Eben Adams (Joseph Cotten) is a struggling painter whose career is going nowhere until he meets a mysterious young woman named Jennie Appleton (Jennifer Jones). Jennie seems to move through time like a spirit wandering. She becomes Adams’ muse and then his lover. But as Adams investigates the life of the woman he loves his faith in her and his art is tested, climaxing one fateful night in a hurricane.
Portrait Of Jennie (1948) is a film about the spirituality of art and its connection to romance. Like Der Himmel über Berlin (1987), Portrait Of Jennie uses supernatural elements in order to investigate the abstract notions of fate, inspiration, and human bonds. The ghostly Jennie is a muse out of time; traversing Adams’ linear existence only when his heart calls to her and inspiration strikes.
The ethereal quality of Jennie’s appearances is rendered strikingly by cinematographer Joseph H. August. August died during production but only after lensing the majority of the film. Sound stages, rear projection and intense spotlights all work in tandem to create a fantastic rendering of New York’s Central Park. These dreamy scenes were an obvious influence on Wenders’ film and on par with the Archers’ A Matter Of Life & Death (1946).
But the greatest cinematic achievement in Portrait Of Jennie comes during the climax of the storm. The black and white photography of the majority of the film suddenly becomes green tinted as the storm hits only to be followed by a red tint in the storm’s aftermath. Miniatures and superimpositions pull off the effect of the storm in the style of a silent film. The cuts and pacing make the fight against the onslaught of waves some of the best footage that director William Dieterle ever shot.
As momentous an achievement of film art as Portrait Of Jennie is there is no denying that, at its core, it is an instance of art imitating life. Producer David O. Selznick was in the midst of his famous love affair with Jennifer Jones. She was the muse of the much older Selznick. Their relationship colors Portrait Of Jennie with all of its close-ups of Jones looking in awe at Joseph Cotten. Cotten, a stand in for Selznick, is concerned most of all with creating a visual record of the woman he loves.
