among the gathering guests as though it is one of them. Clever and effective. You’ll recognize in Charles’s efforts to prepare Henrietta for the Governor’s Ball elements of Pygmalion, the 1938 movie comedy based on George Bernard Shaw’s 1913 play. I could go on but won’t.
5 Questions of loyalty and betrayal are central to the story. For example: it’s not revealing too much to say that Charles ends up falling for Henrietta, yeah? In a movie about secrets, this isn’t one; you can guess as much from one of the posters! This development is one of the most intriguing of several departures from the novel. In the book tension arises because Sam believes that something romantic is going on between Charles and Henrietta, when in fact nothing of the sort is. In the movie, on the other hand, Sam is slow to conclude that Charles has feelings for his wife even though he does. The novelist’s choice has the effect of preserving Charles as the hero of the story cuz he is no real threat to the marriage. The screenwriters’ change creates a love triangle, and one that has a bit of class conflict in there too, Charles being to the manor born, Sam being common. It’s easy at first to root for Charles: he’s such an affable and agreeable fellow, and is such a positive presence for Henrietta. This is underscored when we get to know Sam, who is a cold guy and very hard to like. But then Sam’s strong affection and attachment to Henrietta become apparent even though he has difficulty expressing himself. Who exactly is the protagonist here? It’s complicated. Henrietta, then, is caught in the middle of two very different men, à la a previous Bergman vehicle, Casablanca (1942)—another reference to the movie past! But Charles is no Rick who’s gonna do the thinking for both of them; he’s not all that thoughtful a person and just wants what he wants. And Sam is no dashing and universally admired husband like Victor. Plus Henrietta, who appears passive, submissive, Ilsa-like, is really no Ilsa at all, since, despite her emotional disadvantages, she retains for herself the power to select a partner. Under Capricorn is a movie of uneven quality; on the negative side of the ledger: occasionally stagey, unrealistic sets; inauthenticies such as accents that laughably don’t match character backgrounds at all; only a single substantive acknowledgement of the indigenous peoples of Australia, and that being stereotypical and offensive. But in a film that’s okay but pretty far from great, these dynamics among the principals are surprisingly original and interesting.
Edited by Olga Tchepikova-Treon