The Farmer's Daughter (1947)

Second viewing; first seen on January 4, 1994.

The titular character leaves her parents' farm for nursing school in Capital City (I am guessing this is Washington, D.C.). She loses her money and thus has to work as a maid for a rich politician. She is very opinionated and makes an impression.

Liberal ideas aren't always aligned with populist ones. In fact, I suspect they are really on opposite ends of the political spectrum, most of the time. However, when it comes to selling liberal ideas, they must be coated with a populist veneer. See, for instance, how billionaires are trying to get Immigration Amnesty passed in the U.S.A. by appealing to humanitarian instincts and the like. The Farmer's Daughter is a good example of those tactics. It is based on a play by an Estonian-born Finnish authoress who was a spy for the Soviet Union (need I say more?). As for the screenwriters who adapted it, I do not know much about their political leanings, but could make an educated guess. Anyway, the movie's first half is about minimum wages and milk for schoolchildren, and then it becomes something about the Ku Klux Klan, of which the villain, a politician, is a high-ranking official. As a piece of political mythology this film is at least curious, and it works passably as a comedy (it has a very well-made brawling-and-mayhem sequence near the end). Also curious is that the female lead won an Oscar for it, and was a life-long Republican.

Rating: 43 (up from 30)