Portrait of Jennie

Rating:
Summary: Beautiful film
Review: A wonderful, haunting film that can be seen many times. Jennifer Jones is fantastic as Jennie, a mysterious young lady who inspires artist Eben Adams, excellently played by Joseph Cotton. The score, comprised of music of DeBussy, perfectly fits the drama on the screen. A great cast of supporting players are also at their best here: Lillian Gish, Ethel Barrymore, David Wayne, and Cecil Kellaway. Jennifer Jones is delightful as Jennie, aging from a child to young woman. Joseph Cotton and Jennifer Jones were a wonderful screen team and were at their best in this film and also in Love Letters. Viewers of this film glimpse New York City of decades past and see Central Park and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in glorious black and white. The most haunting and dramatic sequence is the hurricane sequence at the Lighthouse. Another memorable image is the portrait itself, shown in brilliant technicolor.This is one of Selznick's best and is a truly classic movie. It convincingly conveys the message that love is eternal.

Rating:
Summary: As hauntingly beautiful as the sun on the last day of summer
Review: Cut out all the lights grab your loved one/or a box of kleenex and watch the most sweeping love story of all time. The film's plot isn't believeable if you were to describe it to someone but do that person a favor and lend the film to them. The film transports you into a world where a young artist sketches a portrait of a demure young girl and gains critical fame for his work only to realize that he needs his muse to maitain this new found level of brilliance. He searches for and finds her to only realize how she seems to have grown into an adult in a very short period of time, and he falls in love with this newly matured beauty. Jennifer Jones as Jennie talks about events in her life as if they happened yesterday and to her they have! Just watch the sparkle in Jones' eyes as she talk to Cotten about her parents when they meet for the first time in Central park. Cotten's character Eben Adams is intrigued by her but the events she describes have taken place years not days ago!! Is this woman real? Will their love endure? I won't give a hint more about the plot but the final scenes will have you crying so hard you can't see the action on screen. Jones was made for this role and Selznick knew it! Cotton is also quite believable. The dialogue is sweeter than powered sugar on top of ice cream with sugar sauce on top! This is old Hollywood turnig out pure magic.

Rating:
Summary: A Painting Come To Life
Review: Joseph Cotten stars as a struggling artist trying to find the passion and inspiration to bring his art to life. A chance encounter in a park with a young girl named Jennie begins to spark his work, and their infrequent meetings afterwards fuel his creativity and feelings. Oddly, she seems to come from an earlier time and each occasion he meets her, she ages more than the time that has passed. He slowly pieces together the mystery of who she really is.

Cotten gives one of his best performances in this ethereal story. He's very convincing as the artist whose muse and love may very well be some sort of ghost. Jennifer Jones stars as the title character, and despite being given some heavy-handed dialogue, makes the character of Jennie quite believable at all stages of her life. The supporting cast is excellent, with particular praise going to a well cast Ethel Barrymore as the gallery owner who takes Cotten under her wing. She brings a weary, sad quality that matches the film perfectly.

The photography of the film is remarkable, having the quality of a painting throughout, with the last ten minutes very effectively filmed in Technicolor. The music also adds the other-worldly quality that permeates the movie.

The opening "lecture" of the film, however, is awkwardly done, hurt by some of the overbaked writing that occasionally plagues the dialogue. But the rest of the film succeeds admirably, creating a mood and romantic feeling that sustains the unusual story. It's unlike any other film you will see from that era.

Rating:
Summary: Strange but irresistably fascinating love story.
Review: Portrait of Jennie is a strange time-warp love story which may be dismissed by some modern viewers as silly. Yet to me it is almost irresistably fascinating. Even though I regularly watch it on DVD, if I come upon it on TV anywhere in the story I usually am hooked and stay with it to the end, which I almost invariably find quite moving. On the other hand, I suspect that some modern viewers might turn this strange movie off after only a few minutes, or dislike the ending if they stayed with it that far. This wonderful movie is Hollywood's Golden Age at its romantic best and may not please some modern tastes. Therefore, I can't assure you that you'll like this movie because you may not, particularly if you're not a romantic. I can tell you, though, that many of us count this haunting romantic fantasy among our favorite films and, if you see it, you may do so too. I strongly suggest that you give it a try. By the way, Jennifer Jones is outstanding -- and especially beautiful -- as Jenny.

Rating:
Summary: On the short list of Hollywood's great ghost stories
Review: This delightfully unique movie would have been very, very easy to have marred. Fortunately, director William Dieterle maintained a light touch throughout, managing just the right mood for each segment of the film. What could have easily have been hokey instead is eerie and delightful.

PORTRAIT OF JENNIE is unique not just for its subject matter, but for being one of the very, very few films of the Hollywood studio era to have been filmed on location in New York. Almost always in the 1930s and 1940s, a film that was supposedly set in New York or Chicago would in fact be filmed on a Hollywood back lot. In this case, that would have been a serious blow to the atmosphere of the film, since the numerous scenes shot in Central Park, with the unique skyline framing the park, creates imagery unlike any other film of the time.

The cast overall is quite excellent. Jennifer Jones is not completely believable in her role, but, then, I am not sure many actresses could have been. She is asked to age too much during the course of the film, and no adult actress is going to be completely believable as small girl and as an adult. I always love seeing Joseph Cotton in anything, and this was one of his finest romantic roles. The cast is filled out with a bevy of notable character actresses and actors, such as David Wayne, Lillian Gish, Ethel Barrymore, Florence Bates, Cecil Kellaway, and Henry Hull.

The ending is a bit anticlimactic. The heart of the story is Eben Adams's (Joseph Cotton) meeting Jennie, and the way she changes at each meeting, until he is able to solve her mystery. The ending was much ballyhooed by Selznick, with the striking tinted waves, but ironically it pales next to the much quieter, but far more emotionally involving, story of a man and a woman.

Rating:
Summary: Trashed at first, but vindicated later.
Review: This is what happened with Portrait of Jennie. David O. Selznick was so obssessed with Jennifer Jones that his judgement was clouded when it comes to choosing film projects for her. In the case of "Portrait of Jennie", this movie ran over budgeted when Selznick decided to add in a pompous "epic finale" with wind, waves and green tint.

When it was released, Portrait of Jennie did not set the world on fire, and it wasn't a hit. But years later, it have gone on to become a classic.

Joseph Cotten played an artist who ran into a young girl named Jennie in Central Park. The strange part of it is that for each successive time he meets her again, she grew older. With information he got from talking to Jennie, he did some research and found out to his astonishment that the girl he has been talking to could be the ghost of a dead woman. When the anniversary of the death of her parents came, Cotten find her grieving in the park. Pretty soon, as Jennie grew into a beautiful mature woman, Cotten fell in love with her. And when the anniversary of her death approaches, Cotten was determined to change history by rescuing Jennie from her fate. Alas, that was not to be, but the love the two share inspired the portrait of the young woman, hence the name of the movie.

Jennifer Jones delivered another high caliber performance. She can actually convincingly played a young little girl and then slowly turning into a mature young woman. It is my belief that if David O. Selznick's obsession with Jennifer caused her to become one of the most underrated actresses from the old Hollywood studio system. Her performance in this movie is absolutely mesmerising.

Portrait of Jennie captures Jennifer Jones in all her glory. She is still with us today and I am glad that she lives to see this movie turn from a flop to a classic favorite.

Rating:
Summary: A Classic Love Story
Review: When a struggling artist (Joseph Cotton) is wandering through a snowy Central Park in New York he meets a young school girl , Jennie (Jennifer Jones). As the months pass the meetings occur at sporadic times as Jennie ages more than months and details of her life are decidedly off kilter. "Portrait of Jennie " is one of the great screen romances that while dismissed when it first appeared has gained admiration over the years . Unusually for the time parts of the film were filmed on location in New York. Besides Cotton and Jones the film has a wonderful cast including Ethyl Barrymore, David Wayne and Lilian Gish as a mother superior of a convent (the Cloister's in northern Manhattan doubling as the convent/school). The film has an often dream like quality that is enhanced by composer Dimiti Tiomkin's decision to use arrangements of composer Claude Debussy's music for the entire score. For advise on the arrangements Tiomkin actually used Bernard Herrmann as an advisor. A really fine film that just gets better with age.