The Enchanted Cottage

I haven't seen the more famous remake, but the original silent movie is a delight.

Richard Barthelmess was quite the prolific actor during the 1910s and 1920s. He's often remembered as kind, heroic characters, but here he plays a thoughtless, bitter WWI veteran whose injuries have left him disabled. He is transformed (inside and out) by love from and for a lonely young woman whose plain looks belie her compassion. May Macavoy plays the woman and is tender in her role.

Both make a pair of moving screen lovers. The film is a little slow and sometimes a bit heavy on sentimentality, but charming and sweet regardless. I even teared up towards the end!

His body twisted and crippled by the Great War, Richard Barthelmess retreats to the cottage of blinded Major Holmes Herbert to live out his misanthropic existence far from the sight of anyone. But his butch sister, Florence Short, in order not be be married, proposes to come and tend him. In desperation, Barthelmess proposes awkwardly to poor, homely May McAvoy. It's rough at first, but then in the cottage, which has been the honeymoon site for couple for a quarter of a millennium, a strange transformation occurs. They realize Miss Mcvoy is beautiful, and that Barthelmess is strong.

Arthur Wing Pinero's play about the transformation of love, and what beauty and strength really are, is brought beautifully to the screen under the direction of John S. Robertson. It demonstrates the seriousness of actors in the silent era, that they were willing to appear on the screen in modes that were less than flattering to their looks. The movie is greatly affecting. I teared up at the ending, which is not something that every movie can accomplish, and which the 1945 talkie version starring Dorothy Maguire and Robert Young did not make me do. The score by the Monte Alto Orchestra is excellent. My only cavil is that it was a wordy play, and the film makers could not figure out how to make it much less wordy. There were far too many titles for Ed Lorusso's 26th Kickstarter-funded dvd.

Still, I am very glad to renew my acquaintance with this silent movie in a superior, although slightly soft print. I'm looking forward to no. 27!

Wounded serving in "The Great War" (World War I), formerly handsome Richard Barthelmess (as Oliver Bashforth) hobbles around the house with a cane. His misshapen body has caused him to forbid mirrors, lest he be reminded of his changed appearance. Despite this statement, a mirror prominently appears on the screen, showing Mr. Barthelmess his sad reflection. Depressed after seeing his wartime sweetheart fall in love with an able-bodied man, Barthelmess decides to move out of his parents' estate, to a small cottage. Still, he is pestered by mannish sister Florence Short (as Ethel), who continually feels she must "look after" Barthelmess.

To ward off Ms. Short, who he fears is about to move in with him, Barthelmess proposes to homely May McAvoy (as Laura Pennington), a woman he's acquainted with through blind friend Holmes Herbert (as Major Hillgrove). Even blind, Mr. Holmes knows Ms. McAvoy is ugly because, "We sense what other people see." But, McAvoy is kind, and agrees to become companion to Barthelmess, through marriage. The pitiful newlyweds take care of each other, but hide from most people - with the exception of blind friend Holmes. Together, they find "The Enchanted Cottage" they live in was home to 300 years of honeymooning lovers.

Like the spirits of couples roaming around the cottage, Barthelmess and McAvoy fall in love. Then, something magical changes their disfiguring appearances. McAvoy abruptly loses her overbite and crooked nose (shown in dramatic profile dissolve). Barthelmess exclaims, "How blind I've been - you are beautiful!" Then he stands up straight as she exclaims, "You are wonderful to me!" The newly attractive pair are deliriously happy, of course. They share the miracle of their appearance with blind friend Holmes. After considering Holmes' counsel, Barthelmess and McAvoy decode to reveal their newly-found beauty to his family…

This leads to the film's most dramatic scene, which you really should see for yourself. The Arthur Wing Pinero story, re-made with Robert Young and Dorothy McGuire in 1945, is indeed enchanting. This version benefits from the appearance of two great stars who successfully left their respective "nests" - Barthelmess from Griffith, McAvoy from DeMille - and found good roles. Here, McAvoy is most successful, due to the nose and teeth work looking extraordinarily realistic (possibly helped by a fuzzy print, but still). Barthelmess fares less well, apparently stricken with the paralytic disorder Lon Chaney suffered in "Flesh and Blood" (1922).

Directed by John S. Robertson, "The Enchanted Cottage" was the ninth best film of the year, per "Motion Picture" magazine.

****** The Enchanted Cottage (3/24/24) John S. Robertson ~ Richard Barthelmess, May McAvoy, Holmes Herbert, Florence Short

As in the sound film, the basic story is that of a man scarred and maimed in war (Richard Barthelmess as Oliver) who wants to escape his family and so he hides away in an enchanted inn where honeymooning couples have stayed in the past. He becomes friends with the homely girl who lives nearby (May McAvoy as Laura). When his domineering sister tries to force herself back into his life, Oliver asks Laura to marry him, since his relatives are less likely to interfere in the life of a married adult. He does make it clear to her that this is a practical arrangement, although she actually loves Oliver. But then, after they are married, they notice that they are physically transformed - she is beautiful, he is whole. Is it the magic of the cottage or something else? Complications ensue.

The sound version has much more character development in spite of both films being of roughly the same length. In this silent version, you never get to see Oliver as a healthy man looking forward to life after the war, and thus the contrast. His fiancee is given little space too, and instead Oliver is running away from the domination of some mannish sister who isn't even a character in the sound version. As boorish as the sister is I'm surprised Oliver's mother and father didn't run away as well! Also, this Laura doesn't seem as gloomy as the McGuire's rendition of the character. I really don't feel her loneliness here. In fact she seems to be a somewhat joyous character who plays with the local children. And finally, Mrs. Minnett, who gives a good explanation of what has been going on as far as the transformation in the sound film, and is an important supporting character throughout, is barely present here.

It's still worthwhile viewing, especially in its restored state. And it was interesting to see McAvoy in something besides The Jazz Singer, in which she was only allowed to give puzzled looks at various points as the love interest. Apparently Vitaphone was not kind to her voice and she was out of a job by 1930. She did return to film in a series of bit parts starting in 1940.

'The Enchanted Cottage' is a delicate little drama that flirts at the edges of fantasy. Cleverly, this film evokes the aura of the supernatural without ever making clear whether it's actually here or not.

The film actor Richard Barthelmess engages me intellectually but not emotionally. I've never yet seen a Barthelmess performance that convinced me he actually was the character he was playing. Yet he always impresses me with the effort he clearly takes in his characterisations. This is especially clear in his best-known role, as the meek Chinese emigrant in 'Broken Blossoms'. Not for one instant did I accept Barthelmess as a Chinese, yet he works hard and impresses me favourably.

In 'The Enchanted Cottage', alas, Bathelmess seems to be doing a bad imitation of Lon Chaney. Barthelmess plays Oliver Bashforth(!), a shell-shocked veteran of the Great War. He was wounded in combat, but the inter-titles are very imprecise about the nature of his injury. As Bashforth, Bathelmess stoops over and wears raccoonish eye makeup. Very distressingly, he keeps making V-signs with both his hands, like some demented Winston Churchill. This is meant to indicate some sort of physical handicap, though I'm not aware of any injury that causes its victim to make V-signs. Harvey Smith syndrome, perhaps? In one scene, Barthelmess crouches in front of a full-length mirror and bitterly confronts his own deformed reflection: he seems to be imitating the scene in 'A Blind Bargain' when Chaney as the Ape-man discovers his own reflection.

The leading lady in this movie is May McAvoy. May McAvoy was one of the most beautiful actresses in silent films. Here, she portrays a plain-faced spinster named Laura Pennington. The makeup artist has given McAvoy an extremely convincing overbite and a putty job to make her face less attractive. I usually dislike it when a beautiful actress is uglified so that she can play a role that could have gone to a less attractive actress. Here, for once, the device is valid.

Bashforth, allegedly deformed by his injuries and wallowing in self-pity, flees to a secluded cottage so he'll have no visitors. His sister Ethel persists in visiting so she can tend him. Bashforth enters into a sham marriage with unattractive Laura, solely as a ploy so that his sister will go away.

Bashforth and Laura discover that the cottage has a long history as a honeymoon cottage; lovers have trysted there for more than two centuries. Gradually, Bashforth and Laura fall in love. As this happens, they subjectively become more attractive. He loses his deformities, whilst Laura becomes more beautiful and starts looking like May McAvoy. The film subtly persuades us that this is a subjective transformation rather than an actual change. Bashforth's and Laura's only neighbour is a retired major (very well played by Holmes Herbert) who's blind, so he 'sees' the couple in terms of their personalities, not their physical appearance.

SPOILERS COMING. All is well until sister Ethel returns with her fiancé Rupert and Rupert's mother. By now, Bashforth and Laura are so good-looking, they could be a couple of matinée idols. When they come down the stairs into the parlour, there is a beautiful dissolve shot as their physical appearance melts back into what it was at the beginning of the film. He is again deformed, she is again plain and buck-toothed.

This is a beautiful and subtle film, made more so because we never quite know how much of this is genuine fantasy, and how much of it merely the fancies of the on-screen characters. But the effect is sadly undercut by some extremely maudlin inter-titles. This was an ongoing hazard of silent films, as the titles were often written by someone completely unrelated to the production of the film in which the titles appeared, and often the tone of the latter contrasted with the former. I'll rate 'The Enchanted Cottage' 7 out of 10.