Posted on 02/07/2025 2:31:12 PM PST by simpson96
Among the strangest of Hollywood’s supernatural fantasies of the decade was this concoction from producer David O. Selznick and director William Dieterle. A down-on-his-luck painter in 1930s Manhattan meet and fall in love with an enigmatic woman who ages rapidly from girlhood to womanhood to old age between each encounter.
Scored to the mix of Debussy themes and a swirling Bernard Herrmann original, the resulting tale of obsessional love plays like a blueprint for Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958) as Dieterle’s film engulfs us in the painter’s pursuit of an otherworldly muse. Awash in romanticism and melancholia, it dramatically switches from black and white to a green-tinted shipwreck sequence and finally bursts into full color to display the eponymous painting.
Portrait Of Jennie (1948 - Jennifer Jones, Joseph Cotton - supernatural fantasy)
*ping*
Good movie.
I remember it. A time of innocence.
LOVE THIS!!! OWN A COPY!!! ADORE IT!!!
There is a more current movie that subtly borrows from these esoteric themes. That would be the movie titled “She”, or “Her”, starting Joaquin Phoenix. Joaquin plays a 40ish single man, who assembles his idea of the perfect woman to fall in love with. She is nothing more than a sophisticated algorithm, always vavailable at the press of a button. Eventually this man truly does fall in love with this “woman”. I only saw the previews, not the actual film. I’m guessing he ended up losing her.
Supernatural fantasies had a run in the ‘40s. Think ‘Here Comes Mr. Jordan’ and its sequel ‘Down to Earth’.
Ping
“On Borrowed Time” (1939)
Stars: Lionel Barrymore, Cedric Hardwicke, Beulah Bondi.
Young Pud is orphaned and left in the care of his aged grandparents. The boy and his cantankerous old grandfather become inseparable friends. But Gramps is concerned for his grandson’s future and wary of a scheming relative who seeks Pud’s custody. One day Mr. Brink—an agent of Death—arrives to take Gramps “to the land where the woodbine twineth.” Through a bit of trickery, Gramps confines Mr. Brink, and thus Death, to the top of an old apple tree, giving Gramps extra time to resolve issues about Pud’s future. —Thomas McWilliams
I first read the short story/novella by Robert Nathan when I was about 12. It was in an anthology my mother had. I read it several times. I didn’t see the movie until a couple of decades later. Thanks for the link.
8675309 is my portrait of jennie...
Sounds good, I’ll have to look for it!
Rita Hayworth in "Down to Earth" (1947, technicolor, full movie)
And The Ghost and Mrs. Muir and On Borrowed Time.
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