THE ENCHANTED COTTAGE
(RKO-RADIO)
SIR ARTHUR WING PINERO’S play about a homely spinster and a_ déisfigiired returned soldier who, looking at one another with the eyes of
true love, ‘see themselves as beautiful, has here been brought up to date with a World War II. setting and sensitive performances by Dorothy McGuire and Robert Young. Many people will find the film intensely moving, and I hope I shall not hurt anybody’s feelings by saying that I found it disappointing and even rather sickly. I am sorry to have to say this, because the, acting of the principals is pretty good all through and occasionally quite outstanding. Even Herbert Marshall, though suffering soulfully as usual (in the role of the blind pianist), is also rather more convincing than usual; and I liked Mildred Natwick as Mrs. Minett, the psychic housekeeper. For another thing, the central theme is a more profound one than Hollywood normally tackles, and any film of which that can be said should perhaps receive all possible encouragement. (After all, a deliberately unglamorous heroine is undoubtedly a novelty, though one must not overlook the point that she is not required to remain unglamorous all the time. I wonder if the film would be so popular if she were?)
And yet, somehow, it doesn’t quite come off. Where there should be enchantment in the story there is only technical efficiency; where there should be inspiration in the camerawork and settings there is only orthodoxy of treatment. And was it really the magic of true love that caused the hero and heroine to be "transfigured by a power beyond this world"-or was it only the make-up. artist and the hairdresser who did it? Perhaps those are not altogether fair questions; and yet if the film succeeded in créating the right amosphere such questions would not even suggest themselves. The Enchanted Cottage is a higltly-efficient tear-jerker, but it is not much more. :
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19451130.2.31.1.3
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 13, Issue 336, 30 November 1945, Page 19
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320THE ENCHANTED COTTAGE New Zealand Listener, Volume 13, Issue 336, 30 November 1945, Page 19
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Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
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