Bardlerx Strictly average movie

ChicDragon It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

Jemima It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

Billy Ollie Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

bbmtwist What a surprise!Hitchcock as a romantic director. Had I not known I would have suspected this silent film came from the hand of early Carl Dreyer or Ernst Lubitsch.It is a lovely story of a widowed farmer, whose daughter is being married, and who decides to look for a second wife, all the while not seeing the devoted housekeeper who loves him as his obvious choice. How this proceeds through four other objects of his intentions gives the comedy to the romantic aura.I viewed the full two hours and nine minutes of the film and it is so delightfully directed and acted that I would have thought it less than half that length. It is really an undiscovered gem and a feather in Hitchcock's hat. Worth seeking out for those who admire fine silent film. The print on DVD is impeccable.

Michael Rhodes For me Alfred Hitchcock has always been a hit or miss director and in this case he is definitely a miss. The film is about a farmer named Samuel Sweetland whose wife dies so he starts looking for another wife to take her place. Throughout the film he ends up asking five different women to marry him which really makes the viewer feel like Samuel is simply looking for a wife just to have a wife rather than him actually having any genuine feelings for the women. The story is really boring and extremely predictable. For the movie being around one and a half hours it really feels like it drags on with a lot of unnecessary parts.The acting is another flawed part of the film. Jameson Thomas plays Samuel but he really doesn't create enough emotions for the character. He just seems like a guy who keeps trying to go after one lady after another so you really don't feel that he has enough feelings for these people for you to care. He also insults every woman that turns him down which really doesn't help you sympathize with Samuel. Lillian Hall-Davis plays Araminta Dench (a housekeeper) and she does the best acting job in the movie but not as good of a job as she did in The Ring (1927, Hitchcock). All other actors in the film with the exception of Gordon Harker as Churdles Ash (a handyman) do a horrible job which doesn't help this movie at all.There really aren't any special effects shots in the film. As for the music, it is really bad and is hard to listen to. None of the music seems in the right place and even when it is the music is truly horrible and hurts my ears beyond belief.Even though Alfred Hitchcock has provided so many movies that I have enjoyed over the years this is one of his biggest duds. The story is predictable and boring, the film feels far to long, the acting is really bad, and the music makes me want to mute the television. So this film really isn't worth your time no matter what your interests are. For a worthwhile Hitchcock silent film check out The Ring (1927, Hitchcock). Score: 2/10

KlutzyGirl I've always been a huge fan of Hitchcock's early works, especially "The 39 Steps" and "The Lady Vanishes." I especially love the glimpses of country life--the cruel Calvinist husband, the Swiss speaking Romansche. But I hadn't realized that even earlier he made comedies. Now with new DVD releases I can discover them, and I recommend you do too. So far I've also seen "Rich and Strange," which was slow, but a fun precursor to "Mr. and Mrs. Smith."The Farmer's Wife is my favorite so far. The opening...was there ever a more idyllic farm? A more amusing death scene? Cuter puppies? A more curmudgeonly farm hand? These little touches set the scene and kept me interested in the progression of a story whose ending we know from the start. It can be slow, and I really appreciated having it on DVD so I could FF x2 through the long scenes, but overall I enjoyed the whole package very much. My enjoyment was often overwhelmed by the sad story of Lillian Hall-Davis's tragic death and her son's involvement. Very sad. She was perfect in this role. Jameson Thomas (King Westley in "It Happened One Night") was very good, and all the supporting players were terrific. 8/10.

Robert J. Maxwell 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.