DVD Review: The Farmer’s Daughter (1947)
The Farmer’s Daughter
Directed by H.C. Potter. Cast: Loretta Young, Joseph Cotton, Ethel Barrymore, Charles Bickford, Rose Hobart, Harry Davenport, Thurston Hall, Lex Barker, Tom Powers, James Arness. Released May 26, 1947. Running time: 97 minutes.
KINO continues its ceaseless releasing of vintage films with this blu ray of “The Farmer’s Daughter,” which garnered a Best Actress Oscar for its star, Loretta Young. Up until KINO’s release, “The Farmer’s Daughter” held the distinction of being one of the very few films containing Oscar winning performances that had never been released to DVD or blu ray.
Swedish-born Katie leaves her farm to come to the big city for nursing school. However, she ends up losing all of her savings to a swindler who drives her into town, crashes his car, and gets her to advance him the money for its repair. Of course he has no plans to pay it back, and when she goes to retrieve it, she ends up dousing him with a pitcher of water. Situational humor blends with slapstick to effectively establish the film’s comic rhythm.
Katie has a background in domestic service so in order to make ends meet she accepts a job working in the home of congressman Glenn Morley (Joseph Cotten). Eventually as she works and gets to know Morley, she starts to feel comfortable expressing her opinions and impresses him with her political savvy. Of course the two end up falling in love.
The rights to the original play were purchased originally by David O. Selznick as a possible vehicle for Ingrid Bergman. Some accounts claim that she passed on the role, others state that she was having an affair with leading man Joseph Cotton and was replaced. In any case, “The Farmer’s Daughter” is just the type of film that moviegoers wanted during the post-war era: light, romantic, amusing, and still somewhat pointed. The domestic situations, occasional bursts of slapstick, wittily written political humor, and underlying romance all managed to blend cohesively.
Loretta Young is outstanding in the title role, but, curiously enough, she goes from being very central to the film’s narrative to having very little screen time as the film progresses. The impact of her performance in the portion of the movie in which she appears was so massive, it resulted in an Oscar. Comedy rarely got honored with Academy Awards, the most recent having been Claudette Colbert for “It Happened One Night” thirteen years earlier. Thus, Young’s win was considered something of an upset.
“The Farmer’s Daughter” benefits from a supporting cast that includes a quietly snarling Charles Bickford (who was nominated for an Oscar), and a comfortably uppity Ethel Barrymore. Dotting the smaller roles are such familiar faces as Don Beddoe, Charles Lane, Lex Barker, Charles McGraw, Cy Kendall, and Frank Ferguson.
This long-awaited home video release includes welcome commentary by Lee Gambin of Diabolique magazine, a film historian and expert in cinema studies, having penned books on horror movies, musicals, and sitcoms.
It is available for purchase here: The Farmer’s Daughter from KINO