The Farmer's Wife

Having the ability to do something and having the capability to do it well are not the same thing. Gordon Ramsay may be able to run a kitchen, but I doubt he'd make much of a therapist. The members of Slayer are accomplished musicians, Grammy winners no less, but I don't think I'd care to hear the guys who wrote "Dead Skin Mask" perform "Tears In Heaven". And Alfred Hitchcock, though he has many movies which are deserving of being called masterpieces, and is one of the most heralded directors ever, a director still being imitated and analyzed 100 years removed from his first directorial effort, sucks at comedy. He had a knack for slipping in some gallows humor every now and again. Moments of humor, key word there being "moments". Because his efforts at doing outright, front-to-back comedies were almost always dreadful. Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Champagne, The Trouble With Harry, and this, The Farmer's Wife, all show a director who just can't capture or sustain humor as the driving force of the movie. Because there is nothing funny about watching a man go all over town, acting like a right jackass as he begs women he hasn't even begun to court for marriage, and gets indignant when his utter lack of charm, arrogance, and boorish behavior is somehow fails to land him a new missus. The Farmer's Wife isn't funny, it definitely isn't romantic, and it isn't enjoyable. It's far too long spent with far too miserable a main character, all for an ending anybody with a brain stem can see coming in the first fifteen minutes. Too bad, you got an hour and thirty five minutes to get there, and it is insufferable, especially when, at the end, it seems to tack on this flagrant foul of a moral the movie has not earned. If you're doing a Hitchcock completionist run like I am, then that's the only acceptable reason to watch this, and you should do so very, very early in your run, so as to get it out of the way. Best to establish the floor early on. Otherwise, there is no point for any self-respecting lover of cinema to endure this.