1928 Silent comedy
- • UK • BW • 100mins •
- Jameson Thomas Samuel Sweetland
- Lillian Hall-Davis Araminta Dench
- Gordon Harker Churdles Ash
- Gibb McLaughlin Henry Coaker
- Maud Gill Thirza Tapper
- Louie Pounds Widow Windeatt
- Dir:
- Scr:
- Eliot Stannard, from the play by Eden Phillpotts, from the novel Widecombe Fair by Eden Phillpotts
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Classification: NR
- Adapted from his own novel, Widecombe Fair, Eden Phillpott's play had been a long-running hit in the West End before Alfred Hitchcock translated it to the screen.
Essentially, it's a comedy of rural manners, as widower Jameson Thomas alights on the village's eligible spinsters before coming to appreciate the charms of his loyal housekeeper, Lilian Hall-Davis. But Hitchcock adds a veneer of social suspense that renders the farmer's search as much a study in gender and class as a melodramatic romance. Moreover, there's also plenty of coarse clowning from Gordon Harker, as Thomas's gauche handyman.
Basil Sidney headlined the 1940 remake
