A widowed landowner decides to marry again. With the aid of his faithful housekeeper he draws up a list of all the eligible women in the neighbourhood, and goes wooing each in turn, with disastrous results. A romantic comedy in a rural setting is about as far as you can get from a typical Hitchcock film, although he did make a couple of other forays into the ro- 240 mantic comedy genre over the course of his career, with Champagne later in the same year, a gentle screwball Mr and Mrs Smith (1941) and The Trouble with Harry (1955). The Farmer’s Wife is a deceptively subtle film and one of Hitchcock’s most enjoyable early works, with good performances, superior settings, lovely locations and the kind of gentle comedy, coupled with farce, beloved of British audiences. In essence, it is a finely judged battle-of-the-sexes comedy and the story of the humbling of an arrogant man, given some depth by the poignancy of the opening scene where Farmer Sweetland (Jameson Thomas) contemplates a lonely future amid the bustle of his daughters wedding feast. There are moments of farce, courtesy of Gordon Harker hamming it up as the work-shy farmhand, Churdles Ash and a toe-curling party scene in which talented comedienne Maud Gill reprises her successful comic turn as Thirza Tapper from the original West End run. The run of humiliating rejections Sweetland endures finally strips him of his self-defeating pride and allows him to see what we have long since understood: that his ideal bride has been in front of his nose all along.

The gentle and dignified Lilian Hall Davis, who had just recently appeared to such acclaim in The Ring was a good choice to star opposite Jameson Thomas. The gorgeous locations were filmed on the edge of Exmoor near Minehead, standing in for Widecombe, on Dartmoor which was Phillpott’s original setting and the farmhouse was recreated in painstaking detail in the studio with four walls so that Hitchcock and cameraman Jack Cox could do longer tracking shots for greater realistic effect. Contemporary reviewers were enthusiastic, the “Sunday Graphic” wrote “If its only use were to show Devonshire scenery to the world, the screening of The Farmer’s Wife would be worthwhile; but Alfred Hitchcock has made a delightful picture of the Philpott’s comedy. This is surely the kind of film that is typically English and yet can hold some appeal for the world. You must see it”.

The Farmer’s Wife is one of several of the Hitchcock silent films for which the original negative does not survive. Working from later duplications of that negative made in the 1960s, the restoration team’s principal challenge was to ensure that the film looked as much as possible like the original. Work on The Farmer’s Wife accordingly focused on meticulous grading and on a precise calibration to record the image data back to a new film negative. This has ensured that the new prints have the correct contrast and texture. As well as minimising scratches and damage printed in from the original, some work was done to restore Hitchcock’s trademark dissolves, such as when the camera moves seamlessly from a long shot of a house through the window to the inside.

                                                                                                                                  Bryony Dixon