Did any man ever love a woman the way Selznick loved Jennifer Jones? Movie after movie he produced as a testament to her beauty and his inflated opinion of her talent. Back in the day, people scoffed, but looking at the movies now, for the most part, Jones meets or exceeds Selznick's expectations. She really could do almost anything, and even if she couldn't she gave it her best shot. We admire her for being game, if nothing else, though this enthusiasm leads sometimes to tastelessness, such as her impersonation of Eurasian Lin Yutang in LOVE IS A MANY SPLENDORED THING, or trying to imitate a young teen girl in this film, PORTRAIT OF JENNIE, a sensitive attempt but one doomed to failure, she just comes off as a little nutty and Joseph Cotten's interest in her a little prurient.
He's playing Eben Adams, a painter without a subject, evidently a dilemma dreamed up by someone who was never a painter and knows nothing about the way painters work. And yet the movie makes you believe this, makes you feel Eben's pain, indeed we see it as part of a general postwar malaise, as though Adorno had spoken that there would be no subjects in painting after Auschwitz. Through the months to come Eben undertakes a course in humility from his art dealer, Peggy Guggenheim-no, no, I mean Ethel Barrymore! She's the one who advises him that he's all about empty formalism and that he needs soul.
Which he gets in spades from the lovely Jennie Appleton. I wonder if Selznick first became interested in Robert Nathan's novel primarily because of the coincidence of its heroine's name, how closely it resembled his wife's? Remember that he changed her name already, from Phyllis Isley, the name under which she first acted in her earliest films, and then when she met Selznick he named her Jennifer Jones. Dieterle's film is a "portrait of Jennie" in every sense, from child to old woman, from love object to passionate embodiment of lust, from black and white to Technicolor, from living to dead and back again. She is everything and this movie has enough ambition, drive, and melancholy to displace all other movies in its wake. Long live Jennifer Jones, long live cinema!
JONES AT HER MOST ETHEREAL!!
First of all, the DVD transfer is excellent!! Glorious black and white and the technicolor sequences are enthralling!! No extras aside from subtitles are included.
Now, "Portrait of Jennie" is, indeed, something from another world largely due to Jones' excellent performance. Her ethereal beauty was never more evident than in this picture (including The Song of Bernadette). There is pure magic between her and Joseph Cotten, the poor, lonely artist who captures the magic on canvas. The ending shot of the portrait is haunting...as is the picture itself. Jones was perfect casting for Jennie and unlike many of her other portrayals, her facial expressions and contortions during the overly dramatic scenes are not evident here making this portrayal one of her best. This is a great picture to watch on a rainy Sunday afternoon. If you happen to live by the sea, you'll really get a taste of what this movie is about. Romantic love, timeless as the ages, and as real and eternal as the wind ever blowing! A classic!
Love beyond reason!
Like "Peter Ibbetson" (the sound film) or "Wuthering Heights" (the novel), "Portrait of Jeannie" is a perfect example of love "fou" story. Love "fou" is a kind of surralistic tale of passion beyond reason and reality. That is the point to understand so passionate film. This magnificent movie is a triumph for producer David O. Selznick and Jennifer Jones in the role of Jeannie. Great performances by Joseph Cotten and Ethel Barrymore.
A three-hour weepy extraordinaire, this 1944 offering from producer David O. Selznick (who also wrote the screenplay) was a tribute to all the families who stayed behind while their men went off to fight in World War II. Claudette Colbert is the mother of daughters Jennifer Jones and Shirley Temple; first seen coming home after dropping her war-bound husband at the train, she becomes the model of courage and strength on the homefront. The plot has a Saturday Evening Post feel today, as it follows the family's day-to-day life and struggles, whether with a crotchety boarder (a delightfully starchy Monty Woolley) or oldest daughter Jones's doomed romance with departing serviceman Robert Walker. They don't make them like this anymore and it's too bad. Nominated for a fistful of Oscars,... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Claudette Colbert - Jennifer Jones Director(s): John Cromwell DVD Release Date: Released the 19 October 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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This silky smooth film noir pits gruff police detective Dana Andrews, stiff and blunt in his street-bred manners, against a cultured columnist and acidic wit (Clifton Webb at his prissiest) in a battle of wits during a murder investigation. The cop is a romantic hiding under a hard-boiled exterior who falls in love with the beautiful victim through the portrait that hangs in her apartment. Gene Tierney, whose heart-shaped face mixes the exotic with the girl next door, brings the poise and calm of a model to her role as the object of every man's gaze and the target of a killer. Laura, handsomely shot in dreamy black and white, is the first and best of Otto Preminger's cool, controlled murder mysteries. In the gritty world of film noir it remains the most refined and elegant example... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Gene Tierney - Dana Andrews Director(s): Rouben Mamoulian - Otto Preminger DVD Release Date: Released the 15 March 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Leave Her to Heaven is one of the most unblinkingly perverse movies ever offered up as a prestige picture by a major studio in the golden age of Hollywood. Gene Tierney, whose lambent eyes, porcelain features, and sweep of healthy-American-girl hair customarily made her a 20th Century Fox icon of purity, scored an Oscar nomination playing a demonically obsessive daughter of privilege with her own monstrous notion of love. By the time she crosses eyebeams with popular novelist Cornel Wilde on a New Mexico-bound train, her jealous manipulations have driven her parents apart and her father to his grave. Well, no, not grave: Wilde soon gets to watch her gallop a glorious palomino across a red-rock horizon as she metronomically sows Dad's ashes to the winds. Mere screen moments later,... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Gene Tierney - Cornel Wilde Director(s): John M. Stahl DVD Release Date: Released the 22 February 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Great wartime story with so much heart. They don't make them like this anymore. Ginger Rogers plays a different kind of role then you're use to seeing and she pulls it off great. More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Ginger Rogers - Joseph Cotten Director(s): George Cukor - William Dieterle DVD Release Date: Released the 19 October 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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The ultimate tearjerker, this 1942 romance classic directed by Mervyn LeRoy (based on a novel by James Hilton) stars Ronald Colman as a British army officer suffering from amnesia after World War I. After falling in love with and marrying a dance-hall singer (Greer Garson), Colman's happy character begins a career as a writer and doesn't seem to mind that he doesn't remember who he is. A car accident changes all that, however, causing the hero's memory to return and making him forget all about his lovely cottage and bride. LeRoy modulates the obvious suspense element in the story (for example, is Colman going to remember Greer or not?) extremely well, building ever-so-deliciously slowly toward a huge payoff. This is one of the great date movies of all time. --Tom KeoghMore Info about this DVD Actor(s): Ronald Colman - Greer Garson Director(s): Mervyn LeRoy DVD Release Date: Released the 11 January 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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