Stometer Save your money for something good and enjoyable

PodBill Just what I expected

Dorathen Better Late Then Never

Baseshment I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

moonspinner55 A blind pianist tells his friends a story of a 'haunted' honeymoon cottage, long left empty until two sweethearts discover it and plan to rent the place following their nuptials; World War II separates them, and when the GI comes home, he's badly scarred. Returning to the cottage alone, the soldier is enchanted by the spinster maid, homely and unloved, who has harbored a crush on the young man for over a year. Dirge-like, wide-eyed romantic drama with overtures to the fantastic that are explored in the most facetious of ways. Screenwriters DeWitt Bodeen and Herman J. Mankiewicz, adapting the play by Arthur Wing Pinero (previously filmed in 1924), may have had a good chuckle behind the scenes after selling this nonsense, though leads Dorothy McGuire and Robert Young do their very best with the sticky material; Mildred Natwick, as the cottage housekeeper, and Herbert Marshall, as the pianist who gives the couple his blessing, do not fare as well. At the midway point, when the story turns rosy, the incidentals have become obvious and interest in these characters wanes. The film is actually rather insulting to spinsters and scarred GIs. I would have preferred hearing more about McGuire's wood carvings. ** from ****

Tad Pole . . . laments scar-faced Oliver to his "Plain Jane" Laura in THE ENCHANTED COTTAGE. Largely a collaboration between the British and American War Departments, COTTAGE was mass-distributed during Hitler's War to help folks on the home-front make lemonade from War's lemons. With a non-functional right hand, Oliver is unlikely to hold his own with uninjured polo and tennis opponents in the future. However, COTTAGE shows him that it can be just as rewarding to collect driftwood on the beach as it would be to beat the pants off someone in polo or tennis again. As long as Oliver hooks up with a spouse with equally meager prospects--such as Laura--everybody will be on the same page. Similarly, if Oliver were even richer than his well-heeled character here, and if he had his potential beauty queen mate (Beatrice) more appropriately counseled on how war scars cannot be "passed down" genetically, he may have forced Bea's "mercenary instinct" to activate. (Though plastic surgery, rehabilitation, and prosthetics have come a long way since 1945, we're still light years from the magic regeneration chamber of STARSHIP TROOPERS.) By not pushing the issue with Beatrice, but instead lowering his sights to Laura, Oliver is able to fill THE ENCHANTED COTTAGE with a better-matched pair. Though its final act is a little too smarmy, COTTAGE teaches important coping skills for every generation.

Karl Ericsson Had I not experienced something similar in my life before, I would probably not have "bought it". I tell you right away: The mystery about love is to want to love and want it without parachute or any other protection, want it because it is right, want it and become vulnerable.Some of that is only hinted at in this movie but what is hinted at is so much more than what is present in all these other so called "love" films, which are just about lust and not about how lust can be created through the will to love and that will alone.You see, the lust that is immediately presented to us in life has more in common with other bodily functions than with anything spiritual. That is why rape is possible as well as masochism. I have experienced this difference between immediate lust (not far from rape) and the lust through the will to vulnerable love (as far from rape as anything could be) three times in my life, which would have been only one time had it been up to only me. Once I experienced it consciously, witnessing the whole process, which is the reason why I know of it, and I would like to tell you about it, so that you can enjoy this movie even more.I once was in lust with a woman that I met where I was working some thirty years ago. It came to be that this lust was consumed and I was faced with the prospect of a more lasting relationship or "the big deal for life". At this moment by defenses set in and I could detect ugliness on the woman, that my conquering lust had previously not detected. This mechanism is well known amongst women and that is why mothers tell their daughters "not to give it all" and always hold something back for future negotiations with the conquering lust.Maybe through my inexperience, which assumed the whole scalp where my woman had thought she had only given part, I looked at the scalp and decided it was not good enough to last a lifetime, especially not when I knew that there had been scalp-hunters before me operating on the same scalp. All of this was more or less a subconscious process presenting itself to consciousness in finding ugliness where before blind lust had found the opposite.However, I had experienced something similar before and did not really want it to happen. I wanted love so bad that in my mind I saw myself stand before an abyss, the abyss of love, and, willingly, I let myself fall into that abyss.Nothing happened immediately but a process had begun and after what could not have been more than a week, there had been a dramatic change. Gradually my woman had become increasingly beautiful and after that week or so, she was more beautiful than she had ever been before and more beautiful than any woman could ever be for me. I had fallen in love and the miracle of love had presented itself.How vulnerable I had become, I was soon to find out for my loving vulnerability was interpreted as weakness and "my" woman left me and for months I visited her window at nights, hoping to find her with somebody else, so that I could somehow get here "out of my system". Incidentally another woman appeared on the scene and did the job for me.What I had learned was this: Love at first sight is just lust at first sight. True love can only appear where there is an honest and brave wish for it and only he or she who let themselves fall vulnerable, will ever experience true love. This "falling" can however happen less consciously and far more gradually than it did in my presented "case", so there may be true love even where people think that they have only battered with lust for a long time or, with the words of John Lennon, "life is what happens to you when you are busy making other plans".This movie is about this more conscious falling and so it takes less time for the participants to find the miracle of true love.Some may say that my "explanations" are derived from thumb-sucking as far as this movie goes. I do however disagree with that. There is serious intent in this film and not just the presentation of a fantastic idea. In fact, I hold it to be the best and maybe only film about true love that has so far been committed to celluloid.

madfliesler My husband & I watched this with great expectations but were disappointed. We felt the acting was poor and the dialog strained. The idea was interesting, however, but it was just a bit too sappy.The beginning was good with the parents & fiancé - the set up of the cottage and all but the movie tried to tell the story of too many characters, failing to develop any of them properly.Too many feelings were running amok! The idea that on their wedding night, Laura plays a ditty on the piano, a new feeling comes over the enchanted cottage, she knows her marriage is a sham, and on and on and on. Whoa! Develop one thought! And, if they said "enchanted" one more time...!