The Farmer's Wife

Hitchcock's warmest and funniest film — a gentle rural comedy that reveals a side of the Master of Suspense that audiences rarely got to see. After his wife's death, a prosperous middle-aged farmer decides to remarry, drawing up a list of eligible women in the district and proposing to each in turn, only to be rejected with escalating comedy and diminishing dignity. Hitchcock mines the humor from English rural manners with affectionate precision, and the performances — particularly Gordon Harker as the dry, long-suffering handyman — are delightful. The film moves at a leisurely, countrified pace that couldn't be further from the thrillers that made Hitchcock famous, and that's precisely its charm. A reminder that the man who gave us Psycho and The Birds could also observe ordinary English life with warmth, humor, and genuine tenderness.