Portrait of Jennie (1948)

How strange that an old movie from the past should have such a profound influence on so many people living in the present. Is this due to the movie itself or perhaps to the extraordinary gifted people who made it. As a surreal movie of simple aspect, none can compare even in modern cinema. The atmosphere as has been stated so many times before is dreamlike, but there is more to it than that. When we watch this movie we are entering a unique cinematic achievement where a dream has 'almost' been captured on celluloid. The atmosphere is strangely and very slightly out of focus and while the people who populate this place are outwardly friendly and normal, they are somehow slightly distant and in the background there lies something strange and dangerous and while we can't see it, we can sense it's there but we are still drawn in by this enchantingly beautiful girl who seems to grow up before our eyes. A masterpiece of American film making which is now starting to fade into obscurity as one day we all must. But while we will be forgotten, Portrait of Jennie will be discovered by future generations and it's makers recognized as timeless artists...just as the characters in their film are trapped in a beautiful but dangerous whirlpool where time refused to abide by the laws of physics.

Sometimes one happens upon a film which one wouldn't have even known about unless it is found by accident. This, for me, is one of those films and I couldn't be happier to have found it. Having done a little research on the actor Joseph Cotten, he is on the record as stating that this is the favourite of all the films he starred in. With some choice actors in support in the form of Jennifer Jones, Ethel Barrymore - of the famous Barrymore acting clan - Lilian Gish and Cecil Kellaway, everyone plays their parts beautifully. As for Cotten, he has never been in finer form, as his usual melancholy charm is perfectly suited to this film. In essence, the plot revolves around a struggling artist who is yet to find his niche and, indeed, his muse. That muse turns up in the form of Jennie, played beautifully by Jennifer Jones. This film is notable for the fact that it is mostly in monochrome i.e. black and white, but the final reel uses a green tint and sepia. In terms of the direction, it is wonderful and some effective but subtle special effects - for which it bagged an Oscar - are put to very good use. Probably one of the greatest ever love stories committed to film and I'm so glad to have seen it.

The really really really odd thing about the much-criticized studio system of Ancient Hollywood is that, every now and then, almost by accident, by some sort of weird Darwinian evolution, films like this, one of a kind films that you could (literally) watch 100 times, just appeared. Almost like the principle character in this film. She just appears -- and within moments Joseph Cotten, and the audience, are swept away. Cotten is an astonishing and vastly under-rated actor. Orson Welles understood his ability to keep a film together and used Cotten whenever he could. Cotten like Welles came from radio, so when you are casting a story that requires voice-over as well as screen charisma, this is your man. Jennifer Jones was known as a great romantic lead but not a sex goddess. An important distinction. She is perfectly cast. I could lean over and check the "spoiler box" and tell you how this story unfolds, but that would be mean. It is one of the best 100 films ever made, regardless of whether modern fanboys have ever heard of it. From the first moment to the last it is near-perfect. Bring a Kleenex because you may cry. And that comment applies to the women too.

Portrait of Jennie (1949)An ambitious, multi-layered, visually inventive misfire. It's not bad, and the leading actors are good or even great, including the supporting players. But there is so much striving for profundity and a failure to reach it you can't really get into the more compelling basic plot of a pretty girl from the past appearing as a vision to a lonely painter in New York. The fantasy as the core is a wonderful idea that struggles to be truly fantastic.I'm a sucker for romantic films. I thought I this would sink me. At first I went along with the quotes about love and the voice-over intoning and the clouds swirling. But soon the production values begin to show a wobbly. I liked the scenes of New York on a canvas texture as if a black and white painting. Some city shots are photographic stills, however, and you can see the grain of the original clearly motionless, and the segues between techniques are sometimes a bit clumsy.Even so, you get absorbed in Joseph Cotten's character. He's great. He's subtle and likable and restrained. The Jennie is a real Jennie, Jennifer Jones, who starts off playing a 13 year old with a minimum of conviction, then a 16 year old, and so on into her early 20s, where she can then radiate and be her real self at her best. (She was 29 during filming and that year married the producer, David Selznick.) Cotten and Jones don't quite have on-screen chemistry, but there is a long section just beyond halfway where the two are together romantically that is lovingly filmed. The tight close-ups of their two heads at night, in a moving shift of poses, is really great stuff and you finally really feel for the two of them.Without giving too much more away, it's really the crux of the film that Cotten is stuck in the present and Jennie keeps appearing to him--and only him, it seems--from the past. He's confused by this but enchanted (she's a pretty woman and a nice kid both) and his painting career takes off. She is the more complex character in a way because she's vaguely aware something is wrong . I wish they had given more time to her psychology, because there is a lot there under the surface.I feel like a curmudgeon having doubts about such a romantic film. It is an influence, no doubt, on the similar (and similarly flawed) "Somewhere in Time," though in "Jennie" we have a problem they never address of how Jennie doesn't quite notice that the cars are decades newer than she remembered. Most of the time they spend in the park or in the artist's garret, to avoid that hitch. There is a final technical surprise near the end which I won't say much about except that it's thrilling all around, with tinting of whole sequences like some 1922 dramatic silent. (The cinematographer, Joseph August, used some silent era lenses for many scenes, and got an Oscar nomination for his efforts.) The scenes by the end are wild and beautiful, and if you have gotten into their relationship for real by that point you'll be really moved. Throw in some lightly bastardized Debussy, quite beautiful, and you have true drama.Director William Dieterle deserves both credit for making this as different and fresh as it is and some criticism for not pulling it together more smoothly. I think it's because of Selznick, who stuck his nose into the production many times, and kept the vitals shifting as they went. Five writers were used (it shows, especially in redundant recollections of the sad-eyed Jennie throughout). And shooting on location, a novelty in the 1940s, added expense and perhaps some larger than expected challenges. Oh, look for silent era star Lillian Gish briefly as the main nun, and Ethel Barrymore in a major secondary role. There is a lot here to like, but as a total film it's weirdly imperfect, feeling almost unfinished.