Hitchcock was worried that the stage roots of The Farmer's Wife . . . might show through in his film adaptation. It was a needless worry. This semi-comic story of a widowed farmer's attempts to find himself a new wife is shot, as Fran.ois Truffaut observed, “like a thriller.” The camera, on occasion handled by Hitch himself, observes the action cinematically. . . .Each prospective wife-the horsy one, the hysterical one, the high-spirited one-is presented as a comic stereotype. Rejected by each, the farmer ultimately discovers what has been literally staring him-and the audience-in the face all the time: his young, attractive, and devoted housekeeper.