Portrait of Jenny (1948)

Portrait of Jennie is a 1948 fantasy film based on the novella by Robert Nathan.

The film, set in 1934, tells the story of an impoverished painter in New York City, who meets a fey little girl in Central Park wearing old-fashioned clothing. He makes a sketch of her from memory which involves him with an art dealer who is impressed with his work. This inspires him to paint a portrait of her - the "Portrait Of Jennie." Jennie has seemed to age a few years each time Adams meets her. He soon falls in love with her, but is puzzled by the fact that she seems to be experiencing events that took place many years previously as if they had just happened. He sets out to investigate but does not reveal what he discovers to anyone, and is puzzled by what he finds.

The film was directed by William Dieterle and produced by David O. Selznick.

The book on which the film was based first attracted the attention of David O. Selznick, who immediately purchased it as a vehicle for rising star Jennifer Jones. Filming began in early 1947 in New York City and Boston, Massachusetts, but Selznick was unhappy with the results and scheduled re-shoots as well as hiring and firing five different writers before the film was completed in October 1948. The New York shooting enabled Selznick to use Albert Sharpe and David Wayne who were both appearing on stage in Finian's Rainbow, giving an Irish flair to characters and the painting in the bar that wasn't in Nathan's novel.

As Portrait of Jennie was a fantasy, Selznick insisted on filming on actual Massachusetts (The Graves Light) and New York City locations such as Central Park, The Cloisters, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art as opposed to studio sets that dramatically increased the films production costs. The film's major overhaul came when Selznick added a tinted color sequence for the final scenes. The final shot of the painting, appearing just before the credits, is in full Technicolor.

Portrait of Jennie was highly unusual for its time in that it had no opening credits as such, except for the Selznick Studio logo. All of the other credits appear at the end. Before the film proper begins, the title is announced by the narrator (after delivering a spoken prologue, he says, "And now, 'Portrait of Jennie'").

The portrait of Jennie (Jennifer Jones) was painted by artist Robert Brackman. The painting became one of Selznick's prized possessions, and he displayed it in his home after he and Jones married in 1949.

The film is notable for Joseph H. August's remarkably atmospheric cinematography, capturing the lead character's almost drugged obsession with Jennie, amongst the environs of a wintry New York. August shoots many of the scenes through a canvas making the scenes look like actual paintings. August, who used many lenses from silent film days died shortly after completing the film. He was posthumously nominated for an Academy Award for Best Cinematography.

Also remarkable is Dimitri Tiomkin's masterful uses of themes by Claude Debussy, including Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, the two Arabesques, 'Nuages' and 'Sirènes' from the suite Nocturnes, and La fille aux cheveux de lin, with the addition of Bernard Herrmann's "Jennie's Theme" to a song featured in Nathan's book ("Where I came from, nobody knows, and where I am going everyone goes"), utilizing a theremin. Herrmann was assigned the original composing duties for the film but left during its extended shooting schedule. August's and Tiomkin's contributions add greatly to the film's ethereal quality.

A certain scene - of Jennie and Adams having a picnic after witnessing the ceremony in the convent - features in the original screenplay. It was filmed but deleted when it looked as if Jennie's hair was blending into the tree next to her. The scene that featured Jennie doing a dance choreographed by Jerome Robbins took over 10 days to film but wasn't used in the completed film.