Desiring to leave her family’s farm to become a nurse, Katrin Holstrom (Loretta Young) makes her way to Capitol City, only to hit some unfortunate snags on the way. In need of money, she takes a job as a housemaid in the home of Congressman Glenn Morley (Joseph Cotten), who finds himself smitten with the blunt but sweet young Swedish gal. No sooner does she announce her opposing views of Morley’s political party when she becomes a candidate for Congress herself.
Young does a fine job as a first-generation Swedish woman, sweet and resilient despite the lack of opportunity for women without means (compare her Scandinavian lilt to something like Olivia de Havilland in Stanley Kramer’s Not as a Stranger and you’ll see a notable difference in acuity). Cotten doesn’t have much to prove, other than his ability to conjure the semblance of a decent person, while Barrymore is, as always, the no-nonsense sage extolling her formidable wisdom.
Daughter is the English language remake of a 1937 Finnish film, and was later remade in the 1960s as a television film (starring Lee Remick) and a television series (starring Inger Stevens). And while Potter’s title may not be comparable to the likes of Capra’s Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), it does play like the rosy-tinted, impossibly hopeful predecessor of Kazan’s A Face in the Crowd (1957).
If Kazan’s portrait of the dangerousness of the cult of celebrity prophesized the possibility of number 45, then Potter’s film was sixty years ahead of the sentiments which would see the nomination of Sarah Palin as John McCain’s running mate in the 2008 US Presidential election (certain parallels notwithstanding). And if the events of The Farmer’s Daughter seem impossibly naïve, even as it highlights the ruinous gender expectations, the impossible moral high ground of the public sphere and the devious backroom hypocrisies of the political arena, it is a hopeful romantic melodrama which hits all the right notes of an optimistic post-WWII America obsessed with its own virtuousness. We want to believe Ethel Barrymore’s Republican matriarch would have the humanity to call her candidate out on his racism and xenophobia (which Laura Kerr and Allen Rivken’s script outlines with terrifying accuracy in one late-staged bit of dialogue)—and we’d like to believe in the possibility of a character like Joseph Cotten’s congressman, who values the reputation of the woman more than his own.
And even as our cynical, overwhelmed selves continue to balk at the incredulity of the freefall regression of American in 2018, the power of films like The Farmer’s Daughter allows us to see how there was once an endearing hopefulness we could tap into…and while utterly fantastic even as a remnant from a bygone era, there’s still pleasure and motivation to be had in the participation of or the glorification of doing the right thing.
Film Rating: ★★★/☆☆☆☆☆
Disc Rating: ★★★/☆☆☆☆☆
