Movie Review – Enchantment – Read First Chapter.com

Movie Review for Writers:

I'm beginning to watch movies from the perspective of learning more about writing; specifically about how to add information into the background of scenes and also about plotting.

I watched Enchantment, starring David Niven and Teresa Wright and a few others looked familiar.

QUICK SYNOPSIS: The story opens focusing on an estate house that seems almost haunted, like the walls have lots of stories to tell. The movies moves from present time, World War II London with a grand-niece Grizel Dane needs to stay with her grand-uncle, Rollo Dane, who is old, heartsick and not interested.

The story moves from modern day and goes back in time and tells the story of Nolo's family, his widowed father, his older sister Selina who was the only lady of the house, and a ward who the father brings home to live with them. The ward's name is Lark and the story goes back and forth touching on childhood scenes, back into present time, back into when Rollo was just enlisted in the service, and you see he falls in love with Lark. So does the other brother, Pelham, and another Italian guy from the neighborhood.

What is interesting is to watch how the house itself becomes the vehicle that is used to go from one time frame into another. The script takes you into every scene so you can tell which time frame you are in and what is going on in the scene, so there is never any confusion. I got a lot out of watching this, the blending in and out of the scenes.

The modern day story is about this grand niece, who has a simiar story where she falls in love but wants to be practical about things and thinks she shouldn't marry. Uncle Rollo gets his strength back to warn her not to let love get away like he did.

ELEMENTS OF INTEREST TO WRITERS:

The movie moved from time frames (Pre WWII and into WWII) seamlessly by using the house and each of the rooms as the backdrops.
The actors grew up by using events of their lives to indicate childhood, friendship, the courting years, and falling in love
The movie was very good is showing various scenes of "meanness" in developing the wicked step-sister who winds up ruining everyone's lives.
The set is a beautiful Victorian home (at least I think it's Victorian) and if you wanted to describe a room from that era, this movie would give you some really great ideas for describing rooms and backdrops.

Don't read any further if you don't want to spoil the ending.

The audience finds out that Rollo never married Lark, even though he loved her dearly, he was never able to love again, and his career that he chose did not comfort him or make up for this lost love.

The young niece decides to chase after her Italian soldier after telling him she doesn't think they should get married.

Even in the end, it films the final love scene against the bombs dropping all over London which uses scenes from World War II as the backdrop. You can learn a lot about how they weave references to the war and being enlisted.