The Farmer's Wife (1928) User Reviews

It's worth persevering with

[Brian_o_Vretanos · 7/10 · 11 February 2007]

The first half is rather slow, but keep going - it's definitely worth it. The humour in Hitchcock's films is generally based around great character actors (e.g. Jessie Royce Landis in To Catch a Thief and North by NorthWest), and here not one of the actors disappoints. Lillian Hall Davis has a better part in the Ring (also 1928 - Gordon Harker is again very amusing in it too), but is lovely in this film. Sound would have added nothing. My 8-year old daughter was apprehensive about watching a silent film, but once things started to get going in the second half, was hooked.

Hitchcock referred to it in later years as one of his "photographed plays", but the action occurs in several locations, so is nowhere near as constrained as many of his films (plays or not). In fact, even though the location shots are few and far between, they really give this film a non-studio feel.

All of Hitchcock's films are notable for their visual storytelling (look at the initial scene-setting in Rear Window that speaks volumes without a single word being uttered), and it is interesting to see the origins of this, and the great influence of German Expressionism.

A slight, but charming early effort from Hitchcock

[Quirky- · 7/10 · 9 November 2005]

Although his name will forever be linked with 'suspense' films, this 1928 silent feature from Alfred Hitchcock shows the man had considerable comic sensibilities, too. The story concerns a widowed farmer (Jameson Thomas) who decides he needs a wife...129 minutes later, he finds that the perfect woman he was after was under his nose the entire time. Thomas is great as the desperate for love farmer -- watch how he makes a list of desirable women and goes to each one individually to propose, crossing each off the list when they turn him down. It may be overlong (those who've seen the edited 97 minute version yearn for this extended one...personally I think it too long), but the wry humour and the charming characters make this a nice enough early effort from Hitch.

Trouble and Strife to come to the Farmer

[Spondonman · 7/10 · 13 May 2005]

I saw this years ago, enjoyed but forgot about it. On retrospect it seems a very long drawn out 96 minute comedy film with a flimsy plot, even so I wonder what a 129 minute version would be like.

Jameson Thomas plays thicko widower farmer who can't see beyond the end of his nose when it comes to looking to honour a woman by marrying him. It's obvious from the first reel what the story will be and the eventual conclusion, but for all that it's still well worth watching. Some of the outdoor shots are delightful, portraying the English countryside impressionistically, the indoor usually portray people in the throes of pigging themselves within slapstick routines. The farmers' handyman Gordon Harker was even stranger than his master, with make up absolutely caked on his face for some reason.

Altogether, a nice little film, totally inconsequential but with some nice touches from Hitch and fluid camera movements, all helping maintain interest.

Charming Semi-Romantic Comedy, From ... Alfred Hitchcock!

[Snow Leopard · 15 May 2001]

"The Farmer's Wife" is a charming rustic, semi-romantic comedy from the silent picture era. Without seeing the credits, you might never guess that it was made by the "Master of Suspense", Alfred Hitchcock - but if you know who the director was, it is easy to see the masterful touches Hitchcock was known for.

The story is a simple one. Farmer Sweetland (Jameson Thomas) has lost his beloved wife some time ago, and comes to decide that he should marry again. He methodically evaluates, and plans to propose to, all of the eligible women he can think of. But all the while he overlooks the best, and obvious (to the audience) choice: his devoted housekeeper Araminta (Lillian Hall-Davis, who is charming in the role). "Minta" is far wiser, sweeter, and prettier than the other candidates, and she also cares for Sweetland in a way they never will. The plot, therefore, revolves around whether he will figure this out before he gets stuck with an unsuitable mate instead.

Hitchcock applies the creativity and attention to detail that he would later use in his great suspense films, and makes out of a simple plot a movie that is very funny, and also at times quite touching. A great deal of the characters' feelings and thoughts are communicated without dialogue cards, through masterful silent camera work. The most powerful recurring image is a pair of chairs near the fireplace, where Farmer Sweetland had obviously spent many happy hours with his dear departed first wife. Early in the film, as he hosts a wedding dinner for his daughter, he begins to look longingly at the chairs, and we know what he is thinking even before the dialogue cards tell us. As the film proceeds, we occasionally come back to the fireplace, and eventually "Minta" begins to sit with him by the fireplace, sympathizing and helping with his disappointed matrimonial projects. The suggestion is obvious to everyone but Sweetland.

In the lead role, Thomas responds to Hitchcock's direction, sometimes making his character appear somewhat ridiculous in his miscalculated plans, and at other times evoking our complete sympathy and pity for his loneliness. The rest of the cast works very well too, especially Gordon Harker, whose expert comic timing plays wonderfully in the role of Farmer Sweetland's handyman.

There is one long, hilarious comic sequence, at a house party hosted by one of Sweetland's prospective mates, and you have to watch it two or three times to catch all of the detail Hitchcock packed into the sequence. The rest of the movie is filled with lighter comic touches, and concentrates on giving us a surprisingly tender look at the characters' lives.

Hitchcock fans should take delight in seeing how the master used his talents in such a different genre, and any fan of romantic comedies who is willing to try a silent film should also enjoy "The Farmer's Wife".

change for Hitchcock

[sfdavide · 7/10 · 23 April 2005]

The Farmer's Wife is the story of a farmer who is seeking a wife. It is a slapstick comedy that at times is very funny. The farmer, Mr. Sweetland has trouble finding a wife after the death of his first. He makes a list with the help of his maid, who is secretly in love with him. He has four eligible women on his list and they all turn him down in one way or another. All of these small stories are very funny, especially the Thirza Tapper story, with a hilarious performance by Maud Gill as Tapper. Gordon Harker as Ash, the handyman is also very funny.

This is a different genre for Hitchcock and he succeeds. He tried comedy later with Mr. and Mrs. Smith and did not succeed but The Farmer's Wife shows that he was a genius and a true artist. This very charming and touching romantic comedy is one of the best of its time or anytime

Hitch you're a comic genius!

[marriedminnie · 7/10 · 31 January 2007]

What a great film and the 129 min. didn't bother me too much. I couldn't stop laughing at the handyman but it was too predictable or I would have given it a higher rating. The wedding of his daughter sparked the lonesomeness Mr. Sweetland was feeling and felt he needed a companion. The story flowed right along and the imagery was displayed to where you could almost picture yourself in the same position. Mr. Sweetland asked for Minta's help and almost hinted at the idea of asking her to marry him. Well that was not the case as he picked his selections on a piece of paper.

He decided to ask each person from top to bottom of the list to marry him. As each one rejected him in their own way and Mr. Sweetland didn't take rejection lightly as his charm went out the window. He finally got to the point that he ran out of ideas and sat in his chair defeated. Well Minta sat down and gave him the perfect idea through the imagery of asking her to be his wife. Then two of the women that were asked to marry him argued about this issue and they had a competition of who he would choose to marry. He chose none and stuck with Minta.

What's interesting to me was there was comedy throughout and it was genuine not like Mr. and Mrs. Smith which was more forced. Everyone was comedic in their own way and set a light overtone. Also, getting around the censors was Hitchcock's genius as Minta played with her buttons on her blouse enough to indicate she had an interest in Mr. Sweetland more than her boss and their was a sexual overtone.

I never laughed as much though all 53 movies I've watched of Hitchcocks as this one. I have to say, he knew how to experiment and make things work and with genre he did just that.

"'Tis almost indecent to see 'em all on one bit of paper"

[Steffi_P · 5/10 · 13 December 2008]

This early Hitchcock silent, his first for British International Pictures, is a simple romantic comedy adapted from a stage play. A far cry from crime and suspense, but at this point Hitchcock had neither the influence nor the realisation of his true forte to select his projects.

As with all but one of the Hitchcock silents, the screenplay was by Eliot Stannard. Stannard, with his typical understanding of the visual medium, dispenses with the wordiness of a direct stage-to-screen adaptation. He allows time for the characters to reveal their feelings in reaction shots and point-of-view shots, and replaces verbal gags with visual ones. The Farmer's Wife is thus as devoid of unnecessary intertitles as, say, The Manxman.

Given its rural setting, Hitchcock was more or less obliged to include some shots of rolling hillsides. Hitch doesn't seem to have liked the countryside much – in most of his later films if it appears at all it's as a functional back-projection – but he doesn't do too badly here as far as pure photographic beauty goes. Other than that the shooting style is typical of Hitchcock. There is a growing use of fluid camera movement, and we can see that Hitchcock technique, whereby the camera appears to be leading the audience, gradually revealing to us or drawing us in.

Whether it comes from Stannard's script or Hitchcock's head I don't know, but there is a massive tendency here towards point-of-view shots during dialogue scenes, in which the other speaker looks straight into camera. The majority of these are rather pointless, with the exception of several appropriately ghastly close-ups of the Farmer's bridal candidates.

To say the conclusion of The Farmer's Wife is predictable would be a grand understatement. A shortsighted person could see it coming through several miles of fog. Not a bad thing in itself, but rather than play upon its obviousness (which Stannard and Hitchcock must have been aware of), the picture simply becomes a tedious game of waiting for the inevitable. The Farmer's Wife is only quite funny, and is altogether too long.

Pleasant silent film

[utgard14 · 6/10 · 11 July 2017]

Slight but enjoyable early Alfred Hitchcock movie about a widower (Jameson Thomas) who sets out to find a new wife with help from his loyal housekeeper (Lillian Hall-Davis). It's a charming and touching story. Not quite what you would expect from the eventual Master of Suspense. It's a good-looking film, as well. Thomas and Davis are both likable. Gordon Harker is fun as the farmer's handyman, Churdles Ash. Love that name. It's nothing to get worked up over but a pleasant enough film that's worth a look to more than just Hitchcock completists.

"I'm offering myself so humble as a worm "

[secondtake · 5/10 · 4 June 2009]

The Farmer's Wife (1928)

Like many of Alfred Hitchcock's more famous films, The Farmer's Wife begins with pure innocence (a beautiful day in the country, followed by two adorable puppies, maybe the cutest things in any of his movies). And unlike almost all of his movies, it remains pure and happy throughout. Even the fact that a woman (the main character's wife, we learn) is dying in the first scenes is no impediment to the joy of life in the beautiful countryside--her last words are a reminder to the maid to "air out the master's pants." Can't you hear Hitchcock laughing?

This is no diabolical thriller. The only suspense here is who the man might marry next, and I think we are meant to know the answer to that pretty early on, as well. There is a nice montage of him getting dressed around forty minutes into the film. And just before that a fun trick of imagining future wives and seeing them fade in, sitting on a chair, and then fade back to an empty chair. (This reprises toward the end, as well, and it's briefly hilarious.) Some of the scenes are genuinely beautiful, and others have a candor and quickness to the actions that is fresh and honest. And when everyone leaves for the hunt, the number of cute little dogs used is quite astonishing--over a hundred, I think.

Yes, a lighthearted, nicely felt film, a bit slow all along and over two hours long, but there is a feeling of competence here. Is it recommendable? Only if you are really just interested in a calm, sweet tale. The man's quest for a mate is a comedy, with one rejection after another. The acting is generally quite good, especially the many women. The bum caricature isn't a help, and the main man, played by Jameson Thomas, is merely appropriate at being strong and irritable. Some of his lines are pretty funny because he's mean when he doesn't need to be, and the women either squeal or laugh.

And how's this for a line to a woman to persuade her to marry him: "You'll only feel the velvet glove and never know I was breaking you in." She says no.

Alfred Hitchcock Plays the Dating Game

[wes-connors · 6/10 · 19 August 2009]

After his wife dies, and their daughter marries, lonely widowed farmer Jameson Thomas (as Samuel Sweetland) decides to look for holy matrimony with another woman. With the help of devoted housekeeper Lillian Hall-Davis (as Minta Dench) and handyman Gordon Harker (as Churdles Ash), Mr. Thomas proposes to three matronly prospects: independent widow Louie Pounds (as Louisa Windeatt), frigid spinster Maud Gill (as Thirza Tapper), and pillowy postmistress Olga Slade (as Mary Hearn). None of the women prove to be satisfactory, but Thomas' ideal mate is closer than he thinks…

If "The Farmer's Wife" were filmed a few years earlier, in Hollywood, with Wallace Reid and Norma Shearer, we might have had four decades of romantic Alfred Hitchcock comedies… well, maybe not. Anyway, it's a good silent moving picture. The opening sequence, which shows the sad passing of the farmer's wife, is very effective; it's a good change from the original play, considering the silent film medium. But, this film is too long, with the daughter's marriage immediately and unnecessarily dragging the story down; moreover, the ending is drawn out. Mr. Hitchcock's food filming fetish is evident throughout - nobody touches Ms. Gill's gelatin!

****** The Farmer's Wife (3/2/28) Alfred Hitchcock ~ Jameson Thomas, Lillian Hall-Davis, Gordon Harker, Maud Gill

"There's something magical in the married state..., it have a beautiful side."

[classicsoncall · 5/10 · 25 August 2018]

This early silent from Alfred Hitchcock doesn't follow the director's familiar templates. There's no murders, no mystery, (no trains), and no suspense, unless one considers farmer Sweetland's (Jameson Thomas) quest to find a woman to wed. He's just married off his only daughter, and is suddenly left alone to contemplate his loneliness since his dear Tibby had passed on some time before the story begins.

This picture is really more of a comedy than anything else, the dialog cards describing the state of matrimony are hilarious, with one of my favorites being "A woman that's pillowy at thirty be often a feather bed at forty". Some of the earlier ones are even more cutting, the writers having sharpened their pens in crafting the title cards. Actor Jameson Thomas has an oddly off-putting look for most of the story, resembling a disgruntled Tom Selleck doing those reverse mortgage commercials on cable TV during the span of time I watched this picture. It wasn't unusual that he would have been angry for being rejected by some of his prospective marriage candidates, but he compounded things by acting like a bit of a jerk, which I thought would have given his housekeeper Minta (Lillian Hall-Davis) second thoughts.

But in true romantic fashion, Sweetland eventually comes to recognize the woman who pined for him throughout the picture as being his best choice for a wife. I'm not too sure this same story would pass muster if made today for a modern audience because Samuel Sweetland was quite the chauvinist in his approach, particularly when he goes into a rage with each rejection. One unique thing with this silent film was the inclusion of a brief segment where you have the voice recording accompaniment of some singers during a party in the middle of the story. That's something I haven't seen before, and was a nice surprise right in the middle of an otherwise silent picture.

Early Hitch

[rmax304823 · 6/10 · 21 September 2008]

You know what Hitchcock's early movies make me think? That the quondam artist who painted fancy title cards began almost by chance to direct films and underwent some kind of A-HA! Erlebniss somewhere along the way, between, say, 1925 and 1931. It is said that Archimides got into his bath tub one day and it occurred to him as he watched the water level rise that a body displaces its own volume in water. "Eureka!" shouted Archimides. (Or "Heureka" or whatever.) I get the impression that something like that happened to Hitchcock.

If at first his movies were straightforward and of a kind with others of their period, well -- they still were, but every once in a while, in a wanton mood, he would throw in some experimental technique or some strange shot that indicated more than just story-telling was going on. I mean, for instance, in "The Lodger," the scene where the ceiling becomes transparent and we can see the lodger's restless feet on the floor above. Or here, when two big-eyed doggies nestle their head together and look mournfully at the camera while the farmer's wife is dying. Or, when sound was introduced, his toying with the word "KNIFE" in "Murder." If the films and the plots were a little banal, they were often juiced up by one or another director's trick.

This one, "The Farmer's Wife," is a genteel romantic comedy with some touches of genuine warmth. It's a little slow, it's long, and it's not slapstick. The funniest scene, to me, only lasts a few seconds. A doctor comes to a party and finds himself seated next to a plump woman who begins to complain about her symptoms, inviting him to examine her teeth and her knee, while the doctor fiddles nervously and tries to find someway out.

The plot, briefly, involves the widowed farmer's search for a new wife. He makes up a list of suitable women and visits them one by one. They all turn out to be wrong for him. One rejects him because she's too independent. The next is so excessively shy that when the farmer proposes she trembles all over, blinking constantly, and tells him she'll seek no shelter in a man's arms. The third rejects him because she feels she's too young for him, though she's far from it. He insults her extravagantly -- "You try to dress up your mutton as lamb" -- and she throws an hysterical fit. Finally he realizes that his soul mate is his housekeeper, 'Minta, who has been quietly pining for him too. 'Minta is not gorgeous in any conventional sense, but as Randolph Scott said of one of the leading ladies in his Western, "She ain't ugly." She's plain but honest, and she's thoroughly devoted to the farmer.

Anybody could have directed this -- anybody who was already a competent professional. Hitchcock's idiosyncratic style -- full of POV shots and spectacular swooping crane shots -- was to become manifest later in his career. This one is, as I said, a little long for its message but it's easy to watch and despite the chuckles, it's at times rather touching. Hitchcock was to use comic interludes often in his later movies. Some of them were very funny indeed. (My favorite is Alec MacGowan trying to eat his last gourmet meal in "Frenzy.") But comedies, as genre, were never his forte. "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" is immeasurably dull.

By the way, I'm not so sure about that Archimides in the bath tub business. I'm sure he discovered the principle but I'm not sure he did it in a bath tub, any more than I'm sure Isaac Newton discovered gravity when an apple fell on his head. It's too good to be true, like a Parson Weems tale. On top of that, Archimides was said to be so excited by his discovery that he ran through the streets of Syracuse naked. Now that's not only implausible. It's disgusting.

Not really worth a watch

[Jeremy_Urquhart · 5/10 · 23 April 2020]

An old farmer tries to get married again with the help of his housekeeper. Starts out kind of endearing but gets repetitive, because the film mainly involves the titular farmer going from one girl to the next, with each one being not quite right for him before he finally finds the "girl of his dreams." It's extremely predictable, and starts to get a little dull after a while, but the performances are pretty decent and there's some surprisingly nice scenery, which of course doesn't look that great anymore thanks to the fact I was not watching a print of the film that had been carefully preserved or remastered. 5/10

Funny -- and the craftsmanship shows...

[brucia · 28 May 2000]

This film made me (and my wife) laugh... the pathos and the humor both STILL work. The composition in the outdoor shots is excellent, and the work shows a lot of planning. (In one scene two hens scuttle across the road from left to right, as the farmer approaches a hidden intersection... he follows them to the right a few moments later. I would love to know how they got the hens to participate...) In some places the acting is a bit 'broad', but a lot is communicated by very slow pacing and a lot of subtlety -- in facial expressions, glances, and body language as well as the well-written title cards. (There could have been more of them, but the acting usually filled in well for the deficit). The title cards are written in dialect, which helps if one is familiar with the way in 'country-folk' talk in rural England. This film is worth seeing two or three times to catch the easily missed (almost subliminal) details...

An Early Hitchcock Classic!

[Sylviastel · 6/10 · 15 August 2013]

If you loved Sir Alfred Hitchcock and his contributions and services to the film industry, you should see all of his films for study and preservation. This is one of his early silent films. If you have the patience to watch a two hour silent film, it's not that easy. We're so used to speeches and conversations that we forget to watch and see their facial reactions in the early age of cinema. This film is more comedic than dark and dramatic. While the story is more farcical, it is nice to see Hitchcock have a sense of humor since he became more known for the macabre in his films. It is not hard to believe that film audiences didn't laugh and enjoy this film in the cinema in 1928 long before the Great Depression. Still, I would watch it again if I had too. It's not a bad film. You wouldn't know Hitchcock directed it.

Greatly eclipsed by later Hitchcock movies

[nickenchuggets · 6/10 · 29 May 2021]

I don't know about this one. The more you watch early Hitchcock movies, the more you start to realize the pattern of them not being as good as the things he would later pull off. I still enjoy watching things like this because you get to see how the experience of making it eventually shaped Hitchcock's later movies, and how it led to large amounts of improvement. Sometimes you have to make mediocre things before you can make better things. This movie is about a man who's wife dies early in the movie, and afterwards, his daughter leaves his house since she is getting married. The man (Samuel) is now alone with his servants. His housekeeper Minta says he shouldn't let the death of his wife stop him from remarrying, and he heeds this advice. The rest of the movie is him being rejected a bunch of times by different women. As you can probably tell, it doesn't feel like a Hitchcock movie at all. The version I have has newly composed (at the time) music, but other than that, not much to comment on. The movie is also pretty long for what it is, and I think this is because it's supposed to run at twice the speed but it's slowed for whatever reason. The girl who plays Minta in the movie (Lillian Hall-Davis) would also later commit suicide in a really horrific way, but that's another story. This is another perfect example of a movie that Hitchcock had to make in order to get to masterpieces like Psycho.

Underwhelming, but interesting moments

[alderson · 3/10 · 18 February 2002]

Of the 30 or so Hitchcock films I've seen so far, this was by far my least favorite. It has some rare Hitchcock touches, as with the superimposed "candidates" in the chair (I loved it when Minta sat down to take their place). Overall I found it predictable and boring, and entertaining only in spots. I knew pretty much exactly what was going to happen as soon as they started making the list.

Still, it serves as a window into the world of 70+ years ago, and is an interesting glimpse into the early career of the greatest director who has ever lived.

May not be among Hitchcock's best but is still one of his better silent films

[TheLittleSongbird · 7/10 · 30 December 2013]

Alfred Hitchcock- my personal favourite director- has done better with the likes of Psycho, Vertigo, Rear Window, Rebecca, The Lady Vanishes, Strangers on a Train and North By Northwest but he has also done worse with Juno and the Paycock, Champagne, Number Seventeen, Jamaica Inn, Topaz and Under Capricorn(though all have their redeeming merits). The Farmer's Wife is neither among the best or worst of Hitchcock, but it is still well worth watching and among the better of his silent films. It is too long, can get pedestrian and somewhat too slight in places(with a beginning that takes a little too long to set up) and the music score can feel repetitive. However, it is well shot and has lovely scenery, one of the better looking films of Hitchcock's silent era. Prepare yourself for a lot of point-of-view camera shots but they are not distracting at all(some may think differently though). Hitchcock directs with assurance and technical skill though he has done better in films more in his comfort zone. With the house party there are many subtle touches where you are thinking "yeah, this is unmistakably Hitchcock". The comedy is funny and charming if occasionally falling on the broad side, thankfully it is not overplayed and played with a degree of subtlety while making clear that the actors are enjoying themselves. The story is not always involving but does have its charms and you will be drawn in by the comedy and the likable if stock characters, it may have its slow spots but stick with it. The ending is very touching. The acting is good, again at times broad but not too much or that continuous. Gordon Harker is the standout and is immensely fun to watch, though Lillian Hall-Davies is suitably sympathetic and Jameson Thomas carries the film competently(his character is not easy to warm to straight away this said). Overall, interesting and providing that you don't expect masterpiece status- this is early Hitchcock where he was still finding his feet/style in a way- is also a good film. 7/10 Bethany Cox

Poor in most respects...

[tim-764-291856 · 4/10 · 8 July 2012]

The DVD version I have of 'The Farmer's Wife' is part of five disc 'The Hitchcock Collection', that range from this 1928 silent onward.

It is also the poorest DVD of the bunch, both in terms of technical quality - and I'm talking mostly of the poor transfer than the actual film-making and the story itself. The transfer quality is noticeably soft but flicker and blemishes are well controlled but the sound, unusually for a significant 'silent' is also disappointing, the classical music accompaniment still being in mono, whereas most have been re-recorded in modern stereo by now. I cannot say what standard other releases etc are.

These aspects mean that the story never really comes alive and create a barrier to full enjoyment of the film. With very few written notice boards telling us what's happening it's mostly guesswork and we just end up watching lots of people moving about quickly.

I do enjoy a good Silent film but the genre can get tedious when they're not top-notch - and this very early Hitchcock just isn't. As for the direction, it's proficient but simply workmanlike and does all it should for this type of period comedy drama, so anyone looking for clever camera-work, or even a hint at copying what the leading German directors of the time were doing, will be disappointed.

I'm also very aware that I'm only watching it because it is a Hitchcock and because I'm reviewing it, which isn't necessarily a good thing...

The Marrying Kind

[slokes · 6/10 · 27 March 2012]

A charming, sometimes even winsome silent-era trifle from Alfred Hitchcock, "The Farmer's Wife" nevertheless demonstrates why the Master only came to life with the advent of sound.

Newly-widowed farmer Sam Sweetland (Jameson Thomas) decides he "must take time by the forelock" and get remarried before he becomes a lonely old man. His problems are threefold. 1. Not a lot of prime candidates around his country manor. 2. He's forcing the thing. 3. He's blind to the woman who makes the best choice of all.

Hitchcock in 1928 was coming off his first big success, a suspense film called "The Lodger," but suspense wasn't something he was locked into. His handful of silent films show him trying a bit of everything; "The Farmer's Wife" being his pastoral comedy.

It's pastoral, alright. An opening sequence shows us the Sweetland farm in all its sun-drenched splendor, with ducks, a horse, and a pair of lovely spaniels which Hitchcock tracks in matched shots all the way into the house, whereupon they disappear for the rest of the film.

There's even an agreeably disagreeable farmhand, one Churdles Ash (Gordon Harker), to offer rustic commentary on his boss's struggles to find a bride: "To see an old man in love be worse than seeing him with the whooping cough!"

Some directors took so naturally to the craft of silent movie-making that they seemed thrown by the transition to sound. Hitchcock seems to have had the opposite problem. We see a lot of dialogue scenes, but instead of quote cards we get full-on shots of characters either speaking or reacting to being spoken to. Lip readers will get more out of this film than the rest of us.

The big problem all the reviewers here point to is that the film is too long, at two hours and ten minutes. There's not that much story here, and surprisingly even for early Hitch, the pacing is way off. When a character exits one room and enters another, we not only see all of each scene but even her walk through the corridor between them. Long sequences move in real time. Many shots linger on Sweetland looking at an empty chair, representing the hole in his life left by his wife's death.

Two things manage to make this film entertaining on the whole. One is Thomas's lead performance, which transitions from dry dignity to comic exasperation without losing its sympathetic humanity. You really like the guy, even when he's making an ass of himself trying to pick up the next woman on his list.

The other is the way the supporting cast play off each other, and Hitchcock plays off them, with lingering scenes that do drag but also create a real sense of village life. Watching several characters we have come to know talk to each other at once at a house party, a fox hunt, and a bar, reminded me of a Robert Altman movie, and not at all like later Hitchcock sound films, as zestful as they are.

Much of the humor revolves around the Churdles character and gets slapsticky and drawn out, but you do get some winning moments, both physical and verbal. I love an exchange between Sweetland and his loyal maid 'Minta (Lillian Hall-Davis), who objects when he describes one target of his desire as "pillowy." "A woman that's a pillow at thirty be often a feather bed at forty," she replies.

I'm not sorry Hitchcock chose another path, and don't really think he had the chops for making pure comedies (as his later "Mr. And Mrs. Smith" and "The Trouble With Harry" show). That said, "The Farmer's Wife" is a fine entertainment for those with the curiosity to seek it out and a patient mind.

Just A Simple Romantic Comedy

[Rainey-Dawn · 3/10 · 5 May 2016]

In all honesty I'm not big on romantic comedies - very few of them I actually enjoy and love - most of them are quite boring to me and this film has bored me to tears. Maybe one of these days I will go back to watch this film and enjoy it - but I doubt that. There is NOTHING wrong with this movie - it's cute and all - but as I have stated I'm not into most romantic comedies.

I'm sorry I do not like this film - I want to because it's Hitchcock but I don't. I like my Alfred Hitchcock thrilling, mysterious and horrifying and this film is definitely totally opposite of my favorite side of Hitchcock.

This film is worth while if you enjoy silent movies and/or romantic comedies. It's just not a film for me.

3/10

Longer version is at wrong speed

[mijleh · 8/10 · 17 April 2006]

I have both versions, long and short, of "The Farmer's Wife", and they are identical except for the speed at which they were recorded onto tape/DVD. I strongly recommend against the 129-minute version, as it is slower than real-life speed and drags the humor from the film. The shorter version is much funnier and more like Hitchcock, whose films weren't known for their dragginess.

Jameson Thomas, who plays Samuel Sweetland, was at the time of filming a huge star in England. In 1930 he and his wife left England for Hollywood, where he played a few leads in "B" pictures and then settled into a continuous second lead/character groove. He's the doctor at the end of "The Invisible Man" who tells Henry Travers of Claude Rains' demise: "I'm afraid the end will be rather terrible." He also played Mr. Semple, the twitchy false heir, in "Mr. Deeds Goes to Town."

Airy, light, and fun

[davidmvining · 7/10 · 14 April 2020]

Hitchcock's silent career is mostly a window into the burgeoning technical skills of a future master. However, that beings said, there are certainly little gems in there that stand on their own as legitimate entertainments, and The Farmer's Wife is definitely one of those. It stands apart from what Hitchcock had become known for and The Lodger had already demonstrated so well, but as a light romantic comedy, it's something special.

Farmer Sweetland loses his wife to an illness and marries off his daughter in the opening minutes of The Farmer's Wife. This puts him in the perfect state of mind to feel like he needs to find a wife. There are three eligible women who attend his daughter's wedding, and he sets out to marry one of them, adding a fourth to the list because he suddenly decides to. The result of this quest is eminently predictable by simply looking at the young, attractive maid in his employ that he outlines this plan to. He's not going to marry any of the four women he has her list on a little piece of paper, he's going to marry her. And yet, the journey is such a delight along the way that it's easy to forgive the film it's predictability.

Each early film of Hitchcock feels like a technical exercise in some way, and this one is no different. Hitchcock uses fades repeatedly in the opening minutes to imply the passage of time, fading from one set of trousers drying by a fire to the next to show that much time has passed from his wife's passing to his daughter's funeral. The other thing he plays with is the use of double exposures to demonstrate fantasy, going a bit further than he had gone in Downhill. We see it as Farmer Sweetland sits in his chair by the fire and looks longingly at the empty chair across from him, picturing three of the four women in the chair in succession (the fourth doesn't appear here, and to jump ahead slightly, I don't know why she's in the movie at all).

So, Farmer Sweetland goes out and has his inept interactions with the three women. The first is Ms. Windeatt, who dismisses Sweetland by saying that she's simply too independent for him. He immediately breaks down and starts insulting her in her own house. The second is the thin spinster Thirza Tapper who turns Sweetland down right before her big party because she had sworn off all men forever. He proceeds to insult her. Then, at the party, Sweetland turns to the young and plump Mary Hearn, the small town's postmistress, with whom he seems to have a good rapport. She ends up laughing off his proposal because of his age after which Sweetland proceeds to insult her. All through this, his maid, Minta, watches on and hopes for the best for her master whom she sees as kind and decent, eventually imagining herself in that seat across from him by the fire.

Then Sweetland goes to the fourth woman, the owner of the local pub, and we only see the beginning of their interaction and only the ending through a brief flashback several minutes later. Four women was simply too many (the rule of threes is a thing and has its uses), so I get the feeling that she was largely cut from the film in editing.

Of course, the movie ends where we've been predicting it would end from about minute five when Minta was introduced, and Sweetland sees the error of his ways and decides that he doesn't want an independent woman who will talk back to him, but his maid who will keep after his jacket even after he proposes to her. Hey, the movie was made in 1928.

Still, it's airy, light, and fun. A delightful little romantic comedy that attacks the viewer with several different types of comedy well. It's a fun diversion and another small victory for Hitchcock early in his burgeoning career.

Dull and predictable

[grantss · 4/10 · 9 February 2024]

A wealthy, widowed farmer, Samuel Sweetland, decides to remarry. He hasn't got any particular woman in mind and asks his housekeeper, Minta, to recommend suitable women from the village. He courts the women on the list but nothing seems to work out.

An Alfred Hitchcock romantic comedy. Yep, that's not a term you hear too often and having watched this I can see why. Admittedly this was in Hitchcock's early, silent era, years before he became the master of the thriller and was still trying his hand at all sorts of films.

I use "comedy" quite loosely as it's really not that funny. The film is quite conventional and dull and the plot, especially the ending, is very predictable.

The version I watched also had no sound at all - no score even - making engagement even more limited.

Only worth watching if you're determined to watch all of Hitchcock's films (as I am).