THE ENCHANTED COTTAGE Screens For Free February 13th at The St. Louis Public Library – Buder Branch

” Do you know what loneliness is, real loneliness?”

THE ENCHANTED COTTAGE (1945) screens February 13th at The St. Louis Public Library Buder Branch (4401 Hampton Ave). The film begins at 1:30pm Wednesday, February 13th. This is a FREE event.

Nominated for an Academy Award for its music and nominated to the AFI’s Greatest Love Stories list is this charming World War II era love story. Starring Dorothy McGuire and Robert Young, it is the story of a pilot, disfigured in a crash, who retreats to the seaside cottage where he had previously planned to spend his honeymoon. At the cottage, he meets a homely young woman working there. As the unlikely pair begin to fall in love, they are physically transformed into the beautiful people they begin to see in each other.

This sensitive, touching film, based on the classic romance play by Pinero, is beautifully enacted by McGuire and Young as the uncommon lovers. Oliver (Young) is the embittered, disfigured WWI veteran obsessed with suicide, the only alternative, he feels, to coping with an ugliness that repels everyone. He meets the shy and plain Laura (McGuire), a woman also shunned by society. They marry and move into seclusion inside a small New England cottage, all that’s left of a great estate which burned down years earlier. As a honeymoon cottage scores of happy lovers have carved their initials on its windowpanes; its owner (Natwick) knows well the legend of its wonderful spell. Slowly Oliver regains his handsome countenance and Laura blossoms into a beautiful young woman. It is, of course, their mutual love which has brought about these astounding transformations, images shattered by mindless friends. An unforgettable fable and a rare chance to see this on the big screen February 13th at The St. Louis Public Library.