I like Loretta Young, I really do. But I watched this weird exercise in agitprop because I'm a bigger fan of Joseph Cotten. I wish I hadn't wasted my time.
Young is a nice girl from a Swedish farm family (I thought I'd like it because I come from poor, country farm stock). On her way to "Capital City" to learn nursing she's cheated out of all the money she has ($75) by a sleazy sign painter and has to take the first job available, which happens to be a maid for very nice, rich politicos. Isn't that life for you? And she falls for the son of the family, a young Congressman himself, who returns her affection.
So far, it's a story that could happen to anyone across this great land of ours.
Young won an Oscar but she's given better performances, including one that very same year. Rosalind Russell was expected to win for "Mourning Becomes Electra" but that movie should have been called "The Big Snooze." Did anyone ever make it through "Mourning Becomes Electra" without so much as a doze?
Young the maid and her boss Cotten quibble over issues for which Cotten's character, a Young but professional politician slowly climbing that greasy pole, has no ready answer (I could have answered it as a member of an informed electorate but the movie people even back in 1947 believed leftists had the right answers and people who disagreed must ipso facto be at a loss, which is simply stupid).
But when she reads what's meant to be a serious speech praising the League of Nations, it's eye-rollingly ridiculous. It would be laughable if someone hadn't thought it was a pious, self-righteously oh-so-serious we might be in church and her face should glow.
It naturally gets all its facts wrong. The League of nations was proposed by that war-mongering autocratic Woodrow Wilson, but after the horrors of the Great War the "little people" (as leftists and Hollywood like to think of the rest of us) wanted to wash our hands of further European involvement. It was a silly idea and anyone who reads a history of the League will see it was a contributing factor in the next European war. In 1947 that bit was no doubt thrown in as a sop to the United Nations (which Solzenhitsyn rightfully described as the "United Regimes" since so many of its members cling to power by holding their people at gunpoint).
At that point I got kind of queasy and stopped watching; but I'd seen most of it. As I understand it, this Swedish non-Nightingale (since she abandoned nursing) ran for office and won. Good for her. Only in America.
A probable political Oscar win was the result of Young's silly attempt at a Swedish accent. But as the other nominees after Young and Russelll were Susan Hayward, Joan Crawford and Dorothy McGuire for movies I haven't seen, I admit that's supposition.
After the mendacious paean to Woodrow Wilson I guessed they awarded Young (though she did better work as the title character in "The Bishop's Wife": holding her own against Cary Grant was a tougher proposition than against Joseph Cotten) a sort of "honorary best actress award" thinking the UN (in movie terms, "League of Nations II"; it's an idea that failed once so we'll try it again) would stop wars. But Truman's Korean conflict, which my father got caught up in, was right around the corner. And JFK's Vietnam. And . . . But this sort of movie was written by the sort of people who cried when the Berlin Wall fell and deny freedom protesters died at Tiananmen Square.
Overall, I favor this woman's climb to power to Mildred Pierce's, but I don't like the movie. It's supposed to be a comedy, but that just means a lot of chweriness and a happy ending, unless you consider Cotten falling through the ice, and a long-signalled fall at that, to be the height of hilarity. To me, nothing in this movie comes near a line from a Thin Man movie where the maid comes in and calmly announces, "The swimming pool is on fire."
"The Farmer's Daughter" is light-head-- . . . Oops, I mean lighthearted but it's not fun unless you slavishly agree with its simple-minded politics. Otherwise, you're the enemy in its crosshairs. Even if you're poor, small-town, farm-stock "little people" like me.
Young is a nice girl from a Swedish farm family (I thought I'd like it because I come from poor, country farm stock). On her way to "Capital City" to learn nursing she's cheated out of all the money she has ($75) by a sleazy sign painter and has to take the first job available, which happens to be a maid for very nice, rich politicos. Isn't that life for you? And she falls for the son of the family, a young Congressman himself, who returns her affection.
So far, it's a story that could happen to anyone across this great land of ours.
Young won an Oscar but she's given better performances, including one that very same year. Rosalind Russell was expected to win for "Mourning Becomes Electra" but that movie should have been called "The Big Snooze." Did anyone ever make it through "Mourning Becomes Electra" without so much as a doze?
Young the maid and her boss Cotten quibble over issues for which Cotten's character, a Young but professional politician slowly climbing that greasy pole, has no ready answer (I could have answered it as a member of an informed electorate but the movie people even back in 1947 believed leftists had the right answers and people who disagreed must ipso facto be at a loss, which is simply stupid).
But when she reads what's meant to be a serious speech praising the League of Nations, it's eye-rollingly ridiculous. It would be laughable if someone hadn't thought it was a pious, self-righteously oh-so-serious we might be in church and her face should glow.
It naturally gets all its facts wrong. The League of nations was proposed by that war-mongering autocratic Woodrow Wilson, but after the horrors of the Great War the "little people" (as leftists and Hollywood like to think of the rest of us) wanted to wash our hands of further European involvement. It was a silly idea and anyone who reads a history of the League will see it was a contributing factor in the next European war. In 1947 that bit was no doubt thrown in as a sop to the United Nations (which Solzenhitsyn rightfully described as the "United Regimes" since so many of its members cling to power by holding their people at gunpoint).
At that point I got kind of queasy and stopped watching; but I'd seen most of it. As I understand it, this Swedish non-Nightingale (since she abandoned nursing) ran for office and won. Good for her. Only in America.
A probable political Oscar win was the result of Young's silly attempt at a Swedish accent. But as the other nominees after Young and Russelll were Susan Hayward, Joan Crawford and Dorothy McGuire for movies I haven't seen, I admit that's supposition.
After the mendacious paean to Woodrow Wilson I guessed they awarded Young (though she did better work as the title character in "The Bishop's Wife": holding her own against Cary Grant was a tougher proposition than against Joseph Cotten) a sort of "honorary best actress award" thinking the UN (in movie terms, "League of Nations II"; it's an idea that failed once so we'll try it again) would stop wars. But Truman's Korean conflict, which my father got caught up in, was right around the corner. And JFK's Vietnam. And . . . But this sort of movie was written by the sort of people who cried when the Berlin Wall fell and deny freedom protesters died at Tiananmen Square.
Overall, I favor this woman's climb to power to Mildred Pierce's, but I don't like the movie. It's supposed to be a comedy, but that just means a lot of chweriness and a happy ending, unless you consider Cotten falling through the ice, and a long-signalled fall at that, to be the height of hilarity. To me, nothing in this movie comes near a line from a Thin Man movie where the maid comes in and calmly announces, "The swimming pool is on fire."
"The Farmer's Daughter" is light-head-- . . . Oops, I mean lighthearted but it's not fun unless you slavishly agree with its simple-minded politics. Otherwise, you're the enemy in its crosshairs. Even if you're poor, small-town, farm-stock "little people" like me.