My admiration for Jennifer Jones defiantly survives her career-long penchant for goopy vehicles. This film, I note from existing comments, seems to inspire the kind of reverence that no rebuttal can dislodge, and so I'll merely suggest that it might be just a tad pretentious, that some might find it wordy, and that its ill-blended melange of pulp-fiction mysticism, pseudo-theology and "philosophy" adds up to nothing whatever. Some nice fantasy-effects in an impossible Central Park, and a Debussy-derived score that brings many a smile, as much for "the next bit that's left out" as for what's plundered -- it's an oddity, perhaps, that as a leitmotiv for the raven-tressed Jenny, "The Girl with the Flaxen Hair" was chosen, but I did miss the trumpet in the "La Mer" borrowing. Cotten is better in "The Third Man", Gish in "Night of the Hunter", and David Wayne anywhere he isn't wrestling with an Irish brogue that comes and goes like the Cheshire Cat.
Review of Portrait of Jennie
