The Enchanted Cottage

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!

'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.

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.

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!

This 1924 silent is a gem with a great story remade 20 years later and two tops stars: Richard Barthelmess and May McAvoy.

Barthelmess plays a young man hideously crippled from WW I. All he wants is to be left alone with his bitter thoughts, so he hies away at a seaside cottage. There he has a house keeper, but there's also a homely spinster (McAvoy in makeup) who is a local do-gooder. Neither thinks much about the other. But then his sister (Florence Short) a very masculine and pushy girl decides to come live at the cottage and take charge of her sullen brother's life. He panics and in a weak moment proposes to the homely girl so that they might not be so lonely.

We are told that the cottage is called the "Honeymoon Cottage" but it doesn't mean much until the couple is married and repulses the sister. As they get to know each other they also discover the etched (on a window) names of former lovers dating back hundreds of years.

Each secretly falls in love with the other but it's not until the spirits of former lovers start to appear that the magic of love begins to take place. Suddenly the homely girl becomes beautiful and the crippled man becomes straight and strong. In each other's eyes they become perfect and beautiful.

A blind neighbor (Holmes Herbert) seems to know what's going on and encourages the young couple who become reclusive in their honeymoon love. It's not until the man's family (including the awful sister) come to visit that the spell is broken by their crudeness. But after they leave the shattered couple (now in love) fall back together in their sorrow but wake to a new life together.

Barthelmess may well have been the best all-round actor in silent films, and he had a shot of almost every kind of part. Here he is crippled and sullen; his transformation into a strong and handsome man is quite good. Better is McAvoy's. She goes from a hawk-nose and snaggly-toothed spinster into a beauty. The make-up and special effects are quite good. As the previous reviewer notes, there is a terrific shot of the beautiful couple descending the darkened stairs to meet his family. We see a glimpse of them as they descend and are shocked to see them as their ugly selves as they come into the light of the parlor.

This film is a delicate bit of fantasy (from a play by Arthur Wing Pinero) that meditates on the qualities of love and magic. Are the couple really transformed when they are alone together. Or do they only see what love shows them? The blind man seems to think the transformations are real because he states he's still waiting. But no one else sees the "new" couple. Is beauty then in the eye of the lover?

This is a gem of a film; it's a pity it's so little known.