PORTRAIT OF JENNIE
US, 1948, 85 minutes, Black and white/colour.
Jennifer Jones, Joseph Cotten, Ethel Barrymore, Lilian Gish, Cecil Kellaway, David Wayne, Henry Hull, Florence Bates.
Directed by William Dieterle.
Portrait of Jennie is a very romantic film, very popular in the late 1940s.
Joseph Cotten portrays an artist in the 1930s, down on his luck. However, a group of art dealers led by Ethel Barrymore and Cecil Kellaway purchase one of his paintings and encourage him to do more work, especially portraits. In Central Park he encounters a very young Jennie and continues to meet her. However, each time they meet she has grown up much more. She also speaks about a mysterious past.
The artist goes to seek out the places where Jennie is supposed to have lived, including a convent where Lilian Gish portrays the mother superior. The film climaxes with a storm – tinted green for special effects (and the special effects won the Oscar for that year).
The film uses the music of Debussy, giving an added poignancy and romantic tone. It was directed by William Dieterle who had great success in the 1930s at Warner Bros with a number of biographies. They include The Life of Emile Zola and Juarez, Dr Ehrlich’s Magic Bullet and A Dispatch From Reuter’s. He also directed the celebrated Charles Laughton version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame. During the 1940s he made a number of emotional films, some including Jennifer Jones in the cast: I’ll Be Seeing You, Love Letters, The Searching Wind. During the 1950s he made much more conventional films at Paramount, westerns and dramas. However, he also directed Rita Hayworth in Salome and Elizabeth Taylor in Elephant Walk.
1. The enjoyment value of this film? The intentions of the filmmakers and their success: as love story, romantic ghost story, exploration of love and time?
2. Audience response to stories and fantasies? An American fantasy - the importance of the New York settings, the present, the going back into the earlier part of the 20th century?
3. The black and white photography, the devices of the colour tints for the storm and the dawn, the use of lighting especially to suggest the ghostly appearances of Jennie? The obvious studio locations? The contribution of the musical score and the basis of Debussy's classical themes?
4. The significance of the quotations from the authors at the beginning of the film, Euripides, Keats? The realm of poetry, art?
5. The laws of fantasy as different from the laws of realism? How well did the film set out the laws of fantasy on which it operated and followed them through logically? The contrast with realism? The fantasy breaking through time and realism into images of the timeless? How successful were the characterisations, audience response?
6. Ebon as American artist, as a man, his sensitive personality? The strangeness of his encounters with Jenny in the park? Their effect on him? His growing admiration and love for her, interest in her life? The importance of his painting the portrait of her? Her becoming important for his search and his quest? Jenny as the meaning of his life?
7. The contrast with the encounter sequences and his ordinary life? His meeting of the art dealers and their influence on him, friendliness? His own friends? The taxi driver? How real were these characters? or were they touched by the atmosphere of fantasy?
8. The film's portrait of Jennie? Jennifer Jones and her charm and style, her youth and the way that she aged during her various appearances? Did she realise she was a ghost or not? Her taking for granted the meetings with Eben? Her surprise at his responses? The gradual revelation of her story? at school, her parents' death and her grief? Her ability to remain for the painting of the portrait? The build-up to the graduation and her disappearance? Was she a credible heroine, a credible ghost?
9. Eben’s quest and his searching out her convent, the atmosphere of Cape Cod and the storm, the climbing of the rocks? His hope for rescue? Jenny's reappearance and her reassurance but her death?
10. How well did the film build to its climax and to Jennie's death? The explanation by Jennie that her death did not mean the end of their love but an eternal love? How credible within the conventions of this love fantasy? The charm of the film, the romance, the love story, the humanity and sensitivity?
