Before Alfred Hitchcock's masterpiece VERTIGO, itself a tale of one man's romantic obsession with a fantasy woman, there was this beautiful, elegant and quite Gothic PORTRAIT OF JENNIE, directed by William Dieterle and starring Joseph Cotten and Jennifer Jones as the alluring Jennie. Eben Adams is the painter struggling to make a living in New York City whose life one day crosses the path of the somewhat enigmatic young girl known to him only as Jennie. They begin a liaison of sorts, strictly in the platonic, but this eventually comes to consume Adams life and very reason to exist until it becomes clear that Jennie might not even be a real person.
Artists have a heightened sense of reality and Eben Adams' is no exception: through Joseph Cotten's subtle performance we get to see a man tortured by a woman he cannot have but nevertheless pursues and enshrines in his mind, going to extreme lengths to retain every aspect of her existence, even when this existence might not be past his own imagination. Dieterle never truly establishes a clear moment when Jennie herself is -- enshrouding her in shadows and filtered light which make her appearances all the more disturbing -- but it's the music, taken from several compositions by Debussy enhanced by the use of the ghostly theremin that really gives this movie an extra ambiance in an early incursion into Musique Concrete and very early Ambient. Jennifer Jones also gives an extremely modulated performance, since she at the start of the movie looks more like a high-school girl who, every time Adams reconnects with her, ages just a bit, turning into a full-blooded woman with that gorgeous voice and haunting presence that almost drives his character over the edge. Worthy of more than one view, if at all for its innovative use of color for the climactic sequence, PORTRAIT OF JENNIE is an elegant mood piece that progressively seduces the viewer into its mystery and allure and lingers on after the credits roll.
Artists have a heightened sense of reality and Eben Adams' is no exception: through Joseph Cotten's subtle performance we get to see a man tortured by a woman he cannot have but nevertheless pursues and enshrines in his mind, going to extreme lengths to retain every aspect of her existence, even when this existence might not be past his own imagination. Dieterle never truly establishes a clear moment when Jennie herself is -- enshrouding her in shadows and filtered light which make her appearances all the more disturbing -- but it's the music, taken from several compositions by Debussy enhanced by the use of the ghostly theremin that really gives this movie an extra ambiance in an early incursion into Musique Concrete and very early Ambient. Jennifer Jones also gives an extremely modulated performance, since she at the start of the movie looks more like a high-school girl who, every time Adams reconnects with her, ages just a bit, turning into a full-blooded woman with that gorgeous voice and haunting presence that almost drives his character over the edge. Worthy of more than one view, if at all for its innovative use of color for the climactic sequence, PORTRAIT OF JENNIE is an elegant mood piece that progressively seduces the viewer into its mystery and allure and lingers on after the credits roll.