The Substitute Wife Why this movie isn’t screened more often I can’t understand. It was delicately and sensitively played by all the actors, and incorporated a gamut of emotions from comedy to pathos, but never becoming over-sentimental, gushy, or stodgy.
The problems of males “getting spliced” on the Prairies in the mid 19th century, must have been difficult to solve at any time considering there were about ten men to one woman. For a widower with a bunch of kids in tow it would have been virtually impossible, particularly if he was a sod-buster…the lowest of the low in farming circles.
This was beautifully and amusingly solved by the dying wife, by arranging impending nuptials between her soon to be bereaved husband and a whore looking for a way out of her present predicament.
The film is strikingly, if not lavishly photographed, has an intelligent well crafted script, which makes all the points it can out of a rather thin plot, and some lovely accompanying music to boot.
It may not appeal to others as much as it did to me, but it’s well worth a watch, and I also think worthy of a place in anyone’s library.
