Portrait of Jennie (Dieterle, 1948): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 6.20pm
This 35mm screening, part of the Melodrama season at BFI Southbank, is also screened at the cinema on December 27th. Details here.Time Out review:
A companion piece to the William Dieterle/David O. Selznick Love Letters, also
starring Jennifer Jones and Joseph Cotten; but where the earlier film remained rooted in
superior romantic hokum, this one takes wing into genuine romantic
fantasy through its tale of a love that transcends space and time as
Cotten's struggling artist meets, falls in love with, and is inspired by
a strangely ethereal girl (Jones) whom he eventually realises is the
spirit of a woman long dead. Direction and performances are superb
throughout, but the real star is Joseph August's camera, which conjures
pure magic out of the couple's tender odyssey, from the gravely
quizzical charm of their first encounter in snowy Central Park (when she
is still a little girl, strangely dressed in clothes of bygone days)
through to the awesome storm at sea that supernaturally heralds their
final parting. Buñuel saw it and of course approved: 'It opened up a big
window for me'.
Tom Milne
Here (and above) is the trailer.
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