The Farmer's Daughter Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		4.0

The Farmer's Daughter Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Dr. Stephen Larson February 12, 2019

It's hard to think of another actor who appeared in more great films in a single decade than Joseph Cotten did during the forties. Even more remarkable is that this heralded period began at the very beginning of Cotten's career. It certainly got off to a bang with Citizen Kane (1941) and continued with The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), Shadow of a Doubt (1943), Gaslight (1943), Duel in the Sun (1947), Portrait of Jennie (1948), and The Third Man (1949) (not to mention several others that can be categorized as near-great or high-quality). (Note: Cotten's acting debut came not in Welles's fictional portrayal of Hearst but in the wunderkind's silent comedy, Too Much Johnson (1938), which was restored six years ago and is available on Blu-ray in the UK.)

The Farmer's Daughter (1947) isn't on the same level as the above but it gave Cotten a chance to show his comic touch in a political comedy. He's the second billed star behind Loretta Young, who portrays the daughter of Swedish-American immigrants that own a large farm in Minnesota. This is a movie about detours and conversions. Katrin "Katie" Holstrom (Loretta Young) yearns to leave her father's farm for a nursing career. Her trek is derailed when she gets involved with an unscrupulous country sign painter who swindles her. Basically left for broke, Katie gets a job as a maid working at an affluent Capital City home. While there she serves Agatha Morley (Ethel Barrymore), widow of the state's most successful senator, and her congressman son, Senator Glenn Morley (Joseph Cotten). Katie and Glenn are attracted to each other but the congressman already has a girlfriend, the political reporter Virginia Thatcher (Rose Hobart). The plot is further complicated by the fact that Katie wants to enter politics herself and voices her opinion that the minimum wage should be raised. At a town-hall meeting of A. J. Finley (whose backed by Morley), Katie stands up and gets into a constructive debate. Soon Katie is running for the same seat as Finley, which leaves Morley torn between party loyalty and his love for Katie.

Can Glenn and Katie still unite in spite of rival political affiliations?

RKO Pictures initially titled this picture Katie for Congress but my research indicates the original title didn't forecast strong box-office prospects so it was changed to The Farmer's Daughter. Screenwriters Allen Rivken and Laura Kerr adapted it from a 1937 Finnish play by Hella Wuolijoki (who went by the pen name of Juhani Tervapää). I first became interested in the film because Cotten is one of my favorite actors of the classical Hollywood era. It also piqued my curiosity since two films by director H.C. Potter—Beloved Enemy (1936) and The Cowboy and the Lady (1938)—were shot by Gregg Toland. This is the fourth film of Young's that I've seen and she carries the film as much if not more than Cotten. She delivers a passable Swedish accent and I learned from an original reviewer (who was probably referencing the movie's program booklet) that Ingrid Bergman's vocal coach also gave Young dialect lessons for this film. Marjory Adams, then the film critic for the Boston Globe, praised Young for separating herself from prior roles: "Miss Young in the past has played roles in which she was artificial and mannered. As Katrin Holstrom she is down-to-earth, pretty and unaffected as to speech. You feel she is a convincing Katie who could be the center of such astounding happenings without any help from Hollywood." As a native Minnesotan, I easily identified with the expansive Midwestern farmland depicted in the film. The Minneapolis-based paper, the Star Tribune, assigned its film critic Bob Murphy to review The Farmer's Daughter in May 1947. Murphy all-but confirms that it was filmed in my home state. "[T]he urban scenes seem to be a composite of Minneapolis and St. Paul. Yet there is never a definite identification of the terrain, although it is pictured as quite representative of this area."

The Farmer's Daughter Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

At last, The Farmer's Daughter makes its US premiere on Blu-ray courtesy of Kino Lorber's subsidiary, Studio Classics, on this MPEG-4 AVC-encoded BD-25. (For years, I just waited for an official DVD release.) The 1.33:1 presentation appears sourced from a 2K restoration and looks solid all the way thru. Cinematographer Milton Krasner captures many picture-postcard images. He lenses wide and spacious areas in the palatial Morley home (see Screenshot #s 4 and 10). Grayscale, black levels, and overall detail each rate very good. Occasionally, the image displays some white specks (see towards the left corner of #3). They are a frequent occurrence in the penultimate reel. There's often a trail of grain scattered across the center of the frame that makes the image flicker somewhat. In other words, the grain structure isn't the most stable. For a film that's over seventy years old, Kino has done a commendable job with what they've had to work with. The feature carries a mean video bitrate of 25150 kbps.

Kino has accommodated the 97-minute feature with eight chapter markers.

The Farmer's Daughter Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Kino supplies the movie's original monaural as a DTS-HD Master Audio Dual Mono (1560 kbps, 16-bit). While the authoring and encode are merely average, the sound track sounds fairly clean. Spoken words are mainly intelligible and source-related limitations don't drown them out. Composer Leigh Harline's score sounds like one written for a melodrama and it's instrumentation is warmly rendered on this recording. Overall, the master is in very fine condition.

Optional English SDH are available.

The Farmer's Daughter Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Audio Commentary by Film Historian Lee Gambin - Gambin's track gets off on the wrong foot with the historian uttering a plethora of vocalized pauses. He isn't scripted verbatim and I feared that he didn't have his notes by his side but once he gets more into the film and its participants, the commentary picks up a lot of momentum. It frequently is not screen-specific as he delivers a wealth of info and anecdotes about the stars, especially Loretta Young (who he could write a biography about). Gambin is particularly knowledgeable about what occurred in her real-life affairs. In English, not subtitled.

• Theatrical Trailer - a so-so copy of the original theatrical trailer for The Farmer's Daughter.

• Bonus Trailers - a slew of other trailers for Old Hollywood titles.

The Farmer's Daughter Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

I had only seen The Farmer's Daughter aired on Turner Classic so I was very pleased when Kino announced it would bring it to Blu-ray. The transfer has its share of blemishes but upon screening it twice, the picture is still very watchable. Lee Gambin's commentary is slow to get going but once it does, he packs a lot of good material over an hour and a half. This is a classy Hollywood production that will appeal to fans of Capra's State of the Union (1948), Ford's The Last Hurrah (1958), and Reiner's The American President (1995). Also, fans of Young and Cotten should definitely add it to their collections. A VERY SOLID RECOMMENDATION for this long-awaited Blu-ray.