The Enchanted Cottage (1945)

(On Cable TV, April 2021) If you want a comfort movie, The Enchanted Cottage has to be right up there with the greats. A fantastical romantic drama, it features two drab, wounded newlyweds who arrive at, well, an enchanted cottage that helps both see each other as their idealized selves. Notwithstanding the troubling issues of equating physical beauty with personal values, director John Cromwell’s film is a comforting fantasy in which everything is slated to go right for its well-deserving protagonists. There isn’t much to the story (one suspects that a modern film would cut to the chase, but would anything be left for a feature-length film?), but that doesn’t matter — The Enchanted Cottage is a film made to be re-watched more than watched, secure in the knowledge that everything will be all right. It would have been fun to delve more deeply into the cottage’s history and accompanying mythology, but that’s clearly a wish from someone who’s more comfortable with fantasy tropes than romantic ones — others will argue that The Enchanted Cottage is exactly what it means to be, and that it’s catnip for movie-watching couples. That it has endured for decades as a well-regarded romance says it all — timeless stuff even in comfort.