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Not much happens in The Farmer Takes a Wife. The things that do—Molly Larkins' failure to get her preserves entered for competition in the Oneida Fair; Dan Harrow's fight with the canal bully (Charles Bickford)—perhaps convey the picture's flavor less satisfactorily than a speech by Dan's friend, Fortune Friendly (Slim Summerville), boater, philosopher, gossip and amateur dentist. At Molly's request, because of the effect that she hopes it will have on Dan, he tells about the gala ceremonies that attended the opening of the canal: "There were cannon strung out all along the canal and the minute the water began to come in from Lake Erie, the guns went off one by one all the way to New York. They had the news there in 80 minutes. . . . The first barge carried a keg with the American eagle painted on it, and in it was water from Lake Erie to be .emptied in New York Bay. It was quite a sight to see. . . ." Cinemaddicts who see The Fanner Takes a Wife are likely to agree.
Jalna (RKO). Without formal plot construction, the purpose of this almost aggressively quiet picture may elude the cinemaddict until his senses become sharp enough to realize that he is seeing unfolded, not a story, but the portrait of a family. Mazo de la Roche's prize Atlantic Monthly novel was not easy to screen. It propounded two difficult requirements— literate adaptation and perfect casting. Producer Kenneth MacGowan met both successfully. Gran (Jessie Ralph), about to celebrate her 100th birthday, is the hub around which the Whiteoaks revolve in their Ontario fastness—serious Renny (Ian Hunter), impressive Nicholas (C. Aubrey Smith), practical Piers (Theodore Newton) and adolescent Finch (George Offerman Jr.). When Sonnet-Scribbler Eden (David Manners) brings home a bride (Kay Johnson) amid Gran's yells, the screams of the Jalna parrot and the barking of dogs, Piers steals his thunder by appearing with a bride of his own (Molly Lamont). Action consists of the initiation of the two women into the rituals of the eccentric clan, reactions which for Eden's wife involve a new love, and for Piers's wife a momentary and quickly corrected rebellion.
The best tribute to Jalna's success in establishing a mood is the sense one has at the end of the atmosphere of the house, momentarily agitated by the life pangs of a new generation, settling again over its people like 'an unshining heavy fluid: births, deaths, anniversaries; Gran, at her centenary, demanding a candle to grow on, tasting the punch, tiring of lace caps, lumbering into the Buick ("We've got to get a bigger car"), starting the Jalna Christmas song (Ring Merrily Bells, Ding Dong), preparing to say with a leer to some new, as yet un-jalna-ed woman: "You've a bonny body, well covered but not too plump—just right for a bride."
* The "boot," onetime official torture in China and Japan to extract confessions from thieves, is a contraption of boards which fits over the victim's foot, screws together like a vise to crunch his bones.