The Farmer's Wife (1928)/The Manxman (1926)

  Seeing how much you guys liked the last collection of films I did, I thought I'd try it again with the Alfred Hitchcock Legacy Collection.  This is a much more manageable number, though, with only 20 movies instead of 50.  They're all Hitchcock, mostly his super-early stuff.  I already saw The Lady Vanishes through Netflix so I skipped it and went for the second one.

The Farmer's Wife is about a widowed farmer (Jameson Thomas) who decides to remarry.  He wanders around his village, proposing to the unmarried women.  However, he finds the prospects to be an exercise in humility as he is turned down again and again.  Finally, he realizes that his best bet is his housekeeper Araminta (Lillian Hall Davis).

Frankly, this was a snoozefest.  It's not particularly clever or funny and it drags on for far too long.  There is very little of the signature wit and a lot of reliance on British country stereotypes.  Give this one a miss.

  This was a much more lively and engaging story, even if I'd seen some variation of it before. 

Two best friends are in love with the same girl.  Pete (Carl Brisson) decides to work his passage to Africa in order to make his fortune.  Before he leaves, he wrings a promise from Kate (Anny Ondra) that she will wait for him.  He asks his best friend Phil (Malcolm Keen) to watch over her while he's gone.  Phil and Kate spend hours and days in close proximity and then, deliverance.  They get a telegram saying that Pete has died.  As sad as they are to have lost a friend, they're also happy they can finally be together.  Except, of course, Pete isn't dead.  He comes back none the wiser about the two of them and Phil convinces Kate to stand by her promise and marry the guy. 

And he's a great guy, that's the shitty part.  If he was an asshole or beat her or humiliated her in public, they would have had no problem declaring their love for each other and telling him to shove off.  But he's not.  He treats Kate like a queen, is good-tempered, and a good provider.  He's even over the moon when he finds out Kate's knocked up.  Apparently they don't teach math in the Isle of Man.

This is much more in line with Hitchcock's later works, being funny in a darkly sad sort of way and having a strong moral bent.  It puts duty over love, the ultimate "Bros before hos" with dire consequences for failing to adhere to that code.