Portrait of Jennie (1948)

 

Director: William Dieterle

Screenplay: Paul Osborn, Peter Berneis and Leonardo Bercovici

Based on the novella by Robert Nathan

Cast: Jennifer Jones as Jennie Appleton, Joseph Cotten as Eben Adams, Ethel Barrymore as Miss Spinney, Lillian Gish as Mother Mary of Mercy, Cecil Kellaway as Matthews, David Wayne as Gus O'Toole, Albert Sharpe as Moore, Henry Hull as Eke

Ephemeral Wave

 

A failing, poverty stricken painter Eben Adams (Joseph Cotten) finds his muse, a young girl named Jeanne (Jennifer Jones). Every time he encounters her, however, she increasingly ages up to adulthood, with the added sense that, unaware of his world, she is a figure from the past. Already this is a distinct premise to begin with, but any film which starts with a lengthy monologue about the nature of life and love, over clouds, and manages to not only have one quotation onscreen, but two, for Euripides and Keats, is going to not be a conventional Hollywood film from the forties.

The back-story about the film adds a strange tragedy too. Its producer David O. Selznick was a wunderkind of MGM studios, given his own creative control, and was responsible for Alfred Hitchcock's only Best Picture Oscar, for Rebecca (1940), and Gone with the Wind (1939), a cultural monolith even if a problematic one. He also became romantically involved with actress Jennifer Jones, born Phylis Isley, Portrait of Jeannie as a result effectively a love letter to her made at the end of their relationship. Theirs is a really difficult and complicated romance which makes the film in a larger context more disquieting. Both married originally when they had their relationship, Selznick effectively destroyed himself, alongside issues like gambling addiction, trying to control and shape her image over films which did not succeed, and theirs is not a relationship in the modern day that would be seen as wholesome at all. He would die in 1965, and Jones would live to 2009, with other marriages and a life beyond, but with mental health issues throughout her career, it is not surprising after her film career she decided to devote herself to de-stigmatising mental illness with her institution the Jennifer Jones Simon Foundation for Mental Health and Education.

Even by itself, Portrait of Jennie feels like a totem to a love off-screen finally waving goodbye, even if they would live together as a couple until his death decades later. Unstuck in time, not quite a Kurt Vonnegut character, Jennie is a figure from the 1910s, already dead but appearing to Joseph Cotton's impoverished painter at various times, beginning as a young girl and eventually becoming a woman. All of them are played by Jones, the first time acting with a higher pitched voice and childlike innocence, alongside a strategic placement of Cotten and the film camera. As he grows in talent, under the watchful eye of an art seller, he encounters Jennie over and over again, replaying her as a living breathing spectre he becomes increasingly obsessed with, building to the ultimate portrait of her as an adult.

Portrait of Jennie's oddness is compounded, as in any case, by the context of when the film was made. Forties Hollywood means sumptuous monochrome unless in rare cases, such as the finale here using silent cinema colour tinting, matched by romantic melodrama and extensive use of an orchestral score to add a haunting mood. A gamut of character actors flesh out this cast immensely, such as Ethel Barrymore as the watchful eye becoming increasingly concerned by Eben's mental state as he obsesses over a figure no one else has seen, or his best friend Gus (David Wayne), who gets Eben work painting a nationalist mural at an Irish-American bar. All of them, but especially Barrymore's character, add a level of emotional weight that helps the film immensely. And of course, Joseph Cotten is a huge advantage here. It is great to see Cotten in a lead role, particularly as his inherent talent helps adds conviction to a peculiar premise. His earnestness in a film, to a nun played by Hollywood royalty Lillian Gish, about the immortality of love for an unknown figure is the sort that would collapse into kitsch were it not for a great actor like Cotten being there to speak it.

Jennifer Jones as an actress, the idolised figure, is placed in a curious place with this film. This is a case, even with a director William Dieterle an acclaimed figure behind the likes of The Devil and Daniel Webster (1941), where the producer has more auteurist influence, which leaves this with an intense level of reality as a metaphor of love for someone is if there will never be there, and is an openly self-destructive romance where Jennie due to the plot who will depart from Eben's life no matter how hard he tries to steer the course of time in another direction. 

Jones herself, performance wise, does have a challenge in having to play a character that changes from a child to an adult, and does her best. There is a sense, though, of her being a precious figure captured in the prism of the film's camera as much as the paintings in the film. Said film is entirely about the male perception of a loved one, thankfully never straying into a gross obsession but instead wistful, never patronising but pretentious in a sentimental and applaudable earnest way, a weird hybrid of fantasy and the supernatural, possibly even science fiction depending how you interpret Jennie's state. It was not a success when it was made, with Selznick's constant work on the film and the over increasing budget causing this to leave a black eye, enough to push him forth to working overseas on productions like The Third Man (1949).  Portrait of Jennie is a rewarding film for me, truly unique, but its back-story does make it as disquieting as it is compelling.

 

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1) The podcast You Must Remember This, which tackles the first century of Hollywood and classic Hollywood especially, covered this relationship in Episode 66, and it is a tumultuous narrative when read of.