PORTRAIT OF JENNIE Directed by William Dieterle * 1948 There are
supernatural romances and then theres "Portrait of Jennie" an
unassailable work of visionary delirium and towering claptrap that is
easily the strangest film ever recalled fondly by your TCM-loving
aunt. Starving artist Eben Adams (Joseph Cotten) doesnt know it yet,
but one day hell graduate from turning out middle-aged juvenilia like
flower and lighthouse paintings to creating works worthy of being hung
in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. His artistic maturation is
accelerated by a chance encounter in Central Park with Jennie
(Jennifer Jones), a flesh-and-blood Gibson Girl with the diction and
dress of an earlier generation. Her apparition reappears to Eben
periodically, each time a little older and a little more plausible as
a romantic partner. A costly flop upon its belated release, the film
embodied the obsessive zeal of producer David O. Selznick, but no
amount of demonstrable good taste (music from Debussy, quotes from
Euripides and Keats) could ground the materials innately surrealistic
freak flag. A ghost story unmoored in time, "Portrait of Jennie"
reaches back to silent cinema to find its most expressive and
idiosyncratic aesthetic effects, summoning tinting and Magnascope back
from a watery grave in the stupendous final reel. Cinematographer
Joseph August would die of a heart attack before the production was
completed, literalizing the films central conceit of an artwork
dictated from the beyond. (KW) 86 min * The Selznick Studio * 35mm
from The Walt Disney Company Preceded by: Closed Mondays (Bob
Gardiner, Will Vinton, 1974) 8 min 35mm
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28/01/2020 Last update