This is a charming and funny Hitchcock Silent. It has heart, is well cast, and features wonderful and delightful performances.

Particularly hilarious is when Sweetland goes a-callin' to never's-been-married Thirza Tapper, the second wife prospect on his list. That's one repressed-to-the-max uptight woman! lol about her supposed what she considers "sex challenge" (her words).

The movie's leads, Jameson Thomas and Lillian Hall-Davis, are perfect in their roles. Beautiful Miss Hall-Davis is luminous as Sweetland's devoted longtime housekeeper Minta who silently loves him.

It's truly tragic that Miss Hall-Davis committed suicide (combination of sticking head in gas oven and slitting throat) five years after this came out. Young, very attractive, vibrant, and genuinely talented, she seems like someone who had so very much to live for. She was just 35.

Many public domain prints of this film exist, looking awful in cheapie DVDs compilations of Hitchcock's early made-in-England movies. Bypass those inferior The Farmer's Wife prints and seek out, instead, the 2012 restored print that TCM (Turner Classic Movies) periodically airs. It runs 98 minutes, has beautiful perfect picture quality, includes a well-suited dedicated recent-years-added piano score, and the film's projection speed (thus pacing) is ideal.

That's the only way you'll get the accurate fully positive impression of this movie that the film deserves. Otherwise, in creaky public domain form, the 59% rating that both TMDb and IMDb currently show is about right, as in public domain the image is washed out, hazy, jumpy, spotty, draggy, doesn't fill the screen properly, and there's random ill-suited public domain music tacked on that simply doesn't "go". The mentioned issues most definitely seriously detract, and collectively suck the life out of this charming film.

In restored form, on the other hand, I rate The Farmer's Wife 8 out of 10.

See this article about the movie and its high-quality 2012 restoration.

Please check out the following list of titles and celebrities I've created TMDb threads for: https://www.themoviedb.org/list/118052