The Enchanted Cottage (1945)

Set during WWII, an Air Force pilot (Robert Young) is maimed and has his face disfigured when his plane crashes. He seeks isolation away from friends and family at a secluded seaside cottage where he meets a homely girl (Dorothy McGuire) who helps him want to live again. Based on the play by Arthur Wing Pinero (which was previously filmed in 1924) and directed by John Cromwell. In other hands, this could have been a sickly sentimental piece but as he did with SINCE YOU WENT AWAY, Cromwell guides the film with a firm directorial hand that avoids the soppy traps that might have derailed the movie into a morass of mawkishness. In this effort, he's helped enormously by Dorothy McGuire, a no nonsense actress who gives us pathos without excessive sentimentality and Robert Young who hits just the right notes of self pity and sensitivity. The public ate it up and the film has continued to win fans over the years. One of the cinema's great romantic treasures. With Mildred Natwick (whose character was a witch in the original play), Herbert Marshall, Spring Byington and Hillary Brooke.