The Farmer's Wife (1928)
Country: GB
Technical: bw 100m silent
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Cast: Jameson Thomas, Lillian Hall-Davis, Gordon Harker
Synopsis:
A country squire becomes a widower, marries his daughter off, and before long nurtures dreams of taking a new wife. His devoted housekeeper helps him draw up a list of likely contenders, but they all turn him down, leading to the dawning realisation that happiness may be closer to home.
Review:
This rare Hitchcock comedy and adaptation of a signal stage success has the master's noted flair for reducing dialogue to a few choicely observed shots, and internal monologue to mind's eye dissolves. The manner in which he blocks the early scene of the wedding breakfast, for example, is magisterial in its command of shot type and angle, panning of the camera, and the movement of actors in the relatively tight space of the manor dining-room. The selection and proposal scenes are uproarious in the unironic male chauvinism of the farmer's points of view, the latter in particular being way ahead of their time in the comedy of embarrassment that would later be a stock in trade of the Farrelly brothers, The Office and Peep Show.
Country: GB
Technical: bw 100m silent
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Cast: Jameson Thomas, Lillian Hall-Davis, Gordon Harker
Synopsis:
A country squire becomes a widower, marries his daughter off, and before long nurtures dreams of taking a new wife. His devoted housekeeper helps him draw up a list of likely contenders, but they all turn him down, leading to the dawning realisation that happiness may be closer to home.
Review:
This rare Hitchcock comedy and adaptation of a signal stage success has the master's noted flair for reducing dialogue to a few choicely observed shots, and internal monologue to mind's eye dissolves. The manner in which he blocks the early scene of the wedding breakfast, for example, is magisterial in its command of shot type and angle, panning of the camera, and the movement of actors in the relatively tight space of the manor dining-room. The selection and proposal scenes are uproarious in the unironic male chauvinism of the farmer's points of view, the latter in particular being way ahead of their time in the comedy of embarrassment that would later be a stock in trade of the Farrelly brothers, The Office and Peep Show.
Country: GB
Technical: bw 100m silent
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Cast: Jameson Thomas, Lillian Hall-Davis, Gordon Harker
Synopsis:
A country squire becomes a widower, marries his daughter off, and before long nurtures dreams of taking a new wife. His devoted housekeeper helps him draw up a list of likely contenders, but they all turn him down, leading to the dawning realisation that happiness may be closer to home.
Review:
This rare Hitchcock comedy and adaptation of a signal stage success has the master's noted flair for reducing dialogue to a few choicely observed shots, and internal monologue to mind's eye dissolves. The manner in which he blocks the early scene of the wedding breakfast, for example, is magisterial in its command of shot type and angle, panning of the camera, and the movement of actors in the relatively tight space of the manor dining-room. The selection and proposal scenes are uproarious in the unironic male chauvinism of the farmer's points of view, the latter in particular being way ahead of their time in the comedy of embarrassment that would later be a stock in trade of the Farrelly brothers, The Office and Peep Show.