The Farmer's Wife

In the late 1920s, having just wedded Alma Reville, marriage was clearly at the forefront of Alfred Hitchcock's mind as he adapted this play be Eden Phillpotts about a farmer who, after the passing of his wife and the marriage of his daughter, seeks to find a new wife within the small group of eligible women within his village. Farmer Samuel Sweetland (Jameson Thomas) is by and large a good man, though he has difficulty in expressing himself, often fails to see what is directly in front of him and has a heightened ego. Still, he means well. After his wife's death, in which her last words are reminding the maid (Lillian Hall-Davis, returning from The Ring) to air out her master's pants, Minta the maid takes over all of the wife's duties as well as her own. Once the farmer's daughter has been given away, Minta is given one more job to do, help Sweetland find a wife, so the two of them sit down and make a list of the four potential candidates.

The Ring (1927)

Although this wasn't Hitchcock's first film (he made at least five before this one, although at least one of those in deemed 'lost' [1926's The Mountain Eagle] and another two unfinished [Number 13 and Always Tell Your Wife, from 1922 and 1923 respectively]) The Ring is the earliest one I can get my hands on at present, so my travels through the history of Hitch will have to begin here. Telling the story of an amateur boxer working at a carnival who gets a shot at the big time after he is scouted by a renowned heavyweight, The Ring almost knocked me out for being a Hitchcock film about one of the least Hitchcockian subjects, sport.