Loretta Young received her first Oscar nomination and won the Oscar for playing Katherine Holstrom a young farm girl who moves to the big city to become a nurse only to then become a maid to a wealthy political family whose bright young congressman poster boy(Joseph Cotton) ends up falling in love with her. Eventually she gets persuaded to run for office against her love interest's political party and becomes a dark horse in the race.
Loretta Young apparently didn't have a chance in hell of winning Best Actress this year but she won beating all the odds. In a field which seemed to be filled with dramatic heavyweights it's not too surprising Young's charming and romantic performance pulled off an upset in addition to the fact that everybody loves an underdog which fit her character and her status in the race which voters must have been won over by.
The Farmer's Daughter is a pretty hokey film that like To Each His Own is pretty implausible but is still interesting and entertaining. It's a bit simplistic and rather dated but it still holds up today at least for me.
Young portrays Katrin with charm, intelligence, and radiance. She presents Katrin as a strong independently minded person who is blunt and straightforward simply because she's never known anything else. Her dedication towards becoming a nurse as well as her determination to make a better life for herself are aspects of her character that Young plays very well even though the film ends up throwing them out due to wanting a romance between Young's character and the male lead Glenn. Despite this rather old fashioned plot change Loretta Young still is wonderful to watch, showing a radiance and beauty that inhabits Katrin as she falls in love with Glenn whether it be her excitement at seeing him after so long or her feelings of pleasure and longing when the two spend time together. Both she and Cotton have good chemistry on screen due to the obvious contrasts in their characters given how each of those contrasts compliments the other. She also captures Katrin's sense of integrity and strength when it comes to politics even if it is clear that she definitely is not a political climber and only wants to run out of an obligation for what she thinks is right. When things go downhill for her and when her relationship with Glenn goes south Young makes us see her character's pain and hurt at her love's betrayal and then afterwards her joy at expressing the love she has for Glenn at last in addition to her joy of being given his love in return.
The second half of the film does get a bit too ridiculous and simplistic but it's so harmless and charming that it doesn't really effect Young's performance. I don't want to overpraise the performance as it really isn't anything that grabs hold of the screen but it's a charming and well played performance with wonderful simplicity and just the right amount of depth for material like this. An unfairly disliked performance at least to me.
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