THE FARMER'S WIFE (UK, 1928, Alfred Hitchcock)

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An excerpt from Alfred Hitchcock's THE FARMER'S WIFE (1928). Source: YouTube.

 
 

Like THE RING (1927) before it, 1928’s THE FARMER’S WIFE — a romantic comedy about a lonesome man searching for “Mrs. Right” — is a fascinating outlier for the director who would come to be known around the world as the “Master of Suspense.”

In THE FARMER’S WIFE (1928), an aging widower (Jameson Thomas) with a lucrative farm decides to remarry on the occasion of his daughter’s (Diana Napier) own marriage, which has left him an empty nester. Struggling to find the right partner, he enlists the help of his housekeeper Araminta (Lillian Hall-Davis) to find a wife. Romantic (and comedic) entanglements ensue, culminating in the farmer’s realization that his ideal partner (Araminta, of course) has been with him all along.

THE FARMER’S WIFE sees Lillian Hall-Davis return for another collaboration with Hitchcock after starring in his 1927 romantic drama THE RING. The film also marks the fifth collaboration between Hitchcock and screenwriter Eliot Stannard, who provided uncredited contributions to THE RING screenplay, and wrote the scripts for Hitchcock’s films THE PLEASURE GARDEN (1925, the director’s earliest extant film), THE MOUNTAIN EAGLE (1926, lost), THE LODGER: A STORY OF THE LONDON FOG (1927, Hitchcock’s first proper thriller), and DOWNHILL (1928).

A restoration of THE FARMER’S WIFE was completed in 2012 as part of the British Film Institute’s £2 million "Save the Hitchcock 9" project, which aimed to restore all of the director's surviving silent films.

The Kino Lorber DVD and Blu-Ray release of Alfred Hitchcock’s THE FARMER’S WIFE is accompanied by four additional early British films by the director: THE RING (1927), CHAMPAGNE (1928), THE MANXMAN (1929), and THE SKIN GAME (1931).

THE FARMER'S WIFE
(UK, 1928)

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

  • 107 minutes
  • 35mm
  • Black & white
  • Silent film with English intertitles
Distribution Format/s: DVD, Blu-Ray, DSL/Downloadable 1080p .mp4 file on server

Published By: Kino Lorber

Institutional Price: DVD or Blu-Ray Boxset: $400, Single Film DSL Title: $160

To order call: 212.280.8654 or click here for information on ordering by fax, e-mail or post.