Il villino incantato

My wife and I love this movie. There is an ugly duckling in all of us but the right person can bring out the swan. This movie brings that out so well. I am my wife's prince charming and she is my Princess. This movie helps us remember that after 15 years of marriage. In the movie we are taken away from our everyday lives to a quiet mysterious cottage. Couples have visited the cottage for hundreds of years, and gone away mysteriously changed and in love. The film creates a strange atmosphere that takes you into the thoughts and feelings of two lonely people. We then witness their magical transformation into happy beautiful people. No matter how hard the outside world tries to take that happiness away from this happy couple, the cottage protects their romance.

This movie moved me the first time I saw it, I was 7 years old. I didn't really understand the plot, but I knew it made me feel so happy inside. Now that 30 have passed, I can see the beauty in this story of love and enchantment. It brings hope to anyone that feels they will never find that special someone. For those of us that have found that special someone, then when you watch this movie, you can be reminded that though there are trying times in every relationship, you can always find that one thing that made you fall in love to begin with.

This is a forgotten gem of a movie that I have only seen two or three times over the years but it's a well made romance/drama/fantasy film that deserves a look. A WWII casualty played by Robert Young was to be married and honeymoon in a New England historic quaint honeymoon cottage before the war and fate stepped in. Instead he returns from the war with disfiguring and disabling injuries bitter and resentful and as he takes refuge in the cottage he was to have honeymooned in he meets a housekeeper who is plain in appearance and self doubting in confidence and appears resigned to an unmarried life. They marry at first out of convenience and then the magic of the centuries cottage ignites in them the beauty of the soul. Noted British playwright Sir Arthur Wing Pinero wrote the play The Enchanted Cottage: A Fable in Three Acts as a moral booster to WWI veterans resuming life after the Great War with many disabled and disfigured. It was first staged in London in 1921 and then in America on Broadway in the spring of 1923. The stage play was quite different from the two filmed versions in it showed the stories of three couples who honeymooned in the cottage set in England over the years. It also had witches and cherubs and imps. Four roles from the play made the transition to the film Laura Pennington, Oliver Bashforth (with a slight change to Bradford), Major John Hillgrove and Mrs. Minnett. Hollywood filmed a silent film version in 1924 with a script adapted by Gertrude Chase and Josephine Lovett that eliminated the overt supernatural characters and other wedding couples so it centered more on the four main characters. For the 1945 film Screenwriters Dewitt Bodeen and Herman J. Maniewicz do a rewrite of the 1924 adaptation with John Cromwell directing. Cromwell had made such films as The Prisoner of Zenda, Little Lord Fauntleroy, Of Human bondage, Abe Lincoln in Illinois and So Ends Our Night among many in his fine directorial career. Proliffic cinematographer Ted Tetzlaff who photographed such films as Talk of the Town, I Married a Witch and Notorious is the the film's cinematographer. Robert Young and Dorothy McGuire star along with fine performances by Herbert Marshall, Mildred Natwick and Spring Byington. This is a fine film and is indeed enchanting. I would give this a 9.0 out of 10.

The Enchanted Cottage is about two emotionally wounded people who find themselves and find love in the cottage where the man was supposed to honeymoon with his intended bride and the woman worked as a maid to the lady who owned the place.

Robert Young who is a Boston Brahmin has plans to marry the beautiful Hillary Brooke and they've got a beautiful seaside cottage owned by Mildred Natwick in which to honeymoon. They're about to close the deal when it's announced that Pearl Harbor has been attacked. Like so many others the war puts a hold on personal plans and Young goes off to enlist.

But Young comes back from the war facially disfigured, no longer the charming and self assured to the manor born type he was before. He takes the cottage not for a honeymoon, but for solitude as he wants to shut the world out.

Dorothy McGuire plays the rather plain Jane maid who Natwick employs and who crushes out big time on Young at first sight. He doesn't notice her back then, but he notices her now and the two when they start to open up and communicate discover love. Is it them or is it the cottage they're in who some say does cast an enchantment over folks.

The Enchanted Cottage is a Madame X style weepy woman's picture made enjoyable by the sincere performances of its stars. McGuire is truly touching why she did not get an Oscar nomination is really ridiculous. The film did get one nomination for Best Musical Scoring.

On hand also is Herbert Marshall as a blind veteran from the first World War who is a pianist. Marshall was in fact a wounded veteran, he lost a leg in combat there and understood his character very well. He guides the younger generation to some self realization. Spring Byington plays Young's mother and her usual flighty character takes on a bit of an edge to it as she can't see what kind of angst Young is going through.

The Enchanted Cottage holds up very well for today's audiences, it could probably be remade with very few changes made and then only to place and time because the message about love is timeless.

This is a lovely, almost-forgotten little RKO weepie from the 40's. It boasts touching performances from it's two leads, Dorothy McGuire and Robert Young, and a fine supporting turn by the always good Herbet Marshall.

'Enchanted Cottage' has a real message. This is a film about seeing with your heart, not your eyes. Laura Pennington (McGuire) and Oliver Bradford (Young) learn to do so while cast under the magic spell of the 'enchanted cottage' they are inhabiting. It seems a hokey concept on paper, but this film really works.

Laura is a homely maid who looks as if she is going to spend her days as a spinster. She takes on a job at a pretty cottage owned by a dour old widow. Oliver Bradford originally wanted the cottage as a honeymoon location for him and his soon-to-be bride. However, Oliver was called to war a day before their wedding. He is disfigured and scarred as a result, and upon arriving home, his fiancé expresses disgust (although we never see it) at his changed appearance. Crippled, bitter and lonely, he takes the cottage as a single man. The kind-hearted, yet plain, Laura helps him in his loneliness, as she too knows what it feels like to be judged on looks alone.

They eventually decide to marry out of convenience. But the spell of the enchanted cottage starts to work on them on their wedding night, as they realise the true love and affection they harbour for each other, a love that goes past face value and transports them into another realm.

It is a tender love story. McGuire is never anything but convincing as the downtrodden yet kind Laura; she impressed me a lot more here than in her Oscar-nominated work for 'Gentlemen's Agreement'. All the time throughout watching the film I was thinking of her as a perfect actress for 'Jane Eyre'. She certainly could play the plain, ordinary girl well, with emotional depth and understanding. Indeed, the relationship between the once-handsome but now-scarred Oliver and the homely, unwanted maid Laura is reminiscent of the Jane-Rochester relationship.

The widow seems to subscribe to the English novel theory too; her stopped clock at the time of her husband's death is very 'Miss Havisham' from 'Great Expectations'.

Marshall is great, giving his usual understated performance as the blind composer who cannot 'see' with his eyes, but can feel with his heart and his brain.

A great musical score accompanies the scenery well, and appropriately dark cinematography complements the darker points of the story too. This was a war-time pic, and once again we are being shown the harsh realities of war through the disabled figure of Oliver. Still, this is more of a love story than propaganda.

This was made by the cash-strapped RKO studio, and today it is little-known. Apparently finding this film is hard, but here in Australia the ABC free-to-air network plays it regularly. I view myself as lucky.

This a tearjerker, and a beautiful romance story. Keep the tissues nearby.

8/10.