The Farmer's Wife (1928)

Film: The Farmer's Wife (1928)

Stars: Jameson Thomas, Lillian Hall-Davis, Gordon Harker, Gibb McLaughlin, Maud Gill, Louie Pounds, Olga Slade

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

(Throughout the year, in connection with our 'Saturdays with the Stars' series, I am watching every gap I have in Alfred Hitchcock's filmography in what we're calling 'Sunday Leftovers.'  Every two weeks, I'll be watching a Hitchcock film that I've never seen before as I spend 2021 completing his filmography)

We are continuing on our look at the films of Alfred Hitchcock's early career with The Farmer's Wife, yet another silent film (we'll finish up his Silent Era by the end of April), and this one outside what we typically associate with Hitchcock.  While the director has a lot of humorous imagery & was a practical joker offset (sometimes crossing the line into harassment), Hitchcock is not a director we normally associate with screen comedy.  His early works ran the gamut across genres, but generally he is most known for suspense, horror, or straight drama.  That wasn't always the case, though, as we find out with The Farmer's Wife, which isn't just humorous-the film is meant to be a straight up humorous film, and some ninety years later actually succeeds in that regard.

(Spoilers Ahead) Samuel Sweetland (Thomas) has just lost his wife, and his grown daughter (recently wed) is intent on finding him a new wife to help run the farm & take care of him.  Sweetland makes a list of local widows & spinsters, but finds that as he starts to court them that they aren't as interested in his romantic advances as he is in them.  One by one, the four women he initially listed as a match for himself declines the offer, saying he is too controlling, too old, just a bad match.  This hurts his pride, and makes those around him, including his farmhand, ashamed of him having no self-respect & basically just giving himself away to no one who wants him.  However, Minta (Hall-Davis), his housekeeper, doesn't see a pitiable figure, but a man she's desperately in love with, and as the film ends (with one of the women who rejected him coming back to state that he changed his mind), Samuel marries Minta, and they live happily ever after.

The film's plot is kind of funny, and not just wry like Hitchcock usually goes, but actually intended to be properly funny.  So atypical is it that Hitch doesn't even make one of his trademark cameos.  This makes it feel like a bit of a cheat compared to some of the other work we've profiled, as for a director that made everything part of his "signature" this gives off the vibes of a "job for hire" which at this point in his career Hitchcock didn't really need to be taking (after the success of The Lodger).

That said, it's a good movie.  The scenes where Samuel is brought down a peg by these women are kind of a riot.  All (admittedly handsome) machismo, he deserves some of the comeuppance he gets, and while it is unkind in retrospect, Olga Slade steals the movie as a stout, high-on-herself postmistress who refuses Samuel for being too old, though clearly she, like him, has perhaps too high of expectations for herself.  Overall, this is a strange movie, and the picture that feels the least like the Hitchcock we all love, but it's a film that stands up on its own.