OVP: The Enchanted Cottage (1945)

Film: The Enchanted Cottage (1945)
Stars: Dorothy McGuire, Robert Young, Herbert Marshall, Mildred Natwick, Spring Byington
Director: John Cromwell
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Original Score)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

It's hard to imagine somedays, but there was once a time when television and its ability to shape dozens of stories, characters, and ideas into a weekly visit into our living rooms was not a regular occurrence, or even something that was a possibility.  At the time, the only way of doing that was through the mediums of literature, and later movies.  I kept thinking back on this while watching The Enchanted Cottage, as the entire plotline seemed, for better or worse, to be a perfect tale for one of the all-time greatest television series, The Twilight Zone.

(As I just mentioned The Twilight Zone, you know spoilers are coming, so carry on at your own risk) The movie takes place in a small New England town, where a homely girl becomes a maid at a mysterious cottage.  The girl is Dorothy McGuire, though, so "homely" is a bit of a stretch when you have someone as beautiful as she onscreen-they may have subtracted the makeup and given her dumpy clothes but with those eyes and that complexion, "homely" is not the correct word.  She works for a housekeeper played by veteran character actress Mildred Natwick (channelling Judith Anderson in Rebecca, at least in the start of the film) who has lived in the house ever since her husband tragically died during World War I.  They are taking in guests on the eve of World War II, including the dashing bridegroom-to-be Robert Young.  Young goes off-to-war and comes back with tragic scarring and becomes a recluse in the house, only to find himself falling for, and then marrying McGuire's dowdy maid.

The story progresses with a twist, that after their marriage, suddenly they have returned to their movie star good looks (good looks in quotations here for Young-while he's obviously not ugly, I've always found him a little too "Mickey Rooney" looking for my tastes, but for the sake of argument let's proceed once more).  They share this good fortune with no one except their blind friend, played by Herbert Marshall.  What Marshall eventually realizes, and which McGuire and Young find out in an unfortunate scene with Spring Byington later, is that they have not in fact changed, but love has caused them to see themselves as beautiful, and that is the enchantment of the cottage.  After realizing that this is all that matters, we get a movie-star kiss and a happy ending.

For anyone familiar with The Twilight Zone, you can tell that this is the exact sort of "twist, then moral-of-the-story" sort of tale that they familiarized itself with.  Unfortunately, this is not in one of their tight, 25 minute packages, but instead in a 91-minute film, and so there's quite a bit of filler.  The score (which features prominently in multiple scenes in the movie, as the characters are constantly playing the piano) aides the film, and the two leads, whom I'm not a super big fan of, to be honest, both do lovely jobs (particularly McGuire), but it's the sort of film that would be too simple to have been made today-charming, sweet, and with a dash of mystery, but even at an hour and a half, far too long for the film at hand.  Don't feel too badly for them, though-McGuire in particular was having a landmark year in her career-she had also made the classic The Spiral Staircase and my personal favorite of her films, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.  Two years later, she'd be a headliner in her sole Oscar-nominated performance, in Gentleman's Agreement.  Young would continue playing the overly-confident romantic lead roles in B-Grade movies, until finding massive success later on in that already discussed medium of television.

How about you? Have you seen The Enchanted Cottage?  Do you agree with my assessment that it would be better suited for television, or was only the big screen appropriate for this love story?  And what are your thoughts on Young and McGuire-do you have a favorite role, and do you think they should be better-remembered film stars than they are today?