Por­trait of Jen­nie remains one of Hollywood’s strangest melodramas

Por­trait of Jen­nie ought to be a sad film, and in many ways it is; its sto­ry hinges on the trag­ic fate of a young woman des­tined to per­ish in a ter­ri­ble storm at sea. The two lovers at its heart are kept apart by time, even as its strange dis­tor­tions bring them togeth­er for tran­si­to­ry moments of bliss. Its qui­eter moments hint at loss, suf­fer­ing, and the ache of iso­la­tion, all beau­ti­ful­ly con­veyed by its superb sup­port­ing cast.

Adapt­ed from Robert Nathan’s 1940 nov­el of the same name, William Dieterle’s debut fea­ture screened in New York City on Christ­mas Day, 1948, before receiv­ing a gen­er­al US release the fol­low­ing April. It failed at the box office on its ini­tial run, despite a large­ly pos­i­tive crit­i­cal recep­tion. A 1950 re-release, this time under the rather cyn­i­cal title Tidal Wave, fared no better.

The film’s fraught pro­duc­tion his­to­ry saw orig­i­nal com­pos­er Bernard Her­rmann replaced by Dim­itri Tiomkin after one too many argu­ments with pro­duc­er, David O Selznick. The death of cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Joseph H August on set in 1947 was a crip­pling blow (his work was com­plet­ed by an uncred­it­ed Lee Garmes). Ulti­mate­ly, Por­trait of Jennie’s gross­ly inflat­ed bud­get and pro­tract­ed shoot­ing sched­ule fin­ished Selznick’s career.

It’s not dif­fi­cult to see why this strange and melan­cholic film didn’t find an audi­ence on its ini­tial release. Any­one expect­ing a straight­for­ward melo­dra­ma is like­ly to be dis­ap­point­ed. Beneath the roman­tic trap­pings, Por­trait of Jen­nie is a med­i­ta­tion on pas­sion, ful­fil­ment and the trans­for­ma­tive pow­er of art.

Land­scape painter Eben Adams (Joseph Cot­ten) is scrap­ing a liv­ing in the bit­ter win­ter of 1934 by hawk­ing his unin­spired can­vas­es. He catch­es the eye of art deal­er Miss Spin­ney (Ethel Bar­ry­more), who’s struck less by the life­less daubs than by the spir­it of the young man respon­si­ble for them. With the right inspi­ra­tion, she believes, Eben could yet be a name for the his­to­ry books.

A chance encounter with Jen­nie Apple­ton (Jen­nifer Jones) sets his life on a very dif­fer­ent path. The charm­ing young girl prat­tles on about her par­ents and friends, con­fus­ing him with ref­er­ences to long-van­ished New York land­marks. She soon dis­ap­pears, leav­ing him baf­fled – but they’ll meet again. Every time they cross each other’s paths, she’s aged sev­er­al years, final­ly reach­ing radi­ant womanhood.

The haunt­ing song Jen­nie sings dur­ing their first encounter (Herrmann’s only remain­ing con­tri­bu­tion to the film’s Debussy-heavy score) announces her mys­tery: ​‘Where I come from nobody knows, and where I am going every­thing goes’. Eben’s research even­tu­al­ly leads him to the dev­as­tat­ing real­i­sa­tion that the woman he’s come to love died years ear­li­er in a ter­ri­ble storm at sea. Des­per­ate to save her, Eben retraces her final steps until des­tiny seems set to unite them both in a shared oblivion.

Jones – so often under­rat­ed and nev­er bet­ter than here – is lumi­nous as the unfor­tu­nate Jen­nie. Endear­ing­ly awk­ward in girl­hood and beguil­ing as a grown woman, she’s every bit as com­plex as her artist swain. Jennie’s no ide­alised pro­jec­tion, but a vibrant, flesh-and-blood human, the incar­na­tion of the lost and longed-for past that seems to haunt all those who sur­round Eben, rep­re­sent­ed most win­ning­ly by his Irish taxi-dri­ver friend, Gus (David Wayne). Eben’s com­bi­na­tion of sen­si­tiv­i­ty and repressed pas­sion, ren­dered vivid by the irre­sistible Cot­ten, makes him just as appeal­ing an object of desire as his ill-fat­ed lover.

The key to this sto­ry, how­ev­er, lies in the fact that its real pro­tag­o­nist is nei­ther of its two appar­ent leads. It’s imme­di­ate­ly after Eben’s intro­duc­tion to Miss Spin­ney that he meets Jen­nie. When the two cross paths in Cen­tral Park, he turns to find Spin­ney behind him. At a piv­otal moment in the dra­ma, it is his old­er friend and patron who finds Jennie’s scarf, a tal­is­man that Eben clings to as proof of his incred­i­ble tale. Barrymore’s exquis­ite per­for­mance both anchors the sto­ry and per­mits it to soar. Her unspo­ken love for Eben is all the more poignant because, as their wit­ty, charged con­ver­sa­tions make clear, it could have been requited.

New York City, blan­ket­ed in snow and peo­pled by many lost souls in the harsh win­ter, pro­vides an unfor­get­table back­drop. Eerie green and sepia tones intrude on the black-and-white cin­e­matog­ra­phy to daz­zle and dis­ori­ent at a cru­cial point, while a sud­den, unex­pect­ed switch to Tech­ni­colour in the final scene is a stroke of genius. Eben, his place in the pan­theon assured, is nowhere to be found at the film’s close. Instead, Miss Spin­ney, a dif­fer­ent kind of genius, has the final word on the mean­ing of true art. Her audi­ence – intrigu­ing­ly, all girls – lis­ten in won­der. In Por­trait of Jennie’s clos­ing moments, pain and loss melt away. All that’s left is love, cap­tured for­ev­er on canvas.