3 out of 5

Directed by: Alfred Hitchcock

Following along in Hitchcock’s films chronology, there doesn’t appear to be anything “special” about The Farmer’s Wife. After building up a small cache of visually experimental films, and tonal experiments like The Lodger or Downhill, Wife seemingly only offers up its nature as a bawdy comedy; not much to read in to from my armchair appreciation of the storied director. But that’s kind of exactly its notability: as with the preceding movies, we see building confidence in construction, and comfort with framing and style that doesn’t necessarily require the overt artistry of before. From that perspective, The Farmer’s Wife is truly Hitch’s best-lensed movie up to this point, telling its story effectively (taking into account the slower pace of story-telling at the time) and managing a large cast, several settings, and a relatively larger scale with wide outdoors shots with – to a viewer – ease. The very fact that it comes across as standard is essentially the accomplishment for someone only a few years into their directing career, and it proved that Hitch could jump into another genre as well, juggling comedic dialogue repartee (delivered through cards, of course), pantomime / slapstick, and visual storytelling on par with his preceding dramas / thrillers. That doesn’t make the film not average overall, and it’s unavoidably dated in terms of its sensibilities, but there’re slight notes of progressiveness here as well, and what I feel like is pretty risqué humor at points.

In The Farmer’s Wife, Samuel’s titular spouse has… just passed. After a fashion, he deems it dating time again, and decides to make a list of all the suitable ladies in town, assured they’ll be a’swooning for this quite eligible and prosperous farm owner. As he tics down the list, though, approaching one at a time, he finds that assurance dwindling… while meanwhile his dutiful housemaid, ‘Minta (Lillian Hall-Davis), pines from afar, doing her best to support her employer’s quest. Also, Gordon Harker is there, mugging it up as a farmhand and taking up a lot of screentime with rants about how wimmins suck and his pants fall down constantly.

Setting aside the sexism of the very ‘let me select my wife’ premise under the “that’s how it was…” header, the way Samuel is continually rebuffed adds some nice balancing in there, even if it’s essentially spoiled by some eventual cattiness and the fact that Samuel doesn’t really learn anything by film’s end; like, he’s just sour he gets dumped, without much introspection on that. We’ll also kind of set aside how each rebuffing woman is coded to a stereotype in some way or another.

Assuming you’ve signed up for all that, a modern viewer might be surprised by the directness of some of the barbs slung back and forth when Sammy starts to get turned down, and there’s definitely a general poking-fun at the way this old hornball thinks he can get with any lady. The structure of the film drags a bit – as soon as the list of ladies is made, it’s clear we’re going to repeat the dating cycle for each woman, and that’s exactly what happens, without variation beyond the stereotype employed – but Alfred Booth’s editing, and change of scenery / setup for each date helps partition out the film’s pacing well. Plus, as mentioned, bearing in mind who’s behind the camera – inclusive of DP Jack E. Cox, who also worked on The Ring – has you spot some really smart framings, and a general command of what’s on screen. And I’ll allow it: Harker’s pretty funny as well. I mean, it’s stupid stuff with his pants falling down, but the guy being a constant mope is a nice humor add-on to most scenes. The hysterical lady (Olga Slade), not so much, but I’m sure that gag got a lotta laffs back in the day, seeing as how they milk it for so long…