Review by All Movie Guide
All Movie Guide
loved it.
Based on the 1922 play of the same name by Arthur Wing Pinero, this 7-reel melodrama featured one of the great female lead performances of the silent era. As a homely country girl who blossomed into a beauty,
May McAvoy was luminous. With a minimum of special effects makeup (false buck teeth and a crooked nose), McAvoy transformed from the enchantress of the silent classic
Sentimental Tommy (1921) into a shy, ugly English wallflower. A specialist in wide-eyed innocent roles, McAvoy had fallen out of favor with Hollywood a year earlier when she refused an offer from Cecil B. DeMille of a part in
Adam's Rib (1923) that would have required her to be scantily clad. After being forced by a subsequent lack of good roles to buy out her Paramount contract, McAvoy's star turn in The Enchanted Cottage was a professional comeback that resulted in bigger paydays and leads in such gems as
Ben-Hur (1926) and
The Jazz Singer (1927). Male star
Richard Barthelmess acquitted himself admirably as the film's physically crippled veteran awash in self-pity, while also producing the film through his production company, Inspiration. Given the overwrought emotionalism of the film's subject matter, its style was admirably restrained, reflecting its stoic British setting and characters and also the typically unobtrusive craftsmanship of well-liked director John S. Robertson. Robertson's work, which included the
John Barrymore version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1920), eschewed the hand-wringing and eyeball-rolling of some silent-era filmmakers, earning him a great deal of critical respect. Considered one of the great romantic tearjerkers of all time, The Enchanted Cottage would be remade in 1945, its most widely seen and equally acclaimed version, starring
Robert Young and
Dorothy McGuire. In the 1990s, actress
Julia Roberts became interested in another remake, but the project never came to fruition. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide