Rating: NR
Genre:
Romance
Release Date: 10/19/2004
SubTitles: English/French/Espanol
Dubbed: English
Sound: DD1
Run Time: 86 Minutes
Flags: Questionable for Children
Distributor/Studio: MGM
In
Portrait of Jennie,
Joseph Cotten plays an artist,
Eben Adams, who is unable to bring any true feeling to his work. While painting in Central Park one morning,
Eben makes the acquaintance of a schoolgirl named
Jennie (
Jennifer Jones), who prattles on about things that happened years ago. Intrigued at her thorough knowledge of the past,
Eben is about to converse with her further, but
Jennie has vanished. Over the next few months,
Eben meets
Jennie again and again -- and each time she seems to have aged by several years. He paints her portrait, which turns out to be more full of expression and emotion than anything he's previously done. His curiosity peaked by
Jennie's enigmatic nature,
Eben uncovers evidence that he has been conversing -- and falling in love -- with the ghost of a girl who died years earlier in a hurricane. On the eve of the hurricane's anniversary,
Eben rushes to meet
Jennie at the site where she was supposedly killed. As a new storm rages,
Jennie vanishes for good, but not before declaring that the love she and
Eben have shared will live forever. Rescued from the storm,
Eben convinces himself that
Jennie was a mere figment of his imagination. Then he notices that he stills clutches her scarf in his hand. He looks at his portrait of
Jennie (the only Technicolor shot in this otherwise black-and-white film) and understands what she meant when she said that their love would endure throughout eternity; it will do so through
Cotten's art, both the portrait at hand and all future portraits. Based on the novel by
Robert Nathan,
Portrait of Jennie is one of the most beautifully assembled
fantasies ever presented onscreen. Producer
David O. Selznick's unerring eye for "rightness" enabled him to select the perfect stars, supporting cast (
Lillian Gish,
Ethel Barrymore,
David Wayne,
Cecil Kellaway, et al.), director, cinematographer (
Joseph August), and composer (
Dimitri Tiomkin, who based his themes on the works of
Debussy), and blend everything into one ideally balanced package.
~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
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